Hotels are Way Behind on Tech. These Brands Are Trying to Change That.

25.08.2023 - 13:19 / skift.com / Justin Dawes

Hotel executives are the first to admit they’ve been behind the curve with new technology. The problem now is that travelers expect the tech in a hotel to be as good or better than what they have at home.

Catching up was the topic of a panel at HITEC in Toronto this week with executives from Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Accor, Fairmont, and more. 

“I think we’re making progress, but we’re forced with our backs to the wall,” said Michael Levie, founding partner of Netherlands-based hotel chain CitizenM. “It’s a little bit embarrassing that we’re so late to the game, and there’s a lot of catching up to do.”

Many hotels still have cable television and telephones in their rooms, for example, but consumer needs have flown past that.

Tariq Valani, senior vice president of Global Support Services for Accor and global senior vice president of Technology for Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, believes that many hotel companies have lost touch with understanding what customers actually want. 

“It’s a basic comparison to say that when you’re in a hotel, it’s the bed first and then it’s the shower and it’s the Wi-Fi — but maybe it’s the Wi-Fi first now,” Valani said. “When you don’t get that right, as a basic — that’s kind of like the core plumbing of what we’re doing. And so things like this are pain points that we actually need to resolve, get to the basics.” 

One of the key goals for hotel companies is to create a full profile of individual customers so they can provide personalized services. That means establishing a reliable system of customer data that’s accessible by every part of the business. Big hotel companies have been moving to modern cloud-based data systems in part to enable that transition.  

The luxury brand Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group has been implementing technology to track activities of top guests – like when they check in or make a restaurant reservation – so hotel staff can then provide a higher level of service, according to Todd Wood, vice president of global applications and transformation for Mandarin.

“We’re implementing that so that we can then follow up and greet the guests and understand what the guests do and see if we might be able to help out,” Wood said.

The idea of this complete guest profile has been getting even more attention as it relates to hyper-personalization — being able to customize services based on specific customer interests — because of the latest advancements in artificial intelligence 

“I think that really if you’re able to get your data clean and have a digital engagement with your guests, then generative AI has become fantastic because you can mass customize,” said Levie of CitizenM.

Sanovnik Destang, executive director of Bay Gardens Resorts in Saint Lucia,