The hospitality industry has survived economic downturns by cutting 40% of its workforce. Now, hospitality operations faces a new challenge of delivering personalized service with fewer hands. The solution is not hiring back, but the use of smart technology.
You know that moment when you’re checking into a hotel, and there’s a line of tired travelers snaking around the lobby. Everyone clutching their luggage while one overwhelmed receptionist tries to handle check-ins, answer phone calls, and explain why the elevator on the left is out of order? You watch the minutes tick by, your back hurts from standing, and you wonder why there isn’t a faster way to get your room key and collapse on a bed.
Yeah, we’ve all been there. And honestly, wouldn’t a better solution have saved everyone’s sanity?
These everyday frustrations are exactly why hotels are turning to technology. Not to replace the friendly staff who recommend the best local restaurants, but to handle the repetitive tasks that bog down hospitality operations.
The hospitality industry runs on human interactions, personalized experiences, and repeat customer loyalty. It is seeing a surge in new technological advancements that are defining the industry in a new light. After the pandemic, things have gotten normal now. And, we have seen a surge in the usage of augmented reality in web applications of hotels, robotics automation, and new forms of check-in via QR code.
QR codes check-ins, AR previews of rooms and tourist attractions, and robotic concierges are no longer proof of futuristic vision. They are tools that the industry can bank upon to succeed in the competitive landscape.
But before hotels can leverage these innovations, they need to understand the fundamental challenge holding the industry back.
What is the technology gap in hotels and why does it matter?
According to Gartner’s 2024 research, 51% of hospitality businesses lack dedicated technology systems. This is creating massive inefficiencies in their hospitality operations. This represents a $2.3 billion market opportunity for ISVs who can bridge this gap effectively.
The winners will be those who will embrace technological changes and partner with those organizations that understand hospitality technology. This will make human connections stronger and not replace them.
Understanding the gap is one thing and knowing which operations need these solutions most urgently is another. Let’s take a look at them.
What types of hospitality businesses should use AI and technology?
Technology companies (ISVs) play a vital role in enabling emerging hospitality technology trends with innovative solutions. These solutions improve the guest experience, customer loyalty, and day‑to‑day operations. Let’s take a look: efficiency:
Automated Systems in different areas of hotel industry
Customers, like airlines or cruise ships, have high or recurring volume of guests staying at hotels. They like to have contracts with the hotels for the long term. The end users prefer certain bidding domains, which help them to streamline their operations. These applications can be automated with the use of algorithms that can book and select the best smart hotel based on user preferences.
Beyond automation, the real competitive advantage lies in systems that facilitate seamless communication.
Intelligent systems for B2B operations
Messaging systems in the bidding domain are useful for applications that need constant communication between buyers and sellers. A strong messaging system can help increase revenue, close bids faster, and give businesses a competitive edge. It also improves transparency and reduces issues caused by long email threads or miscommunication. Reports show that using a messaging system can cut procurement time by 25% and boost vendor participation by 40%.
For example, messaging systems like WhatsApp/WeChat business account feature in bidding platforms about certain taxations or tax exemption limit in certain areas, or more detailed information about the hotel renovation. The advantages of such technological innovations will be in the form of better customer support and offering personal connections with end users.
While messaging improves communication, artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing how B2B interactions happen.
AI powered revolution for B2B operations
- AI/ML technology: Robotic technology is based on analytical and intuitive intelligence, based on systematic and rule-based learning. The chatbots can easily handle around 80% of the supplier queries, which are routine inquiries, thereby training the systems to respond faster and more accurately. The positive impact of this AI-powered automation can be easily visible on the staff, who can be freed for focussing on high-value interactions with clients.
For example, certain messages that are repeated questions can be automated, like “What is your smallest need for transport vehicles? “Or “Do airlines have different room rate slabs for pilots and crew?”
- Machine Learning: ML can analyze supplier performance, response times, and hotel feedback to recommend best-in-class vendors automatically. The below example, where Amazon has implemented a functionality which allows the end user to view the customer satisfaction ratings, is good for helping select not only the best products but best suppliers.
