The novelty of technological innovations has become a necessity in hotel operations and shaping the new normal in hospitality. Incorporating advanced technology to strengthen customer confidence while safeguarding employees’ health and mitigating losses during this recovery stage. Smart hotel technology empowers hotel operations in navigating the uncertain turbulence of the year 2022 and beyond. Let’s look at a few possibilities in how smart technology adaptation matters:

Smart technology empowers hotel operations to advance.

Contactless experiences all the way

The post-pandemic effects have reshaped hospitality and heightened customer expectations to the extent that the “same old days” experience might not cut it for them. Especially post COVID-19 pandemic has multiplied the difficulties in the hotel sector, leaving the hospitality professionals with questions about how to upgrade their technology stacks while dealing with the current crisis.

Contactless technology has firstly introduced a decade ago it’s nothing new, just staying low-key all this time. The emerging technology has recently gained momentum in both the public and private sectors and is widely accepted in hospitality and tourism. Transforming the hospitality standard into a complete contactless experience from check-in/to check-out, ordering food and room services on the guest app, facial recognition payment, etc. to execute all relevant tasks without physical contact with hotel employees, reducing the risk of exposure to undesirable infection in this “sensitive” era.

According to Skift’s report, 26% of customers extremely agreed and 45% favorably agreed that they preferred to stay at hotels providing self-service options to avoid direct physical contact with hotel staff. This opened up the customers’ acceptance of the technology adaption in the hotel sector.

Up to 80% would download the hotel app to proceed with check-in / check-out and receive the latest promotional information and notifications (based on the Criton Hospitality Survey). The majority of guests (62%) have been looking forward to using digital hotel room keys and communicating/ordering room services, and housekeeping through the hotel apps, while 30% would love to proceed with them on the hotel website, and 8% would carry these out the traditional way.

The above statistics have spoken for themselves on the important role of smart technology in today’s hotels’ operations. It gradually has become the business core value, essential criteria for guest accommodation choice. This might be the hotel management software to help optimize the hotel’s operations with ease. With CiHMS – the complete hospitality management solution, streamline hotel procedures from the front desk to housekeeping, monitor individual tasks right at your dashboard within your fingertip, and improve your guest’s experiences simultaneously at their very first stay.

Contactless experience throughout a typical guest journey at a hotel is now possible.

Better guest communication

Generating all guests’ data, including guest preferences, habits, purchased packages, etc., storing them on your system for further analysis. For instance, guest A always orders an extra pillow for his sleep comfort, guest B loves a king-size bed instead of a queen, etc. In their next stay, offer these adjustments ahead.

Personalizing guests’ experience shows that your hotel “do care” about your customer, you remember them perfectly, and always looking forward to welcoming them back. Giving them a sense of familiarity, hospitality, and empathy. It gives your employees the confidence to communicate with guests openly on a much more personal level.

Communication goes both ways. Two-way communication involves receiving feedback from your customers as well. According to Zingle, only 25% of customers would submit feedback only if their experiences have been affected negatively, only 42% would come back to give hotels the second chance to make up for their previous worst experience. How to get it done fairly comfortable for your guests to freely send out constructive feedback in time and retent your customer without losing them forever?

The digital world has come in as a rescuer for such circumstances. We all can easily find a deliberate version of ourselves online. Taking the advantage of social media messenger integration via Open API, communication to your guests through one of these tools can easily be applied, an open communication gateway for your guests to share their difficulties and unfortunate occurrence with you immediately. From there, quick actions and crisis resolution can help to put all your guests’ problems behind, exceed their expectations, and ensure to meet your guests’ satisfaction before they leave.  Add in a touch of VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) technology to differentiate your hotel marketing and improve guests’ experience during their stay.

VR and AR Technology in hospitality to heighten customers’ experience

Unlocking your employees’ full potential

Technology does not only close the gap between guests and hotels but is also a middle man bridging the void among hotel departments, making sure all procedures are in check and intact. The hospitality management solution allows hoteliers to monitor hotel operations easily, hotel room status is synchronized across the system. Instead of the traditional phone call to get the status updated, now can be seen directly on the CiHMS dashboard, helping to streamline and speed up all departments’ processes smoothly, and kick up hotel employees’ performance up a notch.

Also cutting down the excessive timeline in doing these manually. Taking the time in delivering exceptional customer service, and shift the focus on the guests – is an important factor in the hospitality industry.

The backbone hotel’s development platform

A direct booking portal via the hotel’s website or through OTAs distribution channels increases brands’ awareness, making your brand “discoverable” while approaching your target audiences naturally. These technological tools assist your hotel in better maximizing your hotel room occupancy and avoiding the under/over-booking common situation.

The detailed reports with real-time statistics allow hotel managers to make strategic decisions at the right time. AI technology also powers up precise allotment planning and forecast room plans to ensure revenue stabilizing throughout the low-peak periods. Keep hotels stay proactive instead of “inactively” reacting to the overload high peak season.

AI technology has developed rapidly in assisting hotels to forecast hotel room occupancy, allocate labor force efficiently, and build hotel big data to serve hotel operations.

Undeniably, the power of technology has catalyzed hotel operations to breakthroughs and advance along the side. Catching up with the current technology innovations might be challenging but blissful in return with all the benefits and conveniences it brings along. Utilizing technology in hotel operations with a decent hospitality management solution, like CiHMS is the key to starting their hotel recovery in this new normal post-COVID-19 pandemic at a much faster pace, gaining a competitive advantage against other competitors.

If we have briefly talked about AI technology in hospitality in the previous blog, in today’s blog we shall be digging a bit deeper into how AI application in the hospitality industry and its potential to manage hotel operations efficiently.

Robots in the move

The majority of robots in use today are performing human tasks precisely, especially after the pandemic outbreaks to reduce unnecessary physical contact to a minimum and ensure guests stay safe and secured while keeping the current labor force at bay. Vietnam has only applied robotic technology to the manufacturing industry and is skeptical of the service industry, plus the initial upfront investment in robotic technology ain’t nowhere near affordable. Hence, putting robots into your business daily practice eventually gains competitive advantages over your competitors. Guests shall be curious enough to find the need in visiting your hotels and try out your services, boosting your revenues and profits tremendously.

The applications of AI can be seen in hospitality easily through having robots serving in public areas, delivery services, etc.

In-room voice assistant

We all might have been familiar with voice recognition technology such as Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa – the virtual assistants developed by Amazon, which have been making life at home a lot more comfortable: from browsing the web, weather, checking the time, setting timers, turning on TVs, changing the light brightness level to just about anything you can imagine. Bringing voice assistance technology into the hotel room to enhance guest in-room experiences significantly.

According to a recent study from Juniper Research, it shows 8.4 billion mobile users shall be interacting with the virtual voice assistant in the year 2024. This technology plays an important role in connecting hotel employees with their guests. Simply input their requests via the in-room virtual assistant integrated equipment. Thanks to AI technology, these virtual assistants can communicate and confirm guests’ requests before filing them onto the system to get them to queue up.

Once successfully filing these requests, the virtual assistant shall be following through with a set of procedures given by the hospitality management solution, like CiHMS. The request then gets filtered and direct to the related department to be carried out promptly. It cuts down the human labors time in delegating tasks, communications, and more. You’ll be surprised how easily these tasks get sorted out.

