Many hotels today are like older cars, in that technology has enabled them to really push their performance, but it also becomes a limiting factor if the existing structure cannot keep bolting on new solutions to old systems.
If you bought a new car today, you would expect it to come with a dashboard that affords Bluetooth technology so that you could connect everything to your smartphone. You would expect built-in digital maps with turn-by-turn navigation, as well as all the other new technology to be factory-installed.
Those of us with older cars may have access to all that technology as well, but they are clumsier to install and integrate into one seamless experience. You might find your windscreen crowded out with devices, and you will soon run out of cigarette lighter ports to plug everything in.
We are all excited to fit in all the new hotel technologies into our operations and processes but will soon face significant limitations to what the technology can do for us. The hospitality industry’s basic IT architecture is very inefficient.
The good news is the industry has turned a corner with regards to technology, with hotels moving their focus away from trying to develop proprietary systems in-house and thinking more about cloud-based services.
The 2017 Lodging Technology Study, produced by Hospitality Technology and the University of Nevada Las Vegas Hotel College, found more than half of hotel IT executives plan to have one or more of several systems run in the cloud by 2018. The report said those platforms already include or would soon include a PMS, RMS, CRS or systems for loyalty, sales or catering.
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