Optimizing the service level and operational efficiency

Guest service levels and operational efficiency had for many centuries been the responsibility of the manual labour in hospitality industry.

Is the human workforce the only solution to provide guest centric services in the industry?

While many senior top hoteliers today had grown to their present positions through rank and file whilst learning the tricks of the trade along the way, they had always shy away from adopting technology to improve the services. The reason they distanced themselves from technology is largely attributed to the environment that they had grown accustomed to over the years which heavily on manual tasks.

However, many have come to realisation the importance of technology for the hotel to stay competitive and relevant for the world is the market which includes end-to-end computerization. The view of computerization as an added expenditure to the hotel operational costs is largely a forlorn fact where many had seen the online booking as a tool to allow the hotel to optimize the rate yield and plan it's resources.

Technology today is a business tool which no hotels can ignore and any accommodation provider who are deferring the application of technology, stands the risk of distancing themselves further away from the front runners.

Resources to manage effectively the technology investment had also been a determining factor as staff turnover rate is high in the industry thus causing  a severe issue of continuity to maintain the business tools deployed.

Training and re-training of staff is always a suspect when there is no proper handover procedures being defined as a Standard Operational Procedure (SOP) with the situation worsen if the business application is complex. Some hotels are worsed off and do not even have SOP.

While many of the hospitality technology applications available today are distributed by the foreign developers through local companies, the transfer pricing and mark-ups deny many hotels the ability to adopt technology at an affordable investment.

Hospitality technology products in the market today are fragmented and being placed together through interfacing (not integration) of standard APIs to overcome the shortcomings of the respective technology providers. The forming of technology provider alliance or workgroup is intended to overcome this inter-party communication greatly but could never steer away from interfacing.

There are developers whom had build on an integrated environment but had failed to understand the simplicity and practicality aspects of the solutions for day-to-day operational perspective.

In this context, the hospitality industry are thankful to Panasonic, a leading electronic giant worldwide in launching the Panasonic Hotel Suite (PHS) in collaboration with a local developer to provide hotels with simple, practical and affordable solutions.

Isn't it great if international travelers do not need to complete the Registration Forms/Cards but instead read the travelers details directly from the ePassport? Or from MyKad for Malaysians.

More information to come!