Bringing virtual voice assistant experience into hospitality makes guests to settling in easier in a much more comfortable way.

Room occupancy maximization

Thanks to the support of AI technology, the room rate, and room management can easily be solved, such as Insufficient room inventories and unable to optimize room occupancy to an optimum rate due to an overhauled reservation system. With machine-learning ability, AI can help hotels to be in control of targeting the ideal audiences, arrange the room reservations adequately, limit the time gap between two bookings of the same room, and lower the risk of having an empty room stand-by. Mobile friendly allows housekeeping staff to attend to room service requests quickly as soon as the guests are checking out, and update the room status simultaneously across the system easily with the cloud-based hospitality management solution, like CiHMS.

Optimize room rate and room occupancy forecast

Marketing and Sales Departments can quickly get the promotional campaign, available discounts for membership, etc on the hotel management system. The hospitality management solution integrated with AI technology shall automatically detect the price pattern, and match it with current hotel operations and labor force to start “learning” the hotel inside and out to have a hotel room occupancy forecast ahead of time. It allows the system to come up with a strategic operations plan based on the data analyzed from the campaign, and suggest the optimum room rate for guests. The system can also recommend a proper advertising campaign on social networks, one of the surging and well-loved trends in hospitality, to target and convert potential leads into actual customers.

Reports regarding room rate management generated from the machine-learn process of the AI technology can easily be found in the complete hospitality management solution, such as CiHMS. For instance, once in a while, your guests are in need of postponing their reservation due to whatever personal reason it might be, either their flights are delayed or canceled from bad weather, as soon as you update this information onto the hotel PMS, the room status shall be synchronized across the system, as well as on OTA channels. AI technology lets the hotel run short promotion packages for these outstanding rooms on all booking platforms, search engines, social networks, etc. to get this room filled as soon as possible. Make sure no room is left vacant while maximizing hotel revenue at its best.

AI boosts hotel room occupancy rate and maximizes reservations across OTA channels.

Be in check with the room rate strategy from the competitors, monitor your hotel pricing plan, and catch up with the trends to optimize your room occupancy and rate effectively, all thanks to the artificial intelligence found in the powerful Room Rate Management System within our cloud-based hospitality management solution CiHMS.

Personalize guest experiences

Integrating the AI in the hotel management system shall enable customers’ data such as their spending preferences and behaviors during their stay to be stored and analyzed by a set of algorithms. It may recommend guests to take a questionnaire or survey, collecting an adequate amount of information to gather customer insights and use them to deliver an exceptional personalized guest experience in their next stay like: suggest appropriate room packages within their financial budget, favorite value-added services, meal plans and more. The customers feel appreciated and well taken care of, while hoteliers can maximize their profits by successful upsell and cross-sell without being oversold.

Applying AI technology in the hospitality industry now can be found in leading hospitality management solutions on the market, like CiHMS. Be up with the innovative technology on the market and customers’ expectations set your hotels apart from the others. A step up with a future trend, and a step closer to a smart hotel model.

The vaccine passport concept has gained popularity in the new normal, and become essential for any traveler in order to enter a foreign country without following through with the mandatory quarantine procedure. Ever since its first introduction, the vaccine passport has brought new light and hope to tourism and hospitality in particular, and the economics worldwide in general. In Vietnam, we have implemented the vaccine passport very early on, as the government’s efforts in reopening the border, retrieving the economy post-pandemic.

What is a vaccine passport?

A vaccine passport is a vaccination certification also known as an immunity passport for those who have had at least 2 doses of COVID-19 vaccines (according to the International health regulation on Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases). It is a special pass that determines a healthy individual who does not contain any contagious disease and owns a privilege to obtain a travel visa entrance to a foreign country.

Vaccine passports can be issued in paper form, card, or digitally through an app. In order to get a vaccine passport, a resident has to comply with the followings:
• Fully vaccinated with COVID-19 vaccines
• Negative with SARS-CoV-2 virus certified by an authorized health organization with a laboratory test of RT-PCR/RT-LAMP within 72 hrs before or a COVID-19 antigen rapid test 24 hrs prior to the departure time.

Vaccine passports have been introduced in recent times and receive major concern regarding whether or not it’s the ideal solution.

The benefits of vaccine passports

As stated by the ICAO’s report, the number of international passengers has decreased by 60% in 2020 compared to 2019. Many air flights have suffered through this sudden drop.

According to the UNWTO Travel restrictions report, 46 destinations (accountable for over 21% of destinations worldwide) had to close their borders and stop welcoming passengers. Which, 26 destinations have not reopened their border yet ever since the end of April 2020. 55 destinations (approximately 25% of the total destinations worldwide) have been extremely selective in opening the border up for tourism. 112 destinations (accountable for 52% of the world’s destinations) request PCR testing and COVID-19 antigen rapid test results upon entrance.

In order to recover the domestic and international economy, apart from being in control of the current epidemic situation, applying vaccine passport brings the great benefits:
• Accelerate the downturn of the economical industries post-pandemic. Establishing the travel and economic business exchange activities in the new normal.
• Relaxing strict social distancing policies, resuming public services, manufacturing, and businesses.
• Achieving herd immunity allows nations to lift all public restrictions on public gatherings, and activities.
• Saving time, crazy expenses, and labor in mandatory quarantine procedures upon immigration entrance.

Vaccine passport speeds up the immigration process and cut down the financial burden on the nation.

The disadvantages of vaccine passports

COVID-19 vaccines have been speedily administered to billions of people worldwide, the government has carefully considered acknowledging immunization certification as the key to opening their borders and resuming economic activities, relaxing the strict social curbs. The argument for implementing such has raised massive attention due to the following concerns:

Personal privacy is the trade-off?

Vaccine passports sparked the debates on being immunization proof for international travel. While digital health certificates safeguard the reopening and fast-track economic growth, valid concerns on protecting the privacy of personal health from private institutes and organizations who have been trying to process and collect these data for their own misused purposes. Upon the possible security breaches, the implementation of vaccine passports should ensure a protection measure has been kept in place.

Balancing the economic growth and COVID-19 control

Governments worldwide are in a dire dilemma of consciously protecting their citizens’ health status while struggling to salvage their economy. After countless social distancing and hard lockdown strategies, to pick up the downslope economy, the COVID-19 vaccines campaign seems to be the only way out to many countries. Nonetheless, this does not guarantee COVID-19 is controlled. The recent wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in China is putting a number of their cities completely shut down, closing all borders trying to contain and wrap up this crisis. The negative impacts of this COVID-19 wave on the China economy resulted in great disruption.

The modern form of discriminatory

Socially speaking, the vaccination certification helps to accelerate the economical aspects such as retail, hotels, tourism, manufacturing, etc. However, it somewhat unintentionally creates a two-tier society based on individual health choices. A vaccine passport is subject to indirect discrimination, granting the liberty of travel and public availability to the one who is certified. Governments in developing countries have been racing against vaccine coverages, trying to minimize this invisible discrimination. Meanwhile, in underdeveloped countries where the vaccines supply is moderate, this unspoken discrimination might last for some time.

