While the hotel sector does not have a universally recognized founding date, its history spans thousands of years and countries. Although our modern-day form of hospitality differs from that of thousands of years ago, it nevertheless adheres to the same basic principle: to give services to visitors. And nowadays, customers do more than just stop by hospitality establishments. Many hospitality enterprises are now considered attractions in their own right!
Hospitality may be defined in a variety of ways, but it essentially boils down to the act of making someone feel welcome, generally via amusement and comfort. So, what exactly is the hospitality business? It encompasses a wide range of companies, including hotels, motels, resorts, restaurants, amusement parks, and much more.
Another method to learn more about hospitality is to study The Big Four: food and beverage, travel and tourism, hotel, and recreation. Restaurants, bars, and lounges all fall under the food and beverage category. Airlines and travel agencies are included in the category of travel and tourism. Hotels and AirBnBs are both options for lodging. Golfing, fishing, and tennis are examples of recreational activities.
All of these sectors are linked by a desire to offer a pleasurable experience for everyone involved. The environment is friendly and pleasant, the facilities occasionally provide useful services like showers or gratis valet parking, and their revenue is based on whether or not people enjoy themselves.
The hotel industry’s purpose is to offer clients with a pleasant experience. Whether it’s enjoying a delicious dinner, unwinding in a magnificent spa, or getting a good night’s sleep away from home, ensuring sure each visitor is well taken care of is critical.
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Trends in the Hospitality Industry
The most successful hospitality businesses are always developing, but in order to do so, you must stay on top of the current hospitality trends. Everything from marketing efforts and hospitality practices to adopting cutting-edge technologies and responding to global events is covered.
Keeping up with the current trends in marketing will offer you the best opportunity of reaching your target demographic and expressing your message. Embracing new technology, on the other hand, may help a company become more efficient, as well as improve the entire client experience in some circumstances.
Safety & Hygiene
As the globe adjusts to the virus and works to restrict its spread, there are a number of hospitality themes that may be roughly defined as being connected to safety and cleanliness. These have become more relevant with the introduction of COVID. These themes must be a top focus for hotels, restaurants, bars, and cafés.
Provision of hand gel, greater cleaning of places where consumers will be, regulations requiring the use of masks or other protective equipment, and ensuring that social distance standards are followed are all possible measures. Any particular regulations must be made known ahead of time and must be followed in order for individuals to feel secure.
Furthermore, your hospitality marketing efforts should emphasize the precautions you are doing in terms of safety and hygiene. Explaining these processes might mean the difference between getting clients to book and them looking elsewhere.
Contactless Payments
Many of the most popular hospitality trends revolve around minimizing friction, with contactless payments being one of the most prominent examples. Customers save time by not having to go through cash or enter their PIN when contactless payments are accepted. The introduction of Apple Pay and Google Pay has also eliminated the need to carry a wallet.
The coronavirus epidemic has raised demand for contactless payments, in addition to minimizing friction and improving the consumer experience. Many consumers and employees dislike dealing with cash, therefore offering contactless payment options may be considered as a need rather than a luxury by many.
Voice Search & Voice Control
Clients searching for and booking hotels and restaurants are increasingly using voice search, so you must adapt to this shift in behavior and make a concerted effort to acquire these customers. This includes, among other things, clearly arranging your website content so that it appears in voice search results.
Voice control may also be utilized to control electronics in hotel rooms, which improves the visitor experience. Smart speakers, for example, can answer visitors’ queries and respond to voice commands to turn on lights and other gadgets in the room. This can also help to decrease the number of surfaces that guests come into contact with.
Robots in Hotel & Restaurant Settings
Robotics is an excellent example of this being carried further. Automation is high on the list of hospitality trends to be aware of. Robots can be used by hotels, restaurants, and other similar organizations to greet clients and deliver information, as well as play an important part in security operations.
Robots have been employed to provide room service as well as clean and do other housekeeping tasks at hotels. Meanwhile, restaurants may be able to deploy robots to do some tasks related to food service. This is especially important when dealing with restaurant patrons who are attempting to avoid as much intimate contact as possible.
Chatbots
Chatbots are another big customer service trend in the hotel industry, and they may be especially effective for providing quick answers to concerns when human personnel is absent. This can lead to first-contact resolutions in many circumstances, but the chatbot can also gather information and send it on to a human representative if necessary.
