After COVID-19...a glimpse of the future
Moving on after COVID-19, if the hospitality industry is to stay at the forefront of change it must envisage certain potential scenarios and anticipate the future before it happens. The industry, especially hotel and restaurant operators must imagine a tranche of possibilities such as the widespread use of touchless technology including electronic wallets that identify guests and paperless payment systems. Many hotels without staff, i.e. completely automated, or conversely, technologically sophisticated hotels is a foreseeable think of the near future.
Tomorrow’s consumers will have a clear idea of what they want and the price they are prepared to pay for it, they will not tolerate mis-steps or errors that jeopardize their safety and wellbeing. Tomorrow’s hospitality manager will be more business savvy and technologically enlightened. Competitive advantage no longer rests on “location, location, location” or on “knowledge, knowledge, and knowledge”. It is now “Location, knowledge and technology”.
With reduced levels of customer / staff face-to-face interactions owing to anti-COVID-19 safety measures, one needs to consider that:-
- First impressions on arrival has shifted from guest engagement to a ‘no touch-keep your distance’ paradigm. Kerb appeal though, will remain.
- Digital communication has leapt from ‘niche’ to ‘necessary’.
- Ease of getting to one’s room will erase several ‘touch-points’ during the hotel entry and check-in journey.
- Those hotels that continue to rely on ‘check-in’ done at the lobby / reception desk will have to face the challenge of making any protective barriers, such as partitions, less intimidating and visually pleasing with an appropriate design appeal.
- Space planning in lobby and public areas to reflect social distancing – friendly layout whilst retaining operational efficiencies.
- High rise buildings will provide vertical transportation, i.e. lifts which can be bio-metrically or app-activated. Even the mobile should enable touch free access, etc.
- Selection of eco friendly quality materials that reduce cleaning and maintenance expenses. Controlling cleaning and maintenance costs will be high priority.
- Emphasis on putting money into sections of the hotel that guest’s see and which conforms to the next normal, whilst ensuring that everything behind the wall is also in good order.
- Lobby retail and public spaces to message ‘safe and clean’.
- The quality guestroom is a given. It’s the ‘price of entry’. A well designed fresh room alone won’t win business. Pre- pandemic, guests spent about 70% of their time exploring the larger hotel property and the surrounding areas. Now that ratio will flip. Moving forward, guests will spend 70% of their time in their rooms in the hotel, and if there is nothing to do in the room, that is a problem.
- The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the push for ‘touchless’ fixtures in the bathrooms.
The above are some elements of the approaches our industry will embrace to reach a new level of development. Eventually, the pandemic will end and everything will return to normal – as in terms of what is termed ‘normal’. Post-COVID-19, the world and humanity will never be the same and a new generation of travelers and hoteliers will emerge.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex-hotelier
|
|