The current COVID-19 vaccines supply has been a burden, resulting in the uneven distribution of COVID-19 vaccines around the world. High GDP countries are having the “priority” to get vaccinated compared to others, granting their citizens the freedom of travel and access to public facilities promptly, making the discrimination prominently clear. Although it’s a temporary matter, this issue has become a political issue in the US, receiving backlash from the medically vulnerable group of people.
Vaccination Passport Expiration Date barriers

Apart from being discriminating, the expiration date of vaccination certification has been announced while the world is still deep in the argument about the 3rd booster dose. It created an invisible barrier for not only the international travelers but also imports & exports, airplanes, shipping, etc. industry as well.

Indirect discrimination is triggered upon vaccine passport implementation.

Tourists have to pay expensive fees to complete laboratory lab tests if the regulation on 270 days till the expiration of the vaccine certificate is passed despite which type of vaccines they took.

Tourists have to pay upfront multiple laboratory lab test fees to get their vaccine passport renewal once the regulation on 270 days expiration of vaccine passports is passed despite whichever vaccines you took. After the 2nd dose of COVID-19 vaccines or COVID-19 Recovery certificate, tourists are allowed to enter those countries’ accepted vaccine passports program with a negative result of COVID-19 testing, 72hrs before entry for PCR testing, and 48hrs prior to with COVID-19 antigen rapid test.

Ms. Jenny Southan – the Founder and CEO of Globetrender – a forecasting travel trends company said: “Vaccination expiration date has negatively affected the tourists’ mental state. While the economy is experiencing a downturn, this definitely is not a smart move”. She strongly stated the more tricky and complicated traveling documents get, the slower the tourism and hospitality recovery in the year 2022.

Vaccine passports in Vietnam

In Vietnam, a vaccine passport is only accepted for those who are vaccinated with approved doses by WHO (World Health Organization), the FDA ( the United States Food and Drug Administration), the EMA (European Medicines Agency), and the Vietnam Minister of Health emergency approval guidance – said Ms. Le Thi Thu Hang – the spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a press conference on October 10th, 2021.

Ms. Hang believed vaccine passports are a feasible strategy to actively restart the national economy. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs had collaborated with the Ministry of Health to publish temporary guidelines and instructions to approve vaccination certification and COVID-19 recovery certification for foreigners, and announce these approval forms to 44 nations and territories.

Vietnam vaccine passport is accepted in 19 countries around the globe.

The Ministry of Health had issued an official form and procedure for issuing the vaccine passport, effective on December 20th, 2021. Vaccine passport certification shall be encoded into QRcode, which will expire within 12 months after the initially created day. The government had approved piloting international tourists using a vaccine passport to enter Phu Quoc and Kien Giang Province at the very beginning of this program, then expanded to the rest of the nation later on. Vietnam’s vaccine passport has been approved in 19 countries across the globe including Australia, Belarus, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Japan, Maldives, New Zealand, Palestine, the Philippines, Saint Lucia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Turkey, the United Kingdom., USA, Iran, and Malaysia. Vietnam also loosened their entrance COVID-19 testing requirement by accepting vaccine passports with a PCR negative 72hrs before the departure time or a 24hrs negative result of COVID-19 antigen rapid test.

Travel post-pandemic comes with both opportunities and challenges for all businesses. In the competition for a market share of international tourism during the “living safely with COVID-19”, you’ll miss your chance of being one step behind the others. The vaccine coverage has rapidly escalated over the last quarter, Vietnam has officially opened its international tourism as of March 15th, just in time for the neighboring countries to reopen their tourism again. The opportunity cost of hesitating at this phase is way above our head, narrowing the economic growth in the long run.

The acceptance of vaccine passports globally has opened up a new era post-pandemic. This encourages travelers to favor the contactless trend, Staycation trend, wellness travel trends to the nature-oriented areas/countries, etc. Hoteliers have to continuously keep up to date to stay afloat, ready to transform and adapt to the new normal. CiHMS – the ultimate hospitality management solution for your hotel will help you “stay in the game” – ready to rock the upcoming travel season.

AI technology was first introduced and presented at The Dartmouth conference in 1956. At that time, Businesses had not realized yet the importance of AI technology in business and operations due to its lack of versatility and simply under development. Forward to now, the interest in AI has grown uncontrollably and has been applied liberally in various industries, especially the tourism and hospitality industry. How does AI technology fit in the spectrum of hotel tech in reality? Can AI possibly replace humans completely in the hotel sector? Let’s dive into today’s blog and get this sort out with CiHMS.

What is AI technology?

AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, which is a huge range of computer science, specializing in researching and building smart machines capable of carrying out tasks that require human intelligence to do so. Therefore, it can learn, memorize and make decisions like a human being. The core element of AI technology is machine learning and big data. A few examples of AI in our daily life that we might not recognize as Siri, Alexa, email spam filters, Netflix’s movies recommendations, etc.

AI technology has been surrounding human beings for the last decades without us acknowledging it.

Why does AI matters?

Since the epidemic outbreaks all over the world, Vietnam has been dealing with ongoing impacts on economics and social well-being. The tourism and hospitality industry has been hit the hardest, struggling to stay afloat. According to statistics on total tourism revenue from 2008 to 2020 according to the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, the industry obtained roughly 637.00 trillion in 2008 with a growth rate of 17.7%, by 2020 we only reached 312.00 trillion, experience a negative growth rate of – 58.7%, a significant drop. Based on the Institute for Tourism Development Research (ITDR) report, the total revenue for the first 10 months of 2021 was at 138.150 billion VND, a huge decrease of 45.42% over the same period in 2020.

Hotels were shutting down as the result of the social distancing curbs across the country, hardly meeting 20% occupancy compared to the previous period. As a matter of fact, even well-thought-out plans and scarcity marketing policy such as half-price room rate promotions, buy 1 get 1 extra night off for free, etc. didn’t seem to work out. Hoteliers had to come up with budget cuts and excessive laying off to survive through the pandemic. Consequently, the labor shortage has become a major issue for the industry alarmingly. AI technology has become the optimal solution amidst this chaos.

Contributing to relieving the labor shortage crisis, AI technology has helped hotel employees to executive tasks in a much shorter timeframe.

Thanks to AI technology, your front desk shall no longer have to be hesitated among welcoming a long-line of guest check-in, picking up the disturbing phone ringing, determining whether or not to answer the series of questions from the guests standing by, or your colleagues. All the phone calls shall be routed to the relevant departments based on the algorithm of past phone calls. Guests can proceed with online check-in right at the phone and skip the front desk. All housekeeping requests are synchronized across the system. Perspectively, with AI technology as a back-bone, hotels are getting very close to the smart hotel model – the ideal hotel model of the future.

The downside of AI technology

For the last decades, AI technology has rapidly improved with outstanding breakthrough innovations. However, it’s far from perfect as many have believed. With a group of complex algorithms and deep machine learning, AI still has its flaw and is completely unavoidable. On top of that, the financial burden of implementing AI technology in your business operations is critical. To allocate expenses effectively and leverage between an investment with cost in this sensitive is crucial to any hotel business.