As AI transforms backend operations, the guest-facing payment experience is undergoing its own revolution
Next Generation payment processing systems
Payment processing systems: The rise of contactless payments since the pandemic has made hotels aware of cashing in on this opportunity. According to a Mastercard survey, customers now prefer contactless payments over cash. Contactless payments like mobile wallets, Quick response codes, and mPOS systems are a seamless, secure, and speedy way to ensure customer satisfaction and makes the hotel a ‘smart hotel.’
Recently, Mapro centres in India have introduced ordering via QR scanner code. This makes ordering quick and easy, and customers can avoid the heavy rush at their order counters. This mobile ordering system helps the customer pay bills quickly and easily. POS systems can be used in payment processing, inventory management systems, customer management systems, employee management, and dashboard reporting, too.
As AI transforms backend operations, the guest-facing payment experience is undergoing its own revolution
Internet of Things (IoT) Integration
The Internet of Things (IoT) has worked wonders for the hospitality domain post-pandemic and even in the present time. Automated room locks, voice assistant devices, and light switches controlled by phones, these are some fine examples of how the IoT system allows the customer to control or track devices from a phone or tablet. This allows the hospitality business to enhance the customer experience and turn it into customer delight. For example, smart hotels like Best Western have tested for Amazon Dot devices for enhanced customer service and to reduce the workload of the hotel staff. Even on cruises, IoT is being used as part of a navigational tool and cabin key.
While IoT enhances physical spaces, augmented reality is bridging the gap between imagination and reality.
Augmented Reality: A world beyond marketing gimmicks
AR, which is an interactive experience of a real-world environment. Integration of the physical, real environment with virtual details to enhance or “augment” the real-world experience . AR is the use of computer-generated perceptual information to enhance the objects that live in the real world across many sensory modalities, i.e., Visual, Auditory, and Haptic. AR can be achieved using applications for smartphones or tablets that uses phone camera. Virtual tours and check-ins are offered by many smart hotels to enhance the first-hand customer experience of the property. Through augmented reality, smart hotels can offer real time view of scenic points on maps. For example, hotels can offer an interactive dining experience for customers.
These immersive experiences generate massive amounts of data—and that’s where the real strategic value lies.
Data Analytics: The decision-making engine
As per Gartner, the definition of data analytics is about Manage Data, Analyze Data which will help in improving decision-making and business outcomes. Data Analytics can be used to derive meaningful decisions, which can be used to study consumer behaviour. It can help businesses adjust room prices as per competitor pricing, seasonal demand, and historical data. It can help in understanding the competitor strategies, identify issues like ironing out the inefficiencies by data collected from the guests in the form of feedback, and can help in improving the goodwill and increase branding of the smart hotels.
Discover how we turned a hospitality vision into a working MVP in just 150 days. See what fast, focused innovation looks like.
Data informs strategy, but mobile applications are where that strategy meets execution.
How do mobile apps help hotels and travel companies?
Mobile apps serve many purposes, but procurement and bidding platforms deserve special attention.
What are mobile bidding platforms and how do they work for hotels?
During RFP creation, push notifications can be a best bet for suppliers, which can serve the purpose of notifying the suppliers not to miss any critical bidding opportunities. This can help the business to enhance the response time by 50% and increase bid participation by 55% with suppliers.
Quick approval mechanisms incorporated via mobile applications can help in faster procurement cycles and, in turn, can reduce the approval time by a 70%. This can help in improving vendor relationships and bring more transparency to the process. Similarly, in case of bid deadline reminders and status updates notifications in the form of messages to the supplier can be sent to notify them about the deadline approaching to fill in the RFP.
This will be beneficial to the business by proactively managing deadlines. informing the supplier about status change and providing real-time visibility into bid progress.
With all this digital transformation comes a critical question that keeps hotel executives awake at night: security.
How do hotels protect guest data when using cloud systems?
