Hoteliers do not fundamentally like technology. Hoteliers like people - fine food and wine - fine furniture - fine manners and finesse in general, but they don't warm up to the thought of wires and robotics and touchscreens.
In fact, the average hotelier (who, by nature, thinks of him or herself as anything but average) feels more than a simple apathy for processes and processing, s/he feels an actual antipathy for these trappings of modernism and counter-socialization. Wires were unknown in the days of the great palaces and private estates to which the hotelier looks longingly, if historically inaccurately, back in search of his or her moral roots. Aristocrats used people - servant manpower - to look after their comforts and needs.
A person's wealth and social status could be measured by the number of servants he or she could muster to eliminate the drudgeries of daily life. To find ways to eliminate these people would have defeated the purpose. After all, it was socially gratifying and reassuring to have someone else to fasten one's clothes or tie one's shoes because these very menial acts reaffirmed superiority of position and authority.
A little bit of this thinking is still involved in our idea of a luxury hotel today. Haven't we all admired the great hotels of Asia with their high staff-to-guest ratios and wonderfully humble workforce? Maybe that's why we're so sure that our guests actually want to stand in line so that we can hug them or why we believe that a bellman or porter should stand uselessly behind our guests as they check-in in order to be ready to accompany them to their rooms in the overcrowded guest elevators. Technology must mean Formule Un check-in machines, the loss of personal contact, touchscreen concierges and automatic teller check-outs. Try to imagine Louis XIV in front of a touchscreen concierge.
Of course many hoteliers today have already had to cope with the pressures of publicly traded organizations with their stockholders clamoring for dividends and value. Chain hotels are falling into the dangerous game of cost-cutting at all cost in an environment of presumed commoditization of products and services. Already insignificant margins are shrinking as the cost of improving quality of working life cuts deeper and deeper into meager profits. It is increasingly difficult to recruit and retain staff able to comport themselves with a minimum of social grace.
Even in Asia, the fabled staff-to-guest ratios have plummeted and the once humble staff have begun to demand better wages and better working conditions. Gone are the days of guaranteed 90% occupancy or 95% profitability. And it seems that even today's increasingly democratic and increasingly time-pressured guest isn't willing to play along and use the services of a bellman or porter anymore.
In fact, the situation for hoteliers is becoming grave and threatens to remain that way for some time. The emerging workforce of Generation Xers is not only less than half the size of the Baby Boom generation (who plan to retire and travel on the strength of their portfolios in a sustained economic environment,) it is also a generation which is by some measures over-educated and which places little value on loyalty or subservience.
And while Generation Y offers some hope for North Americans in terms of recuperating workforce losses, there is little hope on the horizon for Europeans whose plunging birthrates will continue to impact at least the next half century negatively. Hoteliers are finding themselves in a forced paradigm shift which runs contrary to their pretensions and traditions but which is necessary to ensure their very existence. Only through process transformation supported by developing technologies can they hope to maintain the same service levels and offerings while improving margins and thereby having the opportunity to impact quality of working life meaningfully.
But what if technology didn't have to hurt? What if administrative process or menial task and welcome or humane service were seen as separate issues? What if, by using a range of features from smart-cards or biometrics to sophisticated vertical transportation devices, we were able to offer our guests more efficient and personalized service and actually had time to look after their vital needs? What if, instead of being viewed as the industry of dead-end service jobs, our profession were seen to be on the leading edge of developing talent and promoting intellectual capabilities? What if we could actually begin to pay people decently to be nice and to care?
Technology, by itself, promises very little. We have all experienced the first wave of automation and discovered that it meant very little change in the way we worked. Computerizing reception had an insignificant bottom line effect on our labor costs. The real promise of technology is in the opportunities it gives us to reflect on how we can rethink fundamental processes. Do we really need traditional reception desks? What if, instead, we could have two or three guest service agents welcoming guests in our lobbies and attending to their pressing needs? What if the housekeeping staff on our floors could be empowered to do better more interesting and more lucrative jobs? Couldn't room service or luggage arrive automatically with the type of vertical and horizontal transportation used in airports today?
Of course, when considering technological advancement, we must beware of two common traps. One is assuming that all technology is science fiction and therefore can be conveniently disregarded. This trap appeals to our aristocratic pretensions and is, at the same time, all too easy a way out for comptrollers who demand immediate bottom line profits and who are loath to invest in unproven solutions. These same comptrollers, guided sometimes by lackluster marketers, are the ones who are leading us down the airline path to commoditization. If we listen too much to this line of reasoning we will one day find ourselves with costs cut to the bone but with no recognizable competitive advantages. Fortunately, the continuing emergence of boutique and design hotels is doing much to offset this commoditization threat.
Another trap is the assumption that technology can and will solve all problems. Many technological advancements fail because they are too far ahead of the curve or because the time lag involved in getting them in place will see the emergence of an even newer, even better technology. And technological solutions are not always easy to implant into existing assets in a manner which is reasonably cost-effective.
Having said that, it is vital that we remember the fundamental problems facing our industry. We have too few people available to continue working as we have in the past and the people who are available, both as workers and as guests, are looking for different solutions than our treasured labor-intensive approaches of the past. We are under pressure to increase margins, improve quality of working life and provide better, more personalized service, and our current models are stretched to their limits.
The twenty-first century is upon us, and we must abandon the practices of the nineteenth century if we wish to achieve our objectives. We do not have to abandon high touch in order to be high tech. Technology, in the broadest sense of the word, is the road to the future for hospitality. Only a new industry with a new know-how defined by process reform supported by electronic devices will survive and flourish in the economic environment of tomorrow. Those companies with the foresight and the resources to realize this transition will be able to reinvent the industry lifecycle. The rest will be left longing for the past.
Jeffrey Catrett is Dean of the Les Roches School of Hospitality Management at Kendall College (Chicago, USA) as well as Dean of the School of Business. He holds an MMH from the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration and a BA from Middlebury College. He has previously served as Dean of the Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (Lausanne, Switzerland) and Dean of Academic Studies at the original Les Roches Hotel Management School (Bluche, Switzerland). jcatrett@kendall.edu 