Applications of AI in the hospitality

AI technology is mostly found in the smart hotel model such as:

• Robots: giving directions, answering frequently asked questions from the customers, delivery room services, and laundries as necessary. Robots can be used as the janitor to eliminate direct physical contact with hotel employees amidst this COVID-19, ensuring guests feel safe and confident.
• Facial recognition technology at the check-in counter, automatically complete the process, earn access to the restricted areas of the hotel without a card key.
• Order contactless through QRMenu – digital menu, easily adjust, proceed with the payment, and give out feedback right on guests’ mobile devices.

Ordering through a digital menu is now possible with QRMenu, powered by AI technology.

• Forecast room and occupancy rates correctly to come up with appropriate strategic plans to maximize revenue and profits.
• Analyze guests’ data to elevate their experience on future stays.
• And more can be found throughout hotel operations that CiHMS shall go into more details in the later blogs.

In short, AI technology exists in various shapes and forms in the hospitality industry. AI is no longer a trend, it has become a part of the industry operations. This technology has been cleverly integrated into numerous hospitality management solutions on the market, such as CiHMS. Featuring all of the above, the cloud-based hospitality management solution has been solidly trusted by our customers and implemented on over 40+ hotels for less than 1 year of launching. Thanks to its high reliability, safety, and security, CiHMS has delivered exceptional growth for hotels’ revenue and performances. Interested in our solution? Contact our consultants to dig a bit deeper into CiHMS.

The technology revolution had allowed the hospitality industry to evolve and transform completely from their traditional operation model into a personalized seamless customer-oriented experience, starting right when the customer journey begins. The epidemic has sped up the implementation process as well as the intervention of customers’ acceptance, opening a new chapter of the contactless era in hospitality. A digital check-in has become a new normal, an imperative in complying with the strict hygiene and distance regulations post COVID-19 while allowing hotels to understand their customers’ preferences pre-arrival.

Pre-check-in allows hotels to comply with strict COVID-19 regulations on distances and hygiene while making customers feel safe and secure.

How does pre-check-in actually work? Why isn’t pre-check-in frequently offered enough? Are you planning to introduce this technology to your property? Let’s cut the queue and dive down into what this technology is really made of.

The ultimate guide to hotel pre-check-in

Hotel Pre-check-in, what is it?

Pre-check-in allows the hotel guests to proceed with their check-in process on their mobile devices prior to their arrival. Hotels usually activate the pre-check-in functionality on their app 24 hours ahead.

Hotels can activate pre-check-in functionality on their app 24hrs ahead.

Pre-check-in is the latest feature developed for our CiHMS Guest App, a part of our CiHMS PMS. We specially designed this functionality to simplify the checking-in process for staff while offering guests the flexibility to handle the check-in in whichever way they indulge.

Guests have to fill in their contact details, their reservation information and provide personal identification documents. A full-face selfie can be mandatory for verification, it automatically syncs this data to the guest profile on the hotel’s database and enables guests’ facial recognition as soon as they arrive at the lobby.

Depending on the hotel’s preferences and policies, guests can also select the desired vacant hotel room, early check-in or late check-out request, luggage storage payment, other added-value hotel packages such as spas, meals, city tours, etc. A medical declaration can be submitted in this process by attaching your vaccine passports or government-approved vaccination documents (green card certification issued by PC Covid).

Your guests can submit their medical declaration right on your hotel app thanks to the latest Pre-check-in feature.

Once completing the check-in procedure, guests may receive their room’s number and digital room key right on their app’s confirmational screen, or choose to pick up their room key physical card at the front desks. Many hotels prefer not to offer guests room numbers until they physically make it to the lobby, in order to give flexibility to their rooms’ allotments.

What are the benefits of pre-check-in?

Your guests just love it

A Data-Driven Look at Hospitality’s Recovery in 2020 report had shown 71% of consumers are more likely to stay in a hotel offering self-service tech. Imagine after the long commute to your destination, the last thing you would want to do is get in line and do all the paperwork onsite. Not ideal for anyone in particular. Say goodbye to the long busy waiting queue at the front desk, get instant access to the hotel room upon arrival. It’s definitely convenient.

Online check-in gives guests the freedom and comfort of checking in at their own pace.

Hotel staff adores it

The pre-check-in reduces the administrative workload for the front desk staff tremendously, much faster with group pre-check-in. A pre-check-in functionality integrated into your hotel PMS, like CiHMS deliver reliable automation, smooth synchronization, and alleviate labor shortage issue with delightful traveler’s experiences. Guests are asked to provide their expected arrival time, which allows hotels to better plan and allocate hotel staff’s availability to welcome guests.

Improving customer relationship

As the pre-check-in has done the majority of the work, like collecting guests’ ID, contact details, booking information, etc., your staff can focus on connecting with the customers at a much higher level, taking time to actually understand their personal needs and expectations, overall, better cater to your guests with exceptional comfort.

A great way to upsell or cross-sell

Guests might be skeptical during the booking process where they often compare prices, features, hotel services before making the final decision. However, they are most inclined to purchase a room upgrade, spa treatments, city tours, pick-up service, set meals closer to their arrival date. The decision-making can proceed much faster at home rather than at the busy front desk.

Social distancing compliance boosts guest confidence

Pre-check-in is the perfect solution to keep your hotel in check with the social distancing regulations. It limits physical person-to-person interaction to a minimum, making guests feel safe and secure. Hotels might integrate contactless/cashless payment or facial recognition technology to take this up a notch. With a cloud-based hospitality management solution like CiHMS, this can easily be done.

With Pre-check-in, guests may proceed cashless payment with facial recognition technology integrated right on the hotel app.

Any disadvantages to putting into reconsideration

Less human contact and interaction

While the advantage of pre-check-in is allowing guests to feel safe and secure by avoiding physical contact with hotel staff altogether, it can’t help create the invisible untouchable personal bubble surrounding guests throughout their stays. For business travelers, things can be tough as they have been used to communicating and exchanging stories with hotel employees on their trips in the past. Many would prefer the traditional check-in process, as they truly enjoy human interaction.

Unstable internet connection

Similar to any hospitality contactless technology, it is required to have sufficient good quality internet coverage across your properties. Otherwise, the cloud computing hospitality management solution won’t be synchronized and unable to work properly. Making sure no internet disruption and an outage is significantly important in implementing pre-check-in technology.

New software investment and comprehensive training for the front desk

Your current hospitality management might not offer pre-check-in functionality, merely because they haven’t started with the development yet. Looking out for a new pre-check-in software installation might be messy, expensive, and simply insufficient for your current hotel operations at the moment. Leveraging whether this upgraded feature is worth the process.

Should you or should you not?

Pre-arrival is an essential touchpoint in the customers’ journey. It happens to be the first impression guests have of your hotel even before they get there. Offering guests, a pre-check-in service shows your efforts and intentions in delivering complete customer satisfaction and tapping in personalized customers’ experiences proactively.

Hospitality is known for its competitiveness, if you fail to keep up with the comparable competitors in the area offering the latest technology there is, most likely, your guests will choose them over you in a heartbeat. Being a highly customer-centric industry, adopting innovative technologies to deliver experiences that your customers are happy with, as their demands grow. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, pre-check-in technology allows the hospitality industry to embrace safety measures to protect guests from any unexpected harmful threat while comfortably enjoying their stays.

It might surprise you how easy it is to get started with pre-check-in. There is a wide range of hospitality management solutions offering this feature as an added feature in their system. Ask your hotel PMS providers for this option, or contact our team to book a demo to discover the possibilities of contactless pre-check-in for your hotels.

