Contact less in hospitality, an opportunity for tech companies
The return to normal of the pre-pandemic is gaining ground and it seems that “the pandemic has changed us” is losing ground. Really? Maybe not. At least in the hospitality industry, where “contact less” seems to have an increasingly present future.
A couple days ago I was reading an article in Travesías magazine about this. They referred to a survey conducted by Skift and Oracle Hospitality in which they interviewed “more than 1,800 hospitality industry leaders and over 4,000 consumers around the world to understand their preferences regarding best practices that could help the industry recover”.
In reference to having less and less personal contact in their activities during their stay in an establishment, the data that stood out the most was that the sum of the values of the various answers given by those consulted, 151%, related the future of the industry to the use of technologies that would allow greater independence in the management of experiences and use of spaces. In other words, doing more on their own without having to interact with an employee of the establishment.
And the hotel executives surveyed seem to be clear about this, as 73% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that “in the future, self-service technology will become increasingly important to our organization to assist guests while minimizing unnecessary contact or possible infection.”
In the case of travelers, 71% responded affirmatively to the question of whether, when returning to a hotel, they would be very likely to stay in one that offers self-service technology and will minimize physical contact with hotel staff.”
This presents a good opportunity for the growth of technology companies that are able to offer products and services that facilitate “contact less” in the hospitality industry. In this way, investments in this type of sector could also be attractive. We will have to keep an eye on them and their performance. We will also have to keep an eye on new ventures in this specialty. And, of course, of the numbers of hotel companies that invest more in technologies of less contact between people. If they improve their performance, we will have to analyze the impact of “contact less” on it.
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