New Delhi, September 18, 2018: For every business organization, learning is a never-ending process. Only learning can help an organization to have clarity on many things – be it market demand or clients’ buying preferences. In this piece, we are going to explain how the changing time has driven hoteliers to look at the cloud. We have learned these top 5 insights about their concerns during our recently concluded hospitality industry event.
The event in a nutshell
We had recently conducted a month-long hospitality industry event from 13th June to 10th July 2018. Titled as ‘Growing hotel business using modern cloud technology’, the series was conducted across 6 cities in India and was aimed at showcasing the benefits of adopting new-age technology in the hospitality space.
Co-hosted by Airpay Payment Services and supported by ShawMan and REVOPT, these events saw a good amount of participation from around 200 plus hotel companies across all the cities. Additionally, the events also featured some top-notch hoteliers of some of the iconic brands to share their success stories to motivate emerging hoteliers and hospitality professionals.
Now, let’s look at the top 5 takeaways
These events provided us with the right platform to engage with many emerging hoteliers in India. The post-event survey we conducted has brought up some interesting insights about hoteliers and their take on the adoption of cloud technology. While there have been clearly some early adopters and leaders who have understood the impact of new-age tech platforms, there are others who are getting warmed up to it.
We would love to share those valuable insights with you and here they are
- Top business challenges
Increasing occupancy & revenue: This considered as the most troubling business challenge for around 32% of respondents (hoteliers). However, according to our last year survey, 60% of hoteliers had to face the same challenge.
Enhancing guest experience: Around 23% of hoteliers find it difficult to enhance guest experience at their properties.
Increasing review ratings: This is another major challenge for around 18% of respondents.
Lowering costs & increasing profitability: According to our latest survey, as many as 14% of hoteliers in India find it difficult to lower overall costs in order to increase profitability.
- Top operational pain points
Managing multiple properties: In India, 45% of chain hotels find it difficult to handle operations across multiple properties spread across locations. This seems to be major concern as most of them have aggressive plans to grow their portfolios in coming years.
Access to the right data at the right time: Nearly 23% of them (hoteliers) responded that they don’t have access to the right data at the right time.
Collecting reviews: As many as 18% of hoteliers have said that collecting and managing guest reviews is a major challenge.
Simplifying room reservation: As per our survey, around 14% of hoteliers in India are struggling to simplify the whole process of room reservation.
- Top tech priorities for the next one year
Cloud PMS adoption: Nearly 64% of hoteliers in India plan to adopt cloud-based PMS in the next one year.
Online reputation management: For 64% of them, implementing online reputation management is one of the top tech priorities this year. Interestingly, 45% of hoteliers had expressed their willingness to opt for online reputation management during our last year survey.
Guest-facing technology: 50% of hoteliers plan to invest in guest-facing tech platforms.
Channel management solution: Adopting channel management solution is a top priority for around 32% of hoteliers this year. It looks like channel manager has seen a lot of adoption since last year as 80% of hoteliers were keen to implement this tech platform in last year.
- Top concerns with cloud platform
Internet connectivity: This year, 25% of hoteliers said that unstable internet connectivity is a concern. Last year, the same was a cause of concern for around 40% of them. Looking at this year’s survey findings, it looks like that internet has become stable since last year and hoteliers have grown in confidence over the stability of internet.
Lack of data security: This year, 48% of hoteliers have expressed their concern over data security with cloud platform. Last year, the same was major worry among 60% of them. It shows their growing confidence on cloud platform.
Cloud PMS can’t handle full-fledged operations: This year, around 29% of them believe that cloud PMSs are incapable of handling enterprise-grade hotel operations.
- Top apprehensions while adopting technology
Not getting post-implementation support: During our survey this year, 54% of hoteliers indicated that not getting timely support from their technology partner is a major cause of concern. Moving to the cloud, when they have to work with multiple vendors, this concern gains more importance. However, cloud as a platform reduces the software downtime and thus minimizes support related issues as there are no local installations.
Software updates & upgrades: This is another area that according to 50% of respondents needs immediate attention.
Growing technology overheads: Going by the findings of this year survey, around 18% of hoteliers feel that integrating various technology platforms in the system increases their technology overheads. However, this particular issue was one of the major apprehensions for nearly 45% of hoteliers last year.
Employee attrition: This year, according to around 27% of hoteliers, newer technology adoption takes a serious setback due to high employee attrition.
Corporate Comm India(CCI NewsWire)
