Smart Hospitality – The Catalyst for Customer Satisfaction

Smart hospitality refers to the provision of convenient services such as controlled lighting, smart alerts among others, via the use of digital media and controls integrated with technology. This makes the clients that are staying in environments such as hotels and resorts feel more comfortable.

INDUSTRY SCENARIO

The travel and tourism industry is booming, which is facilitated by the increasing disposable income among the middle-income and low-income population allowing them and thereby increasing their propensity to spend. Moreover, the increasing trend among the population to visit attractions around d the world is contributing to the growth of the travel and the tourism industry. Thus, these factors are bolstering the footfall in the hotels and resorts are driving the market growth.

Moreover, the increasing adoption of IoT and Information, Communication and Technology solutions across a wide variety of industry verticals for catering to the various applications. In conjunction, the hospitality sector is rapidly evolving and the growth and adoption of advanced technologies the integration of the Internet of Things (IoT)in different applications is increasing. Therefore, in order to increase their profit margins and the market Share the hotels and resorts hold, they are being encouraged to adopt smart hospitality solutions and other advanced features so that the guest convenience and comfort is maximized, and they do not lose their customers to their rivals. This is causing a spike in the demand for smart hospitality solutions, which is further augmenting smart hospitality market growth.

Furthermore, some of the biggest advantages of smart hospitality are that it is able to reduce the overall operation costs that are associated with the effective management of the hotel services, it reduces the check-in and check-out time, thus provides convenience to the customers. The usage of these solutions also helps in increasing the workflow and streamlining the daily output of the hotel and helps the hotels maximize their profits and gain a competitive edge over their rivals. Lastly, it allows for personalization in each of the rooms of the guests by meeting the specific customer demands and allows for energy management, and effective decision making that is based on the data collected and data analyzed. Therefore, the above-mentioned factors will continue to drive the growth of the market throughout the forecast period.

SEGMENT ANALYSIS

By component, the software is expected to hold a noteworthy market share, which is attributable to the fact that is preferred more by the different hotels, due to the easy adoption and setting up as it minimizes the requirement of additional hardware components and systems, which tend to be relatively costlier than the software components.

By, deployment model, the on-premise model is estimated to hold a significant market and contribute to sharing owing to the fact that, the deployment of smart hospitality solutions in the hotel itself gives the hotel management staff easier access to the service and it is relatively cheaper as compared to the cloud-based model. In addition, the cloud-based deployment model is projected to increase its market share over the forecast period on account of the additional security and better data storage and management is able to provide over the on-premise solution.

COMPETITIVE STRATEGIES

Key players in the smart hospitality market are focusing more on strategic mergers and acquisitions, technology partnerships, continuous innovation, and more advanced offerings, as a part of their growth strategies to provide better services to their customers worldwide. There are pieces of evidence from the recent past in the field of smart hospitality, which in the form of partnerships, patent grants, and funding is promoting the extensive use of smart hospitality solutions and services, promoting its market growth at present and in the upcoming years. Some of the examples included are listed below:

• In July 2019, MCOMS announce that have entered into a partnership agreement with Volara, which is one the leading software-based solution providing companies, in order to provide an advanced and technology-driven guest experience. Under this partnership, Volara’s conversation management software and MCOMS in-room entertainment platform will be combined to enable the guests to control the in-room entrainment systems via the use of voice commands, which will be facilitated through the devices such as Amazon Echo, Google Assistant, IBM Watson or Smart Beings Woohoo in the guest rooms. The functions that can be performed using voice commands are; increasing or decreasing the volume of the TV, seamless channel selection and navigation, opening the TV guide, and powering the TV on or off. The first hotel to adopt this solution is Hotel Zetta, which a property of ViceroyHotels.
• In October 2019, Viceroy Los Cabos, which is property of the Viceroy announced that they are planning to standardize their operations, by collaborating with ALICE and adopting their ALICE Platform. ALICE is an operations technology platform catering to the hospitality industry in order to facilitate the connection between different departments of the hotel and providing a single platform for the requests by the guests and communication of the staff. In addition, they also made an addition to heir existing smart features by integrating the Volara technology solution, which is powered by Amazon Alexa, with the existing ALICE solution.
• In February 2019, Honeywell, one of the leaders in connected buildings globally, announced the launch of their new product catering to the smart hospitality market called the "INNCOM INN control 5". This product offered is an instinctive and powerful platform that caters to the energy management needs and facilitates guestroom control. In addition, this system, the IC5, allows the users or operators to effectively monitor and manage guestroom controls across the hotel property in real-time to identify and rectify the arising issues before they affect guests. The other features it offers include the ability to track energy usage and deliver better operational efficiency. The IC5 operates as follows, it collects the data from the guest room and then displays it on a dashboard, which is configurable. On this dashboard, the key performance indicators (KPIs) are shown, as they influence the property operations and functions. Then the cloud-based system provides alerts on the mobile devices and data analytics services to address the problems associated and occurring with the property’s operation. Moreover, this solution is also backward compatible, with their previous product the "INNcontrol3" under the INNCOM product line.

FUTURE PROSPECTS:

Currently, smart hospitality is revolutionizing the Information Technology and Communication (ICT) industry. The increasing investment in research and development by market players coupled with increasing enhancements and advancement sin the smart solutions offered for hotels is expected to drive the growth of the smart hospitality market. Moreover, due to the rapid adoption of IoT solutions by various hotels such as the Viceroy HotelsLimited and Westin Hotels, a part of the Marriott International Inc., in different locations globally and the continued enhancement and addition of features in the hardware modules and software modules offered would fuel the growth of the market in the coming years. Therefore, smart hospitality the market is anticipated to grow at an astounding rate of 13.14% during the forecast period.

Knowledge Sourcing Intelligence is a market research and consulting firm based out of India. Steered by some of the industry experts, the company provides syndicated reports, custom research, and consulting services.