Maicol Peixe, Operational Director
The world is changing fast and we are living in a new age, the age of evolution, the age of automation, artificial intelligence, and much, much more.
It is sad, but it is a hard truth that only in time of war deep changes happen.
The pandemic came and brought us pain and suffering and pushed us to think and see some of our weaknesses in so many different ways, and here comes one of the findings: now, more than ever, it is important to understand and to evaluate the opportunities brought by technology to our businesses in general.
Hotels and Property Managers are an incredible area to work with, the variety of opportunities to automate processes, to improve productivity, and quality, time response and to reduce waste and money is practically endless.
It is not about pandemic anymore, or cost reduction, but it is about competitiveness. There is a need for change since the new normal is far different from what we use to know.
Now think about processes, think about the future, and try to explore everything, without limits, think about every possible thing that you would like to migrate from human to machine. This is the new limit for changes that you can have, some already available in the market, some on the way to be delivered and some other been produced by a startup, an international company, or even a friend of yours living closer and just about to change the world as you know.
Let’s start with guest services:
• Anticipate your guests’ arrivals, enriching data using a simple App, collecting all necessary information to better host him.
• At guest arrival, fully automate the onboarding process, providing a complete and rich experience with kiosks, where guests can complement their data, ask for additional services, pay for their stay, get their access key, and much more.
• Get in touch with your clients and send them welcome messages, provide them the door lock codes to make them feel at ease, at their arrival.
• Collaborate with other providers to deliver cigars, flowers, and/or chocolates.
• Connect to sound players and give your guests the experience to be welcome by their favorite music. Play in a digital frame their family pictures available on their Facebook and or Instagram.
• Present to your guest events, theaters, tickets, etc., everything based on their profile.
• Count heads to guarantee limits established by you and maybe charge for extra guests or not welcome animals.
• Never let your guest lose his flight again, make an automated call, schedule a taxi, an the alarm clock, or even call someone of his preference.
• Make your guests feel safer, enhancing the monitoring of houses and hotels, and establishing automated contact with the police and warning guests about the possible danger.
• Let your guests do their own checkout and autopay, avoiding long lines.
• Take care of every problem and demand in real time, assuring that the problem was really treated.
Now, let us think about front desks and staff in general:
• Connect cameras, door locks, and even use Wi-Fi to identify the presence of your guests and automate the schedule of room house cleaners and even maintenance staff to act on a problem presented by your guests, assuring total privacy.
• Monitor items inside the minibar, the refrigerator and the shelfs and lockers, enabling automatic charge of consumed goods, using several different technologies.
• Constantly analyze your data, based on your guests’ behavior, anticipating offers and given them the impression they have an angel, not a company, looking after them.
It is mandatory to have in mind that every step, every connection, every action count, this is data, and data can be a problem if not well used, or pure gold for those who master the theme.
We just got a blink of an eye of simple things, but as said every data count, you can understand consume of goods, behavior of guests, analyze their profile, and be extremely assertive in your offer and much more. Today artificial intelligence is already a part of the automation process.
A machine, improving your services, can perform each one of those steps.
I am not just talking about robots as machines. I am talking about a bunch of codes, programs interacting with hardware that most of the time you already have, but do not use.
Automation, and Artificial Intelligence, today are affordable items for everyone.
We are no longer talking about millions of dollars. We are now talking about bills that can be paid by simples people like you and me. Small costs that can bring you service improvements, customer satisfaction and lots of cost reduction, what means a sound return of investment.