Up to February 2022, mobile users worldwide have reached 7.26 billion users, accounting for 91.62% of the world population. 4.15 billion are currently active on their social networks with an average usage of 145 minutes per day. The high usage tendency has proven its impact on travelers’ decisions through the social network, setting itself as a new influential trend in the hospitality industry. Hotels have been adjusting their management to take advantage of this social trend by promoting their marketing campaign. Then, where to start and how to grow your audiences on social media to effectively boost your hotel’s revenue?

The growth of social trends in hospitality is invincible, driving sales and revenues like never before

Connecting people through social network channels

According to the Digital 2021 October Global Statshot Report done by We Are Social and Hootsuite, the social network users have gained 400 million users, which is equivalent to 9.9% growth in the last 12 months to exceed 4.55 billion users in October 2021. In Vietnam, there were 68.72 million Internet users national wide, making up for 73.7% of the nation’s population who have been frequently active on their social networks.

Blogs, pictures, and short clips on travels have been favored and shared proactively over any other materials found on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter, Youtube with recorded views daily. The keyword safe travel becomes a popular trending keyword, receiving a decent high search volume over the past year due to COVID-19 pandemic impacts. Taking the social networks in the right direction and setting goals dedicated to hotels’ marketing campaigns in order to approach the potential target audiences naturally, connecting their customers with their brand on an emotional level, building the brand awareness that they trust, love, and believe can ever be easier.

The millennials are constantly online to feel mentally connected with others. If hotels know how to approach them through social media networks correctly can win their trust and loyalty.

The power of hashtags

The hashtag is a metadata tag prefaced by the hash symbol #, which is used as a filter system to categorize and arrange related post content accordingly to the user-generated tagging system. Taking advantage of this feature, it is suggested that hotels should consider including hashtags in each social media post while encouraging guests to share the hotels’ hashtag in their personal posts every time they mention the products/services/experiences at the hotel. This is particularly useful to increase your brand awareness. For instant, your hotel starts out with the obvious hashtags to promote your brands, such as #CiHMS, #hospitalitymanagementsolutionCiHMS, or #CiHMShospitalitydigitaltransformationsolution. Once you generate an adequate number of posts with the above hashtags, your hashtags will surely show up when users start typing related hashtags to yours, such as #hospitalitymanagementsolution, the hashtag #hospitalitymanagementsolutionCiHMS definitely shall be suggested to the users on the search box autocomplete dropdown.

Promoting the hashtags among your customers can be easily implemented with genuine marketing or promotional campaigns. Ask them to share their stays, experiences, their favorite place/ services about the hotels with the hashtags to receive added value services in return such as spa vouchers, free room upgrade, free lounge access, etc. These campaigns help approach various customers segments that would be interested in your hotels. Making these hashtags consistent across the social media channels would be a big plus inputting your hotels on the map, becoming searchable, and showing your brand’s authenticity, a personality that your customers can actually relate to.

Be consistent with your hashtags to maximize their effectiveness

Aligning your brand with a social cause campaign

Competition has always been challenging for any business, especially in the hospitality industry amidst this recovery transition phase post-pandemic. To stand out and gain competitive advantages, many hotels strive big, support building a good cause campaign for the community. The one that’s well thought out will eventually help to drive brand awareness, gain customers’ affections and loyalty toward the brand. A social cause campaign also improves brands’ interactions with customers, brings in followers and subscribers that share the same interests with your business. A successful and effective social cause campaign ultimately helps generate leads and boost your brand’s conversion rate spectacularly.

Influencer marketing on social media

Influencer marketing is also a form of word-of-mouth but takes place on the social network platform. If in the past, breaking news usually only spread in a small area of your town through your chatty neighbors, thanks to social media, the news can travel at a much faster speed throughout your city or nation, depending on your initiatives.

Although it is controversial, undeniably influencer marketing is remarkably effective. Social influencers have gained exponential credibility, authority, and potential in reaching a large audience for a short period of time. The influencer can promote not only your products and services but also your brand identity. Consider collaborating with a travel blogger, who is willing to share their real experiences at your properties: personalized hotel room tour, in-room services, dine-in menus, the foods and drinks quality reviews, the current events that are happening within the hotel and the surrounding neighborhood.

Furthermore, these influencers – Youtubers, Tiktokers, and KOLs have actively had their own unique followers base, the majorities are the millennials and Gen Z, the biggest two customers segments in tourism and hospitality at the moment. If you decide to go with high engagement rate influencers, you’ll be sure to reach the individuals following that given influencer non-intrusively. It allows the customers to perceive hotel experiences from a personal and interactive approach, breaking the traditional hotel marketing strategy and empowering to influence your target customers’ travel decisions.

The appropriate campaign and the right influencers deliver many drastic economic benefits to businesses.

The takeaways from influences marketing

• Draw qualified leads from the influencers’ followers base, the quick buzz for your brand identity, get people to dive deeper into the actual services and products your hotel is providing.
• Pick your influencers wisely, as their impression affects your hotel brand’s image and credibility.
• The safe attempt at crowd effect generating from influencers marketing to shape your brand marketing campaign.

The holdbacks of influencers marketing

• The unexpected scandalous issue that happens with your influencers during the campaign might hurt your brand’s image deeply, some have faced serious boycotts against hotel brands.
• Always double check your influencers’ statistics, look at their followers’ audience to determine whether or not it fits your brand target audiences, or face the waste of ineffective campaign setup.
• Collaborating with a number of influencers to create diversification in content, reaches out to a much bigger base of followers instead of sticking to only one influencer with the repeated content style might end up boring your audience.
• It’s indeed a risky marketing strategy with a big budget.
• Hence, using influencer marketing methodology effectively, hotels have to be selective in choosing credible influencers, leverage on the prospective customers, the economic returns, competitive advantages that come with the campaign. In any circumstances, being legally binding among parties is extremely important to eliminate any possible risks, ensure quality delivery and commitment from the influencers.

Hence, using influencer marketing methodology effectively, hotels have to be selective in choosing credible influencers, leverage on the prospective customers, the economic returns, competitive advantages that come with the campaign. In any circumstances, being legally binding among parties is extremely important to eliminate any possible risks, ensure quality delivery and commitment from the influencers.

Social trends have crept their way into hospitality to drive constant growth, changes, and impacts on the way hotels innovate their brands and gain the customers’ trust and loyalty. This digital strategic shift opens plenty of opportunities for hospitality to expand its customer base when it’s done right. Occasionally, CiHMS also came across our customers regarding the current social trends and how to get everything started properly. Improving your guests’ experiences, optimizing tel operations efficiently with powerful and cutting-edge technology is definitely vital, worth investing in, and our All-in-one cloud-based hospitality management solution – CiHMS have all your backs.

Contactless technology has altered the hospitality daily operations landscape completely, while has become the main reason behind the resurgence of QR code technology during the epidemic. According to Bit.ly – a link management service, QR code downloads have soared 750% over the last 18 months. It has been contributing a great share in minimizing the inevitable ordering workload for the hospitality sector. Digitalize your restaurant, spa, and room services’ menus with a scannable QR code in just a few easy steps. Thanks to the new update of the POS – Food And Beverage system in the cloud-based hospitality management solutions – CiHMS: the QRMenu would allow you to turn the fancy above into reality. How does it work and how to get this technology implemented at your business today? We’ll get you all covered here in this blog.

