27 May 2020
4 MINS READ
The current crisis has hit the hospitality industry the hardest. As in the past, the hospitality industry will come out stronger from the current crisis as well. Such extreme uncertainty can be tapped in as an opportunity by leveraging next generation IT solutions and digitization of business processes.
The effects of COVID-19 are spreading across the globe and the primary focus for governments and businesses rightly so has been the safety of their people. The travel sector and more so the hospitality sector has been among the hardest hit due to:
As per IMF these lockdowns could shrink the global economy by 3%. Hotel occupancy in US could drop sharply below 10%. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, this pandemic could cut 50 million jobs globally in the travel and tourism industry and this sector will take up to 10 months to return to its base normal levels.
Hospitality industry has been impacted earlier as well e.g. the SARS virus impacted the industry drastically in 2003 with a 50% decline in hotel bookings. Despite that the travel industry managed to register immense growth by 2006. Even this pandemic is temporary and we as humanity will fight and survive through this. Thus, the industry needs to plan for the future and take steps to reduce long-term damage, gather customer confidence, reduce cost, increase revenue and drive itself for a faster recovery.
Adopt cloud technologies: Remote working has become the normal. With cloud-based systems, majority of the operations can be controlled remotely. In hospitality, cloud-based systems will help manage everything remotely and instantaneously. Reducing personal contact with guests will be new normal experience. One can perform countless operational tasks from anywhere, at any time like check-in, check-out, reservation, inventory management etc. Also, adopting cloud technology will help in reducing the IT estate and its related costs.
Cross Sell and Up Sell (Ancillary Revenues): Airlines have tapped into the ancillary revenues over the past many years. Considering the current situation, the hospitality industry needs to tap more onto this area as well. By Integrating with third party vendors like tours, activities, cars, local events, museums it needs to provide them as a package to their guests. Also, providing loyalty benefits for such bookings can help the hotel industry engage more with their customers, increase their loyalty base, achieve revenue growth and enhance guest satisfaction by providing personalized offers.
Also, hoteliers need to consider driving profitability by diversifying into other operations like food delivery, professional laundry services, limousine services, etc. Currently hotels sell their branded products at the hotel store; hoteliers can leverage e-commerce platforms to promote and sell hotel merchandize on their website.
Customer Health & Safety: With the virus being very contagious, it is crucial to have appropriate health and safety policies in place, especially for hospitality businesses that relies more on in-person/direct interactions. Providing customers with the Hotel Safety & Hygiene index ratings will go a long way in building customer confidence and help increase their loyalty.
Installing non-invasive thermal scanners to monitor body temperature of guests and staff at hotels will help. Also, hoteliers should update or adopt protocols to help ensure that the staff is not contributing to the spread of infection and maintain high standards.
Hexaware continuously aligns itself to provide disruptive solutions with vision and philosophy based on the three cornerstones that are ‘Automate Everything™’, ‘Cloudify Everything™’ and ‘Transform Customer Experiences™’. With Automate Everything™ we help reduce manual effort and intervention using latest technologies such as Cognitive AI, Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics. With Cloudify Everything™ we provide Cloud services like re-platforming or migrating to cloud native application architectures which help in cost savings, scalability and real-time accessibility. Hexaware uses its intelligent smart automation re-platforming product “Amaze™” to help migrate monolith mainframe applications to the cloud. With transform Customer Experience™ we provide positive impact on the business by enabling rich, unique and quality customer interactions. driving latest digitalization initiatives.
In the current scenario, Hexaware can help the hospitality industry in digitization of Business processes, reducing the IT estate and its cost and in building stakeholder confidence and enhancing the guest experience.
About the Author
Shripal has 21+ years of experience working across Airline industry. He is a solution architect bridging the business and IT needs across Travel industry. He helps in driving solutions in business transformation, new trends and initiatives in the travel industry.
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