Is automation the end of personal service in hotels?
A few weeks ago, I had a lively discussion with a student during a lecture. I am an absolute fan of increasing the degree of automation in companies.
I believe that having nonsensical manual processes carried out by software in order to increase efficiency will be vital in the future. The student argued that this would be the end of the hotel industry.
The guest would only interact with the smartphone, everything would be automated, no more personal conversation, no more nice words. It couldn't get any worse! The digitalized apocalypse of the hotel-guest relationship.
My perspective here is actually completely different: The lack of motivated talent in the industry is something we deal with on a daily basis. Who wants to do dull and pointless tasks these days?
This is understandable when many hotels still have to print out pages of reports in the morning, tuck checklists under their arm and tick them off in the hotel, manually transfer information from system A to system B and so on.
Every normal person is already so annoyed that they no longer have any desire to offer the guest a friendly and individual service. In my opinion, this is exactly where the great potential of digitalization in hotels comes in - we need to relieve our employees of these pointless manual tasks!
We have to do our digital homework: link systems, standardize interfaces, banish paperwork. Only then will employees have the time they need to take care of the most valuable thing in a hotel: The guest. Guests appreciate it immensely when the interaction with the employee offers added value. Otherwise, they can do without it, as a recent study by Oracle shows: Almost half of the travelers surveyed stated that they prefer to stay in a hotel that enables contactless processes and offers self-check-in, for example. Nevertheless, these guests say that they are happy to receive personal words from staff. (See Oracle, p. 15, https://www.oracle.com/a/ocom/docs/industries/hospitality/hospitality-industry-trends-for-2025.pdf*).
The use of technology should not replace human interaction in the service sector. Rather, it should give the customer or guest the choice - would I rather have my room key on my smartphone without contact? Then I should be able to do that. Better to send a message than to call - let's go!
Customer centricity also applies here: the customer should be allowed to decide how they want to interact. This is certainly also a question of age groups and the specific target group of each hotel. In this respect, there is only one way to go here: deal with it and offer the solutions that your guests want. This will continue to be the basis for a stable and meaningful hotel-guest relationship in the future.