QRMenu – a great updated feature of the POS – Food and Beverage system in the ultimate hospitality management solution – CiHMS.

What is QRMenu?

As its name might have given it all away, the QRMenu practically is a digital menu that you can access via a scannable QR code with your mobile phone. If you have not familiar with QR code or Quick Response code, it is the square matrix barcode, invented almost two decades now by a Japanese automobile company.
Starting to come back around hotels and restaurants ever since the COVID-19 pandemic crisis hit, the scannable QR code helps to prevent the risk of spreading infection and reassure customers’ hesitancy and doubts in the physical dine-in experience. The QR code could be printed right off the printers as you wish, then stuck on tables, front desk, or just anywhere hoteliers see fit. Customers can easily get directed to the hotels’ menu, make orders, pay, and submit feedback – a massive step-up from your standard paper menu version.

The bright sides of QRMenu

Plenty of benefits the QRMenu brings into the pictures that are hard to miss out on:

1. Quick modification and high versatility: By replacing with a digital menu, restaurants can add/remove a dish on the menu without re-printing the menu all over again. The perk of having a digital menu means you can do everything digitally: changing the price tag during the day, locking in a promotional price for a certain period, or having a varied menu for breakfast, lunch, dinner is also possible.
2. Unique and creative marketing tool: Allows hoteliers to be creative with their menu design layout and force them to test out which layout brings their best conversion rate. This sounds outrageous but is not. Play out different types of design on your menus, move sections up and down and see what best serves your business. Be bold with promotional campaigns and discounts on your menu with flashing titles, colors, and fonts.
3. Sustainable hotel technology: Yes, indeed! The QRMenu is, in fact, contactless technology and contributes its big share in promoting the hotels to stay in check with the sustainable hotel technology. Guests go through a complete contactless experience using QRMenu: from scanning the QR code to receiving their orders.
   

   QRMenu is a form of hospitality contactless technology, that helps stop the spread of infection transmission for guests and employees.

4. Being actively eco-friendly and cutting expenses: QRMenu eliminates the paper menu off your hotels’ system entirely. No more printing or re-printing a menu seasonally or per promotional campaign. Imagine how much paper and money a digital menu can save a hotel throughout the year.
5. Cutting down the ordering wait-time: Customers can take their time to decide what to order while waiting in line before the event gets seated, especially for a big group of customers. Hoteliers can enable guests to make orders upon access, streamline your hotels and restaurants’ operation from table to the kitchen, accelerate the speed of service, enhance guests’ experience and maximize employees’ performance, cutting out any recessive workflow.
6. Accumulative big data: Receiving an overwhelmed source of data daily as a reminder for hoteliers have to start taking advantage of them. Keep your data analyzed and “upgrade” your menu accordingly to meet your customers’ expectations. Just as Bo Peabody, co-founder and executive chairman of Seated, had shared: “If you run a restaurant that doesn’t take reservations, you don’t know who your guest is until they pay. What the QR code might allow you to do is learn who that guest is right when they’re sitting down.” The bottom line is QR code helps you to grasp your customers’ insights without the need to spend thousands of dollars on a market research project.
7. A solution to hospitality labor shortage: QRMenu lets hotels and restaurants operate at a much faster pace with fewer employees – Toast CEO Chris Comparato also agreed. No more taking-order tasks; leave these time-consuming tasks to your customers.

How to set up the QRMenu?

First thing first, you have to set up your hotels/restaurants’ menu beforehand. This part can be both fun and tricky. A Digital menu grants you the power to be creative while staying informative. Going with the classic design or bold typography, selective food dishes photography, or a full-on photographic menu featuring every dish there are on the menu? Should the hotel have different menus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Or should they only have an All-day menu? They are all up to you but remember the first impression matters. Test the water and see which one works best for your business. Embrace the beauty of a digital menu.
QRMenu is an upgraded feature recently in CiHMS – the POS – Food And Beverage system, enabling hotels and restaurants to actively generate a unique QR code for each table or room separately at the properties, giving their guests instant access to hotels/restaurants’ menu, from which they can easily make orders at their own pace.

To generate a QR code, hoteliers have to specify which table/room this QR code is for, in the respective fields, including its floor number, the area, and the table’s current status (active/inactive). Upon completion, a QR code can be printed out and stuck on the location where it was created. It is literally all it takes.

The flexibility of QRMenu is impressive. You can configure your guests’ access solely to one specific menu, or different menus depending on the time of the day with just only one QR code or create different QR codes for each menu (breakfast/ brunch/ lunch/ dinner), and allow your guests to fill in their table number themselves.
QRMenu for room service works on the same principles. However, to reduce the excessive work on printing a different QR code for each room, big chain hotels would uniform the same QR code throughout and have their guests declare their room number before proceeding onto the ordering section.
The downside of QRMenu

Poor connection services

Understanding the fundamentals of how QRMenu operates, you might have come to realize that this functionality won’t work without a stable Internet connection. If you are committed to getting this QRMenu installed, please be mindful of your properties’ network. Opt for better Internet infrastructure, which shall be beneficial in the long run, an investment you certainly wish to invest in sooner.

Having a stable internet connection in place brings long-term benefits to hotels.

The power of habits

The other cons QRMenu might face is the customers’ reluctance to change. Young consumers or millennials are willing to accept and adapt to new technology innovations. Generation Y has been slowly redefining the hospitality industry, despite the older generations – the baby boomers are skeptical toward recent trends and resist taking the acceptance.

“People have different levels of digital comfort. Some people will prefer and enjoy the QR code and using the phone, and others will rather have the traditional menu.”

– CEO of Dine Brands, John Peyton.

QR code has regained its popularity ‘til recently after being snoozed for almost a decade. The new normal has ushered the hospitality industry to proactively implement sustainable hospitality technology to step out from traditional operations to explore and discover the possibilities to bring customers back in. Apart from QRMenu, there is plenty of other sustainable hospitality technology for hotels to look at. This is nowhere near the perfect solution for all businesses, though it’s pretty close.

The contactless era has already arrived, don’t stay behind! Train your staff well, encourage your customers to engage, and recognize what they have been missing out on all along. Interested in QRMenu and would love to see a demo? Contact the CiHMS team for a detailed consultancy on the product.

The millennials are considered a typical generation in initiating trends and remarkable milestones. This demographic segment accounts for the major spending expenditure in the tourism industry, willing to pay the extra miles in exchange for the taste of memorable experiences instead of material things. Determine the millennial travel trends shall benefit your hotel operations in better tailoring to their needs and retaining these huge customers segments long-term. What are the travel trends of the millennial generation this 2022, then? Let’s discover them with CiHMS in today’s blog.

The millennials are one of the biggest customers segments worldwide, especially in the tourism and hospitality industry.

Who are the Millennials?