Due to the highly sensitive data volume and variety, the industry needs to ensure that it does not hurt the business. As per reports, the average cost per breach is around $4.87 million. There are many examples where data breach has costs businesses not only financial losses but also loss of brand/ goodwill. To safeguard the data, advanced encryption methods, and multi factor authentication, and regular security audits are used to ensure that compliances related to GDPR and ISO 27001 to safeguard supplier information.
Cloud-based procurement solutions centralize the entire procurement lifecycle, including souring process, while reducing the reliance on legacy systems. Businesses also choose cloud platforms to test and manage supplier performance. Cloud procurement manages all suppliers and contract activities from a single platform.
It provides detailed insights into spending, identifying cost-saving opportunities, and improving operational efficiencies.
Security protects what exists today, but Generative AI is creating entirely new possibilities for tomorrow.
How is Gen AI changing the hotel and travel industry?
The travel & hospitality industry is experiencing a revolution in adopting Generative AI solutions to convert the customer experience into customer delight. Hospitality technology like Generative AI is used in the travel industry to customize plans for every individual with a desired budget size. I have used AI to customize travel plans to tourist location where I got a detailed plan of travel which had a plan overview, day-wise itinerary, highlights, flexibility, and tips to travel with ease. I added a budget, and I received a breakdown of costs that could be spent on various activities.
So, Generative AI is helping people make informed decisions and customize travel plans as per the requirements without any extra costs.
Certain travel companies are using AI travel agents to guide their customers 24/7 in case they need any information. This helps the tourists feel connected with the travel company and have positive feedback about the company.
Generative AI has a positive business impact on hotel business operations, too. The following are the benefits that can be highlighted for embracing this technology.
Automated Content creation: The property descriptions can be done in many languages, which can help the social media content to be tailored for different regions.
The Generative AI can be used to generate templates that can be used in RFP, which will reduce the manual labor by 70% and increase requirement clarity by 80%. With vendor matching capabilities, the results can be improved by 80% and can reduce evaluation time by 30%. Also, by introducing features like scoring analysis and risk identification of defaulter suppliers/vendors, the end users will have a trustworthy experience. Certain features, like automated Q&A systems, can be embedded in vendor dashboards for easy addressing of questions and multilingual support for global vendors to enhance the procurement application.
Generative AI has capabilities to transform RFP websites from static document repositories to intelligent procurement ecosystems, which can not only reduce RFP creation time but also improve user satisfaction.
And through intelligent systems, these platforms can handle the entire cycle with minimum human intervention, gaining efficiency in market intelligence and organizational goals.
With all these technological advances reshaping hospitality, one question remains: what happens to those who don’t adapt?
Why hotels that don’t adopt technology will fail – “Survival of the fittest”
As Darwin’s theory described the evolution process, the hospitality industry is experiencing its own change. In this digital ecosystem, the fittest are those who evolve to technological advancements.
A few critical traits that the travel & hospitality industry needs to understand are the strategic partnership with ISV, which can lead to continuous improvements in systems, designing the best business solutions that can be beneficial to both, and quick adaptation of new technologies as per the survival in these difficult markets.
As advancements in hospitality technology will see a snowball effect, there will be many product innovations in the guest rooms. This will create a forging relationship between the IT firms and hoteliers to adapt to the new changes in the environment. The hospitality industry’s survival depends on three critical decisions: choosing hospitality technology that enhances human connection, partnering with ISVs who understand guest experience, and implementing solutions that deliver measurable ROI within 12 months.
The opportunity is clear: ISVs and hospitality leaders must collaborate not as vendor and client, but as strategic partners building the future of guest experience. For hospitality operations to thrive, the question isn’t whether to adopt these technologies, it’s how quickly you can implement them before your competition does.
Ready to transform your hospitality operations with AI and cloud technology?
Nitor Infotech specializes in building cutting-edge GenAI-powered solutions for cloud, data, and digital transformation. We enable hospitality businesses design, architect, and migrate their workloads to the cloud while implementing intelligent automation that enhances guest experiences.
From AI-powered procurement systems to cloud-based data analytics, our consulting-driven approach ensures your technology enhances human connections rather than replacing them.
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