Withiam, G. (2008). Tech-savvy guests spend more. Hospitality Technology, October 2008, Retrieved from http://www.htmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=MultiPublishing&mod=PublishingTitles&mid=3E19674330734FF1BBDA3D67B50C82F1&tier=4&id=277F5CD9C9B1434C8CEBFE06229B6EC5
Technology importance and adoption have become a cornerstone issues in hospitality industry. But even though technology applications can greatly improve hotel operations and contribute to guest satisfaction, some hotel customers are not very familiar with technology. Being not attuned to modern technological tools those people don’t use them heavily during their hotel stay and obviously they don’t want to pay for these services and even could be annoyed and disappointed with the necessity to deal with technology all the time. So, nowadays every hotel faces a great challenge: to choose which technologies to implement, to decide whether it is worth money and eventually to build up own technology adoption policy. All these issues are covered in the article “Tech-savvy guests spend more” written by Glenn Withiam, the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research Director of Publications. Trying to answer the questions mentioned above the author describes the survey conducted by the Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research in order to find out hotel guests’ technology inclinations. The study group employed the web-based Technology Readiness Index (TRI) tool. The researches described the group of travelers who favor technology and get the highest TRI score. The main features of those respondents are:
- They are relatively younger,
- They are more highly educated,
- They are more affluent,
- They are more inclined to be frequent travelers,
- They are willing to pay higher room rates (and tend to stay in upscale hotels).
Also the researchers found out the top technological tools to be on the cutting-edge of IT adoption, among them:
- Online / web-based hotel booking,
- Self check-out,
- In-room Internet access.
At the same time study results confirmed that not all hotel guests embrace technology innovations. The author concludes that every particular hotel should learn more about its guest preferences and opinions about technology and take decisions concerning technology adoption accordingly. One of the possible ways to serve not technology-savvy clients is to maintain human interaction opportunities.
In my opinion, the topic of the article is really interesting, up-to-date and significant for the industry. Nowadays hotels have to operate in a very competitive fast-changing environment. On the one hand hotels should track technology innovations and employ them to meet the technology-savvy guests’ expectations. But on the other hand implementing technology we can discourage certain group of travelers to stay in a particular hotel. Even simple everyday actions (e.g. to turn on a TV or draw curtains) could become a great problem for those who are not familiar with cutting-edge technology. So, hotels should be very attentive to their guests and also very selective choosing new technologies. Such research projects as one described in the article can help hoteliers to take right business decisions. We should remember about hotel business main point: to provide positive experience to the guests keeping up making profit. It means that it is unnecessary to implement all the technological tools that appeared on the market. First of all, hoteliers should compare the price of this adoption with possible impact on hotel guests’ satisfaction. To give an example, professors from the University of Delaware Dr. Beldona and Dr. Cobanoglu conducted the importance-performance analysis of guest technologies in the lodging industry and classified all the technologies in four groups according to guests’ expectations and satisfaction. The first group which is called “keep up the great work” includes express check-in/out, remote control TV and HSIA and has both high importance and performance scores. The second group, with high importance but unexpectedly low performance, includes wireless internet access, alarm clock, easily accessible electrical outlets and online reservation capabilities. This group should attract hoteliers’ attention because guests considered these tools choosing a hotel but they were not satisfied with the level of service. The third group demonstrates technologies were given the low importance rates but recorded high performance; it includes web TV, pay-per-view movies, in-room personal computers. And the last group indicates the low importance-low performance technologies: videoconferencing capabilities, wireless access to hotel website, business centers and plasma screen TVs (Beldona, Cobanoglu, 2007). These results could help the hotels to distinguish those directions they should work on. Also I suppose it would be very interesting to deepen the study and focus, for example, on business and holiday travelers. But anyway for the best results every hotel should study its own clientele to draw the conclusions regarding technology implementation and its impact on guests’ satisfaction.
References:
Beldona, S., & Cobanoglu, C. (2007). Importance-performance analysis of guest technologies in the lodging industry. Cornell Hotel & Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 48(3), 299-312.
Withiam, G. (2008). Tech-savvy guests spend more. Hospitality Technology, October 2008.
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3 comments:
Ekaterina, I think your article selection brings up several valid points. The hospitality industry knows how important it is to stay fairly close to the cutting edge of technology. Yet we all know that new technology can be pricey. Unfortunately, the expense of newly added technologies trickle down to the hotels’ guests. As you were explaining, not all guest use technology if they don’t have to. So why would a guest have to pay for a service they have no intention of using? In a sense, to charge a guest for services not rendered is kind of inconsiderate. Yet I understand that the hotel industry is a business and somebody has to pay for the service that so that it will be available when any guest wants to use it.
It is possible that some of these guests do not have these technologies readily available to them. By visiting a hotel and having experienced something like “Clocky“ (which can be found at http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=15986697), which is a not so average and kind of techie alarm clock, it may encourage the guest to purchase a similar product for their convenience. By having in-room technologies available it can provide the guest with a gift or a curse. If the guest is fairly familiar with using new technologies then they probably will enjoy the modern day luxuries. However, if the guest doesn’t have a care for technology, they may feel overwhelmed with the many technologies that are throughout their room and the hotel. On a personal note, I know my grandparents get frustrated with the cable television on-screen menus. I couldn’t imagine how they would deal with various hotel technologies.
So I very much agree with you when you suggest that a hotel must know their guest. They should know what their guest prefer and adjust the experience for them. As you stated, careful consideration should be taken when introducing new technologies to the overall hotel. Through our studies we have learned that new technologies don’t always offer the best results. What seems great right now may not be upgradeable next year, and in a few months it may become an unusable technology. Hotels that have just the right amount of technology while maintaining accepted normalcy, in my opinion, should provide a welcoming place for all.
New technology may make business profitable and it also bring some disadvantages just as Ekaterina stated in her reflection. The most important issue is that how to communicate with your hotel's customers and get accurate feedback in order to use them for future improvement and management. This is a advanced skill and not everybody has.
How to use technology properly is always a controversial question, but we can believe that people will update and improve information system to make it serve the majority. The most important reason for making technology progress is to satisfy people.
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