The Millennials (also known as Gen Y) are those born between 1981 to 1997. This demographic has fast become the major part of the world population recently, making up for 27% global population, approximately 2 billion people, and roughly 38% of the Vietnam national population, according to the population research done by Pew Research center. The World Economic Forum defines the millennials are those born between 1980 and 1994, about 1.8 billion millennials worldwide, roughly making up for 23% of the world population. This generation has been exposed to revolutionized digital devices, online resources, and ever-changing social networks. By 2020, 50% of the global workforce and purchasing consumers goods or services are the millennials (based on an analyst from Bernstein).
United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) believes the millennials are the emerging golden generation and the most potential demographic that the hospitality industry should pay close attention to. Passionate about travel, the Gen Y travelers shall reach nearly 300 million travelers annually, and take at least 35 days per year to travel. The high satisfaction of customers service is the important key factor to Gen Y’s loyalty.

They were born in the radical technological evolution, get in touch with technology at a very young age, generation Y doesn’t share the same customer characteristics with any of the rest.

Mobile devices and social network orientation

Being digital natives, millennials are tech-savvy at heart. Always on the hunt for new destinations, have their itineraries, ideal accommodations that they shall be visiting on their next trip. Up to 74% researched their trip, 87% of millennials used Facebook to inspire their booking, and over 50% used Twitter (reports generated from Condor Ferries). They search for it to believe it. 97% of millennials confess they share their travel experience on social media. 2 out of 3 would post about it at least once a day.
Understanding Gen Y surfing habits enables the hotel’s marketing department to easily identify and approach this particular target segmentation through the social networks’ platform, to convert leads and maximize their sales revenue. Providing exciting and unique experiences is the essential sales point to attract these demographics in purchasing your added-value products and services during their stays. Encourage them to share on their social media in exchange for vouchers and other free services also a win-win option for hotels to look at.

Millennials grow up with mobile devices. Being on social networks daily has become an irreplaceable habit. Making them feasible targeted segments for hotels.

Several hotels have been giving away complementary services, promotional products, group discounts, etc. to further upsell the millennials targeted group. Getting the exposure the hotels need to the target customers’ friend circle, at such a lower cost ongoing mainstream and broad social posting advertisement. Exceeding the customers’ expectations while optimizing hotels’ operational expenses.

Experiential travel

If Baby Boomers (the previous generation before the Millennials) strongly believe travel is outrageous to overspend for indulgence, it’s understandable as they entered their childhood amidst national economic decline; the millennials enjoy travel as a crucial and irreplaceable part of their daily life. Travel brings invaluable benefit to the soul and mind, and merely priceless. Millennials yearn for the true experience, the chance to rediscover themselves, to relieve stress after burying themselves in deadlines and projects, to rejuvenate their energies, set themselves back to balance, ready to come back to their normal life.
An Expedia survey has found, 74% of millennials are happy to spend on travel experiences rather than material things. 58% prioritizes hotels with full services, while 35% seeks luxurious stays at premium hotels and resorts. Only a minor prefers to stay at Airbnb accommodations are millennial travelers with kids. This reassures gen Y craves experiences over anything else. By providing immersive accommodations in various levels of personalized experiences: from adventurous to discovery, and finding your inner-self, hotels leverage their services to accustom to all the Gen Y customers.
The millennials focus on making a difference rather than receiving corporate and generalized hotel stays. They embrace local lifestyles, traditional dishes, music, and crafting experiences.

Enjoy the cultural, adventurous, and sentimental experiences rather than corporate and organized tour packages, millennials are keen on experimental travel.

Environmentally conscious

Generation Y seems to be the pioneer in leading the sustainable travel trend. Highly responsible for the surrounding environment, they prominently support businesses revolving around sustainable operation models. Especially in Tourism and Hospitality lately, these two industries have been called out to actively up their game in turning “greener” with the community.
This explains why the sustainable travel trend has made such remarkable impacts. In many countries around the world, as well as in Vietnam, the governments have put in their side of the efforts to promote the sustainable trend, making a positive influence to engage the tourism and hospitality industry take on the “greener” path. Thanks to modern technologies, seamless integrations, and functionalities aiming to make the smart hotels‘ transformation possible to existing hotels facilities without the hassles of remodeling. Up to 73% of millennials lean toward eco-friendly hotel models as their preferred accommodations for their next trips.
The millennials’ impacts have been brought into tourism in general and the hospitality industry specifically is undeniably compelling. It helps redefine and reshape the hospitality industry for the year 2022 and more to come, with the majority of customers being the millennial generation. Keeping up with the latest trend to adjust hotel services with a touch of technology, while being personalized to each individual shall help retain this most potential customers segments for the long-term.

The tourism industry is at its turning point coming into the year 2022. In 2020 and 2021, when the pandemic hit, the travel industry had almost shut down around the world. Back-to-back social distancing policies and travel restrictions have been applied to ensure public health during the epidemic season. Many tourisms promotional activities have been implemented to adapt to the new normal through a deep understanding of customers’ insights. As a result, the majorities are sharing the common ground, trying to “make up” for the lost time by seizing every possible opportunity available within their budget, contributing the share on initiate new travel trends in 2022.

The most exciting year of hospitality 2022 is filled with popular travel trends.

Big group travel

A recent study from the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL) in Switzerland, one of the world’s top 3 prestigious hotel management universities, showed that an increase in consumer awareness toward the surrounding environment had created new opportunities and new trends, especially the sustainability, health, and well-being travel trend.

After closing borders internationally worldwide, the year 2022 has recorded the rising demand for independent travel. EHL Associate Professor of Finance, Dr. Philippe Masset, expects the same thing, observing that the need for independent travel surpasses, particularly interesting since the pandemic has fueled this trend. This consequently boosts the big group travel trend-forward, grouping the independent travelers with the unique benefits of the big group trend:

After two years of continuous lock-down around the world, extensive group travels have been preferred in the tourism and hospitality industry.

Personality changes

Group travel fits travelers who have easy-going lifestyles. Group members learn to take things lightly and get along with everyone around them. When participating in such trips, you shall likely adapt, adjust your personality, social life to become more outgoing, active, and vibrant.

Cost-saving

Traveling in large groups is budget-friendly. The more members your group has, the more efficient your budget is. From transportation fees, hotel accommodation fees, meal fees, discounts are usually offered on many purchases, including incentives, discounts, and gifts.

Improvement in communication skills, experiences gaining

Each member in the group contributes a different feature; making connections among members can be an exciting process. Traveling in a big group helps individuals excel themselves, step out of their comfort zones, exchange experiences and emotions, and learn and help each other throughout. In addition, each individual gets to improve their solidarity to be reliable companionship and the spirit of sharing.

Business travel resumes

The ongoing discovery of Delta, Omicron variants, and so on creates unspoken barriers in the tourism fields in general and the hospitality industry in particular. However, travel experts said they remained optimistic that business travel shall pick up strongly as early as the beginning of 2022.

One thing for sure is business travel shall take over the hospitality by storm.

Christopher J. Nassetta, the president and chief executive of Hilton, had shared last month, “People have to meet [but] it takes time to plan it.” So after the challenging year of 2021, we have been planning carefully, with even a backup plan on hand.

The airline and hotel industries have always been heavily reliant on business travel, which has accounted for a significant portion of revenue due to last-minute booking and willingness to pay outrageously high for specific-hour flights and accommodations.

According to World Travel and Tourism Council forecast on the business travel market shares for 2022 shall meet two-thirds of the revenue before the pandemic in the recent survey and forecast on market demand in 2022.

