Tickets, luggage, wallet...key?

                                            

Technology is everywhere! We are using it at home, at the work place, during our journeys and even without knowing. On this statement, hotel industry decided to follow this path and started applying gadgets and softwares to help with customer management.

During my 4day trip to London, I had the chance to visit a five-star hotel that came to amaze me. One of the things that fascinated me was the fact that they no longer have a reception and replaced the imposing desk with an iPad. In reports by the Pew Research Centre (2013, 2014), a third of American adults owned a tablet in 2013, including a majority of those in higher income households. The number increased to 42 per cent by January 2014. Same as this hotel’s new approach, more hotels are embracing the benefits of technology and give their customers the opportunity to have their check-in online or even use their phone as the key’s room. “The general benefits for customers when using hotel apps include convenient access to hotel and destination information and services, entertaining content and empowerment to arrange for hotel services (e.g. ordering room service, check-out and scheduling wake-up calls)” (Kim, 2016, p. 1535-1553). Basically, customers feel more comfortable managing their holiday through their screens than through face to face interaction. A few previous studies empirically examined the consumer’s smartphone app usage intention in hospitality settings such as restaurants and air travel (Okumus and Bilgihan, 2014; Morosan, 2014).

Behind the desk and the data that the customer uses, there is a bigger, more complex approach that uses technology to manage the hotel’s rooms. One of the first hotel brands that introduced technology into their benefit was Marriott International, which had implemented MARSHA. “Marriott’s Automated Reservation System for Hotel Accommodations (MARSHA) is a reservation network and demand management tool.” (Enz, 2010, p. 176) and it is connected to the global distribution systems operated by airlines and travel organisations. In 2005, MARSHA handled 70 million reservations and US $22 billion in gross room revenue.

Reference list

Enz, C. (2010). Hospitality strategic management. 1st ed. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons.

Kim, J (2016), 'An extended technology acceptance model in behavioral intention toward hotel tablet apps with moderating effects of gender and age', International Journal Of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 28, 8, pp. 1535-1553, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 13 November 2016.

Morosan, C. (2014), “Toward an integrated model of adoption of mobile phones for purchasing ancillary services in air travel”, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 246-271.

Okumus, B. and Bilgihan, A. (2014), “Proposing a model to test smartphone users’ intention to use smart applications when ordering food in restaurants”, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 31-49.

www.sinch.com/opinion/technology-transforming-hospitality

www.traveldailynews.asia/news/article/51504/pioneering-mobility-technology-gives-guests