Technology
easier to pull off. The message will thus evolve to something like: “I see that you are travelling because you are trying to change something in your life. We can be part of that journey by being the place where you sleep, where you look after your health and fitness, or by becoming your place of work while you explore how your career can move forwards”.
One of the brands already doing this successfully is Equinox, which began in fitness but has now opened what it calls “the fittest hotel on Earth” in New York’s Hudson Yards. It promises a stay there will help you on your personal journey of being healthier, more focused and higher performing. It turns the transformation economy from theory to real-world practice.
Can the hotel ‘brand explosion’ last? While the other trends I have highlighted can primarily be seen as opportunities rather than risks, this final one is more open to debate. It concerns the fragmentation of the hotel sector into a plethora of sub-segments, each with their own stable of competing brands. Choice is generally a good thing for a consumer, but has this process gone too far in the hotel business? Are customers becoming confused rather than inspired when faced with so many brands? Will they trust once independent brands which are now part of a multinational group to deliver authentic experiences?
VingCard Novel
I personally think that such concerns are valid, and in time we may see some rationalisation as the larger operators focus on one brand in lifestyle, one in boutique, for example.
These are just a few hospitality trends that I have chosen to highlight. There are plenty more items on the hospitality leader’s strategic agenda, some of which – such as social responsibility – may ultimately prove more impactful than those mentioned above. The red thread that runs through most, if not all of them, is the hotel industry’s ongoing battle to attract and retain staff. Much of what I have talked about is centred on delivering transformational, ultra- personalised experiences to guests. But how can a hotel do this successfully if its front line workforce is changing every six months? As an industry, we need to address the way we engage and excite young people to work in hospitality; deploy technology to give us more freedom to invest in people and employ roles that captivate both the staff member and their guests; and reclaim that notion of personalised, human-to-human interactions that Airbnb used to such great effect when it first emerged as a challenger to the traditional hotel business. If the hotel industry can pull this off, it will deliver exceptional growth because this is the way that guest demand is going. ●
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learn more:
assaabloyglobalsolutions.com/novel 30 Hotel Management International /
www.hmi-online.com
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