Bucket list destinations checking off

Every trip got delayed and canceled due to the pandemic. Everyone has been coming up with their version of the all-time favorite bucket list destinations, which list all the places and countries they have to visit at least “once in a lifetime.” Setting the vacation goals with a long “to-do-list” for solo and group travel throughout social distancing.

Everyone can’t wait to cross off their bucket list destinations one after another, making the hospitality industry prepared to welcome their guests soon.

Whether you’re visiting a domestic destination or traveling abroad, be as informed and equipped as possible about the cities and locations you will see. It spares you a lot of time in finding the place while you’re there, nor have to panic once you get there. Moreover, the more detailed your pre-planning is, the more proactive you’ll be, not to mention that careful calculation and speculation shall help you budget effectively.

Sustainability travel

Sustainability travel is a fundamental development and provision of tourism activities to meet the tourists’ and locals’ needs. However, it is essential to ensure the conservation and embellishment of resources to develop tourism activities in the future while satisfying the aesthetic, economic, and social needs of people:

• Create many benefits for economic development, providing a stable source of income for local communities and stakeholders.
• Protect the living environment, minimize the impact on the environment. Helping people’s living environment to be in check, through which people shall benefit from it.
• Sustainable tourism development helps to reduce social vices by providing jobs for local people.
• Resource exploitation becomes awarded and adequately executed, ensuring natural resources grow and develop for future generations to follow and take advantage of.

Loving nature travel trends have been the stable trend for the past few years and more to come, especially for the hospitality industry when guests are aware of the surroundings.

The world is gradually shifting to adapt to the new normal post-pandemic.

“The industry must evolve to remain relevant to the new demands and needs of travelers in a

post-pandemic world.”

– said Dr Jean-Philippe Weisskopf.

Many new tourism trends are gradually blooming to catch up with the new tourists’ mindset, making sure to be in line with the shifting trends and ensuring to follow the health and safety standards. The same goes with the hospitality industry; we are trying to move forward to promote the industry’s potential and recovery the economy ultimately after years of “immobility.”

2022 is here, and everyone might be having their own forecasting on the hotel tech trends for the year. This helps to project a better strategic plan for your hotels to adapt and transform. Let’s zoom in and detect the upcoming emerging hotel techs, the ones that hotels should be keeping up to for this year.

Here are our takes on the upcoming trends in hospitality technology for 2022.

Hotel apps

Mobile has been becoming an essential part of any travelers’ experiences. Having a dedicated hotel app for your guests to book and manage a room reservation, making payments, online check-in/check-out, digital key room access, contact the hotel front desk, and more are expected to initiate a total contactless hotel technology experience. Making hotel procedures less complicated, and allowing seamless guests communication.

AI technology

Artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced itself and strengthened itself to be reliable as well as beneficial. Slowly, AI is taking over all the human grunt works, leaving your employees to do what they are best at. Improving work performances and better human resources allocations.

AI technology can also analyze data, statistics to assist hoteliers in making better decisions, helps personalize guests’ experiences based on their previous stays. This collected information contributes to retaining current customers and attracting potential customers profiles.

AI technology makes such an impact on the hospitality industry, assisting human staff to bypass the grunt work and to focus on what they are better at.

Virtual & Augmented Realities

These technologies are to the simulation of the world, mimicking reality into the digital world. Many hotels have been working on their virtual reality (VR) hotel tours. It gives guests a sense of hotel space, environment, atmosphere, and the property’s facilities.

While VR might take the actual surrounding off the ground completely, and replace them with a digital one. Augmented Realities (AR) technology tends to enhance it in real-time. Hotels can easily apply AR technology with AR headphones, glasses. These enable customers to discover the hotels through the graphic lenses of AR glasses, a lively tour providing in multiple languages translations.

Many have been compared AR to VR without a thorough understanding of both technologies. In fact, they complement each other and cost quite a budget. In return, they provide exceptional guests experiences.

AR and VR technologies have been around for decades, finally taking their steps up in the hospitality industry, bringing visualization benefits for not only hoteliers but the customers as well.

Smart Technology so-called Sustainability Tech

With the current advanced smart technology, hoteliers can program to turn the lighting system on or off, dimmer or brighter in a certain area, adjust AC temperature, and activate the heating system accordingly to the hotel presets thanks to the integrated sensor built-in camera. Everything is automatically carried out by smart technology either in the lobby area or in guests’ private rooms. Such sustainable hospitality technology helps hoteliers to reduce energy waste as much as possible.

Facial Recognition Technology

It might sound futuristic a couple of years back, but absolutely very “in” at the moment. Even your mobile device is having such a feature, there is no reason why not put this technology to use onto the rest. In a few smart hotels around the world, guests grant access to the elevator, their reserved rooms, and other hotel facilities with face recognition devices: quick, paperless/keyless, and data recorded on the system.

Big Data

Hotels welcome guests on a daily basis, the information input received from the customers is massive. Have you ever wondered where those data would go? Data upon entering the system will be categorized and analyzed to interpret customers’ behaviors and later served for the decision-making process.

The above pretty much explains how big data works. A collection of customers data to generate insights helps to further personalize guests’ experiences for future stays.

The numerous data input daily from the hotel front desk cannot be put to waste. These are big data, which should be analyzed and interpreted for hotels to better serve their guests in future stays.

Cybersecurity

Due to the large data volume from guests including sensitive information such as guests’ identity info, along with their credit card, hackers never miss their chance to attack the hotel’s security. As the result of the recent pandemic, people are found working from hotels, and getting their business info exposed apparently is not on anyone’s agenda. Up your hotel security’s matter is not a question but is crucial to moving forward.

The SaaS

Most of the mentioned technologies are packaged in a SaaS product model. It is cost-effective, built on a cloud-based infrastructure, and grows along with your business. Cutting down a huge budget in hardware investment, complex maintenance/update management, and on-site IT support teams to monitor the system 24/7. The growing adoption of SaaS models has been shaping the hospitality industry in improving its traditional operations to scale up efficiently at a reasonable budget.

The SaaS product model has been around for a long, however recently received support from the hospitality industry due to its efficiency and effectiveness.

It meanwhile defines the future hospitality management solutions has to be cloud-based, flexible, integrate effortlessly with other technology. CiHMS certainly fits the puzzle here as being an all-in-one cloud-computing hospitality management solution your hotel would ever need. Thanks to Open API, integration with 3rd party software is straightforward and trouble-free.

Hospitality has always been such a competitive industry. Technology keeps on evolving and is wiggling its way to becoming stable in the future of hospitality. It allows hotels to deliver unrivaled accommodation to their customers while maximizing the current business resources, optimizing its operations, reducing the expenses, and staying afloat and relevant with the present. Helping hotels to be responsive, make data-driven decisions, improve their processes and eventually transform.

Just as Jeanne W. Ross, MIT Sloan’s Center for Information Systems Research did say:

“Clearly, the thing that’s transforming is not the technology — the technology is transforming you.”

Nobody knows what the future holds, knowing all the hotel technology trends in 2022 does not mean you have to implement them all. Pick a few relevant technologies that bring immediate benefits and are most valuable to your hotel to start out with, the remaining shall soon follow.