It is the Hotel CEO's Job to Buy the Right Technology
Hoteliers complain about their hotel technology for several reasons, such as too complex to use technology, too little training, slow support, lack of functionality, lack of understanding of hotels' needs, and even too many functions that hotels never use. These problems have been around for decades. Is there a way to minimize these problems? More profound industry knowledge from vendors and using the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework could be a way to better hotel technology.
Modern hotel technology must be innovative and intimately aligned with the real needs of hotel operators and guests. This is where the Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) framework becomes essential. In this blog post, I will explore how the hotel CEO can apply the JTBD framework when buying new technology. At the end of the blog post, I will also mention how Demand Calendar, a hotel management platform, has embraced the JTBD approach, ensuring that every aspect of its design and development process is driven by a deep understanding of the specific 'jobs' its users need to accomplish. Let's get started with explaining the JTBD framework.
Understanding Jobs-to-be-done
The development of technology for hotels has become increasingly important in today's fast-paced world. To ensure the success of these technological advancements, it is crucial to understand and align with the customers' needs. This is where the Jobs-to-be-done framework comes into play. In this article, we will explore how the Jobs-to-be-done framework can be effectively used when developing hotel technology, focusing on hotel management, revenue management, and guest experience.?
The Jobs-to-be-done framework revolves around the concept that customers "hire" products or services to help them accomplish specific tasks or jobs . Technology developers can gain deep insights into customer needs and preferences by focusing on the job the customer is trying to get done instead of analyzing customer profiles or data correlations. This understanding enables the creation of technology that genuinely addresses the core functional jobs , related jobs, emotional jobs, consumption chain jobs, and purchase decision jobs of customers.?
The Jobs-to-be-done framework provides a structured approach for defining, categorizing, capturing, and organizing customer needs. It brings order and structure to the innovation process. It allows product teams to identify unmet needs, discover unique customer segments, and create breakthrough products that predict market success and provide customer value. However, any substantial technology investment is up to the hotel group CEO after stakeholder input and a solid ROI calculation, including evaluating upcoming changing consumer needs and a competitive advantage when attracting guests.
The CEO makes the final decision about buying hotel technology
All hotel CEOs know that buying and implementing hotel technology is demanding for all team members, including managing the natural human resistance to change. Every CEO wants to minimize the risk of buying the wrong technology and maximize the potential for additional revenue, cost savings, enhanced guest experiences, and strengthening of the market position. From a CEO's perspective, selecting and buying technology for a hotel involves several key aspects to achieve the maximal effect of a hotel technology investment.?
While a hotel group CEO may need more detailed technical knowledge, their role is to understand the broader needs and ensure the selected technology serves those needs effectively, leveraging the expertise of their team and industry experts.
The Role of Deep Industry Expertise
Developing technology for hotels requires in-depth knowledge. Ideally, hoteliers and technology developers with specialized industry experience can identify and prioritize relevant jobs like hotel management, revenue management, and guest experience. This is, however, where things start to go wrong. Hoteliers are often too busy running the day-to-day business and need more time to become experts in defining the jobs. In hotels, the work has been taught from generation to generation, and the jobs have been done the same way for decades. One example is the check-in process, which has been the same for at least a hundred years. Hoteliers explain to technology providers that this is how it should be done. Their only wish is that the PMS could pull up the guest information faster and the credit card machine could process the authorization quicker to speed up the check-in process. The hotelier is not different from any other customer and can only come up with incremental improvements. Even if there is no proof that Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses," the quote captures the difficulties of thinking outside the box and creating game-changing ideas.
?This is where the jobs-to-be-done theory comes in. Why do hotels need to check in guests? What is the job that has to be done? Here are a few ideas of what the job is:?
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?When the job is clear, innovation on how to get the job done can start. Let's look into "secure payment." The traditional way is to ask the guest for a credit card, authorize the card in the credit card machine, and ask the guest for a PIN code or signature. Instead of this ancient process, the booking engine could process and authorize the credit card if the guest books directly. Another way is to hand over the job to the guest in an app on the smartphone. Hotel staff can get a green light that the credit card is authorized. Creative people could come up with ten other ways to secure the payment. Based on all these ideas, a technology vendor could design functions that will handle the "secure payment" job without friction for hotels.
?Deep industry expertise goes beyond the day-to-day standard operating procedures and searches for why things must be done to develop solutions that get the job done. Hoteliers and technology vendors need more industry expertise. It is too much work to think about how things could work. The hotelier just wants a new PMS and has heard that a cloud-based PMS is what the hotel needs. The vendor is eager to sell, so they will sell a generic PMS as long as hotels are buying generic PMSs. The same goes for POS, RMS, CRM, etc. End of story. Hoteliers will continue to complain because they did not know exactly what they bought and the technology did not solve the problems they expected.
Continue to read the blog post here: https://www.demandcalendar.com/blog/it-is-the-hotel-ceos-job-to-buy-the-right-technology
Applying JTBD to Technology Solutions
A way forward would be to use a common framework for communication between hoteliers and technology vendors. The jobs-to-be-done framework focuses on the essential jobs and should be used to align hoteliers and technology vendors.
Future Trends in Hotel Technology
The Jobs-to-be-done framework can also be used to speculate on future trends in hotel technology.
Key Takeaways
The Jobs-to-be-done framework offers a powerful approach to developing technology solutions in the hotel industry.
Demand Calendar focuses on hotels JTBD
Demand Calendar is a hotel management platform designed from the hotel group CEO's perspective, driving the business toward long-term financial success.
Chief Business Officer @ SODA.Auto | Co-Founder at Duamentes
9 个月Thank you for sharing, we just published on this topic! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-sEWEjyuME&t=268s it is always great to learn more within one framework
#Hotel addict | #hoteltech specialist | Keynote Speaker | Advisor | Entrepreneur
1 年When the hotel company is small which is very common in several countries such as France, the CEO/GM often wants to be bandmaster and musician at same time, thinking that he can play piano with one hand and his baton in the other hand...