The hospitality industry is an enormous and diverse sector, and technology is having a massive impact on all businesses in the industry.
Technology is changing how we discover places to visit and how we interact with our favourite hotels and restaurants. But even better, technology is also impacting how businesses and organisations in this sector operate.
From streamlining processes and increasing output to reducing costs while maximising profits, there are many ways technology can help to drive revenue in the hospitality industry.
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Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways that technology is penetrating and influencing the hospitality industry:
Better Insights through Connected Data
In order to make better decisions, hospitality businesses need data. But in the past, collecting and connecting this data has been a challenge.
With the rise of technology, however, businesses in the hospitality industry are now able to collect and connect data like never before.
As an example, powerful software such as NetSuite delivers modern and lightweight software for franchisors, restauranteurs and hoteliers to drive revenue and reduce costs. This comes with a single scalable foundation that hospitality organisations can use to connect data sources and effectively manage their business.
With a solid foundation of back-end financials and inventory in a unified cloud platform, companies in this sector can elevate their business by adding the functionality required to meet their changing business needs including point-of-sale integration, commissary, franchise management, and more.
Cost Reduction through Efficient Resource Utilisation
Keeping costs low is a big deal for your hospitality business. Technology can help with this in a number of ways.
For one, it can help you to utilise your resources more efficiently and effectively
Modern technology allows managers to foresee resource availability across multiple categories and locations. By doing so, businesses can avoid the costly practice of overbooking guests or underbooking guestrooms or tables.
For instance, Expense@Work for SunSystems is one innovative technology designed to bring about dramatic results for your organisation by reducing costs, increasing employee productivity, and improving business performance.
The module is a uniquely powerful and comprehensive travel and expense recording, approval, tracking and management information solution which can be easily adapted to meet your organisation’s expense policies and rules.
Improved Customer Experience through Improved Data and Delivery Systems
Data in hospitality companies can often be disparate. Technology has the ability to solve this by bringing all of your data into one centralised location, allowing you to gain new insights that you weren’t able to get before.
This can be useful in many ways including understanding your customer’s journey, improving the accuracy of bookings, and managing your inventory.
It also helps improve your customer experience through faster processing and streamlined transactions.
So many companies are looking at their technology stack and finding ways they can become more efficient at managing information, finances, and people. They know that by doing so they will also manage their costs effectively in these areas.
By cutting out inefficiencies with technology stacks, teams will have more time to focus on driving revenue and improving the customer experience.
Automated Processes for More Productive Operations
Gone are the days when businesses had to rely on paper records and time-consuming manual processes. (Although we’ve come across many companies still using paper!)
With technology, organisations can now automate various tasks and processes that would traditionally be carried out by human employees.
When you aren’t spending time manually working through these reports and trying to gain insights from them, there’s more time to focus on other areas of your business such as RevPAR and guest satisfaction. This is the beauty of ERP for hospitality.
The result is an effective strategy for driving revenue across your business with less input required from staff members involved with resource-intensive tasks.
Improved Payment Management
New payment processing methods such as mobile wallets are having an impact on how people pay for goods and services.
The hotel industry is especially well-suited to take advantage of this trend — as more and more people choose to book their rooms online, they expect a seamless payment experience.
Even more, technology has the ability to keep an eye on internal costs and processes of hotel operations and continually improve upon them.
SunSystems is one good example. From managing payments and cash flow to managing the lifecycle of your hotel assets, Infor SunSystems (implemented by FinanSys) is built to help you optimise the way you use your human, physical, and financial resources to consistently deliver a superior experience to guests and keep your properties in top shape.
Whether you want to track and analyse your hotel financials, quickly generate financial reports, expand your operations, or optimise financial closing, SunSystems from FinanSys is able to do all that and more.
New Ways of Connecting with Customers
Businesses throughout the hospitality industry often have huge databases of customer information stored away. But how much of it is actually used?
Technology now allows businesses to tap into this resource and use it as a way of engaging with customers directly.
To illustrate, using NetSuite, you’d easily gain a better understanding of your hotel’s or restaurant’s guest behaviour through the guest service dashboard.
You’d also be able to manage, resolve and track guest inquiries and complaints with case management to improve guest satisfaction, and even build email marketing campaigns and track performance.
Conclusion
Technology is playing an increasingly important role in the hospitality industry.
From automating tasks and processes to giving hotels the tools to deliver satisfactory service and experience to guests, it’s clear that businesses that embrace technology will be well-positioned to drive revenue and improve their bottom line.
We hope you found this post helpful. If you have any questions or would like to learn more about how our technological solutions—including our financial management system and ERP software—can help your hospitality business, please contact us.