Customers will have more inquiries about the coronavirus, and there will be limits in places like hotels and restaurants, so those in the hospitality business need to be prepared. Chatbots will be able to answer the most basic inquiries in this field in a matter of seconds, reducing stress levels for everyone involved.
Virtual Reality Tours
Virtual reality is one of the most intriguing hospitality technology innovations, allowing potential hotel guests or restaurant customers to virtually experience their surroundings from the comfort of their own home. This can be critical in getting these folks to commit to a visit from the planning stage.
Some clients may benefit from virtual tours or 360-degree films to better comprehend the amenities provided. Offering this service provides you a distinct advantage over competitors who have yet to capitalize on this specific hospitality trend, and because current VR tours are web-based, they should be available on a variety of devices, even if you don’t have a VR headset.
Local Experience
The need for visitors or travelers to have local experiences is another issue that many in the hospitality business are grappling with. Many individuals don’t only desire to live a life that is identical to their own but in a different place. Instead, they want to immerse themselves in the culture of the place they are visiting.
In order to meet these needs, businesses in the hotel sector are reacting. Local items may be available in hotels, but other choices such as Airbnb and farmhouse lodging can give a more authentic visitor experience. Furthermore, travel agencies and tour operators can assist visitors in participating in local events.
Healthy and Organic Food & Drinks
Fast-food restaurants and bars that served sugary alcoholic beverages used to make up a sizable portion of the hospitality business. However, there has been a societal shift, with people being more conscious of what they put in their bodies, leading to a rise in healthy food and beverage trends.
This has resulted in restaurants revamping their menus to include gluten-free, dairy-free, low-fat, vegetarian, vegan, and organic alternatives. The demand for healthy food and beverages, on the other hand, has spread to hotels, catering services, and even vacations, with healthier room service alternatives and healthier drinks offered behind bars.
Sustainability
Customers are becoming increasingly concerned about environmental concerns and want to know that the companies they do business with are ethical. As a result, one of the most visible hospitality trends in recent years has been sustainability, with an increasing number of hospitality organizations touting their eco-friendliness.
Restaurants that promote their vegetarian and vegan alternatives, as well as hotels that employ smart light bulbs and smart heating to conserve energy, are examples of this. There are also considerations to be made in the hospitality industry regarding adopting more sustainable materials for items like towels and bedsheets.
Personalization
Personalization is a big trend in virtually all businesses, and the hotel industry is no exception. The emergence of big data is mostly to blame. Meanwhile, an increasing proportion of hotel visitors prefer to be addressed as persons rather than as numbers.
Personalization may be used in a number of different ways. Returning guests at hotels, for example, can be automatically given with comparable amenities as they were the previous time they stayed, as well as being personally greeted by a member of staff upon arrival, thanks to GPS technology and booking data. Hotel guests may also be able to utilize their own devices and accounts on entertainment platforms, thanks to the rise of smart gadgets.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence serves a variety of purposes in the hotel business, the most important of which is to improve customer experience. AI-powered chatbots are one example of this, which may be used for online consumer interactions to eliminate long wait times and provide quick, intelligent replies to inquiries.
Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, has other applications. Some hotels, for example, have included AI and voice-controlled customer service or tourist information centers. Meanwhile, AI may be used to filter through data, make automated process improvements, and so on.
Popular Job Designations for the Hospitality Industry
The most in-demand Hospitality jobs include:
Concierge
Customers engage directly with a concierge, who provides them with a variety of services. They may reply to consumer requests or predict what they may require. These services might include everything from babysitting to purchasing tickets to a performance to recommending a restaurant.
Hotel General Manager
A hotel general manager, often known as a hotel manager, is responsible for ensuring the successful operation of a hotel (or inn, lodge, or other venue providing sleeping accommodations). Interacting with guests, managing personnel, managing the property’s finances, and much more are all part of this job.
Housekeeper
Housekeepers are in charge of maintaining a high level of cleanliness in a hotel or other hospitality establishment. They clean both individual hotel rooms and public places. Housekeepers in the hospitality business clean toilets, make beds, and store linens, among other things.
Waiter/Waitress
Restaurants, bars, hotels, casinos, and other food-service facilities employ waiters and waitresses. They contact with customers directly, taking orders, providing food and beverages, and collecting money.
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