Survival of the fittest! This Darwinian theory has evolved into a guiding principle for the businesses operating in the marketplace. The essence is to offer much more than the basic amenities for gaining not only the customer's wallet‐shares but also the mind‐share in the long run. After globalization, when the physical, financial and psychological barriers between the countries, cultures, and societies are diminishing, it has become very challenging for the businesses to survive and succeed in a highly competitive environment.
Today, in this digitized world, customers are getting used to the advanced facilities. And so, they're expecting the same with the hospitality & tourism industry. Therefore, with the tremendous changes in the taste and expectations of guests, all hospitality service providers are actively looking into the new technologies as well as techniques to offer the optimal levels of guest experiences. Like other services industries, the hospitality and tourism industry is also facing large scale disruption propelled by the emergence of new technologies, ever‐evolving competitive landscape, and ever increasing expectations of the customers along with many other challenges. Today we stand on the brink of the most transformative revolution ever, the era of “connected intelligence”. Driven by the smarter devices everywhere, armed with cloud based services and driven by cognitive intelligence, the world is changing at a dizzying pace and businesses are scrambling to keep up with this reality. Particularly, digital disruption is fueling innovations in the hospitality and tourism industries. Traditional enterprises are being forced to reimagine their business as technology‐driven whereas startups are conceived as digital‐first and have the advantage of being agile in the business procedure. In these turbulent times hospitality and tourism as an industry is no different. Travel as a major component of tourism, remains the most progressive expression of human curiosity but still relies on human connections for ultimate expressions of hospitality. This means strategies adopted have to be far more purpose built for industry specific nuances. These strategies in turn are influenced by some major trends that the industry is witnessing.
Travel is no longer about transactional booking of airtickets, hotel rooms and sight‐ seeing. Modern day travelers seek and often demand experiences that resonate with them at a deeply emotional level and thus prefer authentic and personalized experiences.
Being able to provide such individualised experience to them is only half the battle won. The ultimate deal is to be able to provide these handcrafted experiences in a scalable manner. Food‐tech alone has morphed customer behaviour to start expecting the food of choice delivered anytime and any where. Travel and Hospitality brands looking to meet new service expectations must look for ways of hastening the delivery of services such as dynamic itinerary, streamlined purchase process and allowing instant access to assistance throughout. Using technology to scale seamless experiences is fast becoming a feature of not just isolated travel companies but entire cities. Customers today prefer value added services for seamless experiences that are an extension of their daily rituals, taking into account their preferences. Consumers expect “complete” services for their travel need and not parts, an idea that is driving the industry towards singularity. This can propel hotel brands to forge dynamic partnerships to drive broader services. By leveraging data‐ driven insights and analytics to gain a better understanding of guest behaviour, and employing new digital technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), beacons, chatbots and internet of things (IoT) the hotel companies can deliver on customers' expectations for guest centricity and personalization.
Disruption comes in many sizes. It can make a huge splash, like self‐driving cars, or it can make ripples in the form of chatbot service agents and robotic room service delivery. But all new ideas should have the common goal of making travelers' experiences easier and more enjoyable in order to ultimately drive loyalty and repeat patronage behaviours. For the hospitality and tourism industry to stay competitive, it will have to continue to look at options to stay operationally efficient and define services to monetise fixed assets of their brands more effectively. This can be done by re‐architecting the physical spaces of their operational units to blend in the hospitality, retail and commercial use in the same venue. This trend will drive the traditional players in the hospitality and tourism industry to reimagine their businesses. The future of hospitality and tourism industry will demand businesses to shift hard to create value for customers through unique value added products and services that create seamless experiences. Speed & accuracy will be the universal currency of business. Businesses will need to rapidly innovate to stay competitive in an age where the landscape will continue to evolve. This will need embrace a strong culture and willingness to make necessary investments and structural changes to their operating model.