Hospitality Industry in the 2020s

As the 2010s come to an end, and we have seen the world completely transform in most developed countries at least, we can anticipate a continuation of rapid and transformative changes in the 2020s. No industry is an exception, including hospitality.

IoT

To remain competitive, as the 2020s begin and progress, hotel operators will willingly or reluctantly have to embrace more and more IoT options to reduce energy wastage, draw efficiencies from robotic process automation for logistics or delivering ubiquitous services to guests in their rooms for enhanced comfort or conveniences.

With IoT, more and more hotels will be, well, SMARTER buildings, with SMART features throughout the facilities. This though, will raise the question of privacy and security, quite very naturally.

Security

Where baby monitors now trigger cyber-attacks and data theft on massive scales, the next decade is one where concerns of privacy and information security will be more valid to say the least.

Where data about what a person feels upon looking at something or movement patterns of his or her feet are increasingly of value, in an IoT world, with all the merits it renders, tech-security as well as information-security will be more important a subjects than ever before.

While hotels may employ better trained as well as better equipped human guards, while also deploying robots, to mitigate threats of physical harm to property, personnel and guests alike, they will also need better virtual guard-dogs to guard against breach or manipulation of their systems.

The best leading hotel chains will probably work towards becoming the new age "Swiss Banks" of guest information, by implementing systems to ensure, the very presence of their guests on their facilities, will virtually be unknown.

Experience

Let us face up to the truth. The value of a hotel, is really, about the experience it offers to any guest. It all boils down to just that. Always has, pretty much, except in exceptional cases, where in some parts of the world, a traveler really has no other option, for keeping warm at night, and that would be all that a hotel may be about there.

Increasingly with technological advances, particularly haptics, mixed reality and holographics, sightseeing will be much less a draw for tourism. Not just hospitality, but the entire economy of nations will be drastically impacted by such advances.

The future of tourism, would be about experiences, that technology will not be able to replicate, substitute or simulate adequately. For countries that can offer immersive or sensory experiences as such, this is great, for virtually a permanent timeline. Whereas in countries where such offerings to tourists will be less possible, hoteliers will probably have to transform their mental models of what the business should be about.

As a Futurist, I thought about this question and the first thing I thought of was, Maldives. Maldives has remote atolls which offer sights that one cannot experience anywhere else on the planet, but running hotels in such locations costs immense amounts of money, something which the traveler would have to bear, making such trips rather costly. And then there is the difficulty in getting to such places, and the cost of that.

What hotels around the world could do, is capitalise on the possibilities presented by X Reality, using a combination of mixed reality, holographics, haptics and more, to bring remote places on earth, into their facilities, which they could sell as staycation packages as well as vacation packages.

Artificial Intelligence

Not every hotel may wish to replace its outstanding human touch with apps and robots. That is quite understandable. However, the most conservative of hotels, no matter how much they may have denied it through the 2010s, will find it increasingly difficult to resist the draw of Artificial Intelligence driven software and systems to manage revenues and room optimisation or bookings. And no, it won't stop with just room or booking management.

To some degree, Finance, HR, Logistics, in every industry will see AI driven automation make an impact on efficiency of processes. It will be no different in hotels.

Harish Shah is Singapore's first local born Professional Futurist and a Management Strategy Consultant. He runs Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting and Keynote Topics include X Reality, EmTech, Product Development, Innovation, Industry 4.0, Marketing, Strategic Foresight, Systems Thinking and Organisational Future Proofing. He was the Opening Keynote Speaker at both the Hotel Management Summit Singapore 2015 and the Hotel Technology Conference 2016 Singapore.