Is IoT the Cherry On the Top for Hospitality?

The travel and tourism industry is exponentially expanding with each passing day. This somehow has pushed the hospitality industry to expand itself as well. In fact, hospitality businesses have generated a significant amount of money for economies. It also offers several career and employment opportunities to people coming from all walks of life. The primary aim of the hospitality industry is to make the guests feel empowered throughout their stay in a specific hotel. For this, the industry requires to overcome various challenges that are otherwise not possible without the tremendous and unbending support of technology. With the Internet of Things (IoT), superior levels of technical support could be designed to meet each and every requirement of the hospitality sector for instilling ‘Guest Welfare’.

The biggest challenge to the hospitality sector comes in the form of unawareness of the guest’s needs and requirements, who come for the stay. Each guest is different, has a different personality, likes & dislikes, music preference and individual backgrounds that make them unique. Thus, the process of collecting data about each and every guest appeared complex and challenging in the beginning until IoT came into the picture.

If you are a hotelier and want to provide A-class services to your guests, then go straight and invest in the IoT driven strategies. IoT benefits the hospitality sector in several new ways and increases operational efficiency in almost no time. In order to take stronger roots in the volatile marketplace for hospitality, IoT assistance is much required by any hotelier. Let us discover more.

1)     IoT Intensifies Room-Personalization

In the hospitality sector, the primary intention of IoT is to design smart rooms for the guests. Smart rooms are defined as those rooms that ‘know the guest well and the guest knows the room very well back in return’. These rooms are termed as ‘connected rooms’. The basic intention in designing such rooms is to make the guests feel like ‘home away from home’. This requires ‘guest knowledge’ in order to win a chance to the guest’s heart.

Smart IoT sensors manage to collect significant data about the guests. This happens when a guest comes in for the stay and adjusts the room temperature, chooses a particular genre of music, switches to a particular channel on television and so on. The information collected under the name of a specific guest is utilized the next time when s/he comes for the stay in the same hotel.

IoT sensors manage to scoop a good knowledge about the guest’s choice and preferences without gatecrashing into the guest’s privacy. Thus, drawing a fine line in between sensitive data and not-so-sensitive, yet crucial data is very important for the hoteliers to progress with the concept of hyper room-personalization with full dash. Here are some examples:

With IoT driven connected rooms, the devices will greet the guests to make them feel at home. Smart televisions will welcome the guest in the rooms by saying “Welcome (guest’s name)”. In that connected room, the guest can easily change the room temperature, automate the opening/drawing of curtains, use voice controlled bots like Alexa to change music, TV channels and/or switch onto the favourite Netflix TV series.

2)     IoT Helps In Using Energy Inside Hotels Productively

In order to provide the guests with utmost comfort, hotels bear a lot of expenditure. With IoT devices hoteliers can now witness a significant amount of energy and workload savings. It is a general habit of the guests to leave the fans and lights on while leaving the rooms. With IoT sensors and motion detectors, the room resources will automatically get turned off once the guests will step outside. This will help the hotels in saving huge sums of money which they can invest in other IoT strategies in order to enhance guest experience.

3)     IoT enhances mobile engagement

The world’s population is 7 billion in the current date. There are almost 6.8 billion cell phones that are been used. This is a great opportunity for the hospitality sector to get connected with their targeted audience through mobile phones.

The Internet of Things enhances mobile engagement in between the guest and the host as in today’s time, spotting a mobile phone in everyone’s hand is no big deal. Mobiles have in fact changed the way in which we work, travel, seek entertainment, commute and more! Hotels like Hilton and Starwood are now offering guests the ability to check in and unlock their doors all through smart mobile applications. IoT has thus tremendously enhanced the way wireless communication work.  

In fact, through this keyless entry system, hotels are now enabling the guests to bypass the front desk and head straight to the rooms. Now the guests are no more required to hold onto their patience in the front desk to complete the check-in procedure. This saves a lot of the guest’s time and helps them in experiencing greater comfort.  

Some concluding thoughts

As an industry, hospitality has its core focus on strengthening the relationship between a guest and the host. Receiving every guest from across the world with utmost goodwill is what the hospitality sector aims for. In order to heighten client loyalty, technological support was much required by hotels across the world. Now with the IoT in the hospitality industry is designing new strategies to ease out its operations that will contribute to making the guests feel ‘empowered’ in every way possible.

The biggest challenge for the hospitality sector lies with the fact that every guest has a different choice, preference, personality and dislike. Giving each and every one of the guests a personalized experience was never possible a few years back. But, today with IoT devices knowing the guests' likings is not much challenging. The smart sensors collect data about the guests who have stayed in the hotels previously. So, next time whenever they are visiting, IoT sensors set the room according to the data that has been collected under the name of the specific guests. This promotes guest experience better and this is nothing short than a revolution!