SINGAPORE (Jan 15): At the 120-year-old École hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL), executive dean Inès Blal is aiming to train a generation of technology-ready hoteliers. “We try to instil in them customer-oriented service excellence,” Blal says. “It is just another challenge for us — to deliver competencies to our students so that they can face any new change in the environment. Those changes can be anything from robots to hotel substitutes like Airbnb.”
EHL’s comprehensive programme covers cooking, wines, housekeeping rosters and even foreign languages. The objective is to cover all the basic skills that any hotel manager would require. Dealing with technology is one of them. Robots that make beds and deliver food are opportunities that the hospitality industry should embrace rather than fear, Blal says.
“The challenge for students is: How do you integrate these new techniques and technologies to maintain a profitable business?” she explains. “My challenge, and the challenge of the graduates, is to make sure that the service experience and customer experience are maintained with that new parameter. The hotel industry has evolved since its creation. That’s why we focus on competencies rather than knowledge.”
The best hotel managers will be the ones who deploy new technologies to their advantage, Blal adds. “How do I use [robots] to be cost-efficient and still give guests a certain feeling? I think it is an opportunity for some brands to shine. If there is any change in the parameter, the one who finds the solution first will achieve [success]. And our role is to equip students with the tools to [do so].”
Seizing the opportunity
As the global economy proves itself to be on a steady growth track, the hospitality industry is coming alive. According to statistics from the Singapore Tourism Board (STB), the standard average occupancy rate for the first nine months of last year increased by 130 basis points to 86.1%. Revenue per available room was up 0.9% to $202.20.
OCBC Investment Research analyst Deborah Ong, in an industry update last year, says: “From our channel checks, there finally seems to be a slight pick-up in corporate demand, with more requests for proposals and corporate enquiries for function rooms and activities recorded.”
To grow, however, local hoteliers will have to increase their adoption of new technologies. The hospitality industry is often thought of as imbued with the human touch — from the porters who greet you at the lobby to the smiling employees at the front desk helping you check in and down to the housekeeping staff who smooth your sheets and fluff your pillows. But maintaining such manpower-intensive operations has become challenging amid Singapore’s labour crunch. So, the government is pushing companies towards automation and robotics.
In November 2016, the STB announced the Hotel Industry Transformation Map. An important element of the ITM is developing manpower-lean business models and innovating to develop new solutions. Among other things, the roadmap introduced a Hotel Innovation Challenge to crowdsource for solutions that will address key issues and take advantage of opportunities in the hospitality industry. To date, the challenge has yielded more than 15 awarded solutions in technology areas such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, robotics and facial recognition. Over 30 hotels have agreed to pilot these solutions.
STB is also working with hotels to develop measures that focus on innovation, productivity and talent. Hotel operator Far East Hospitality is the first to partner STB and is looking to transform its business model to cater to the challenges in the industry.
“We recognise the need and the complexities of transforming our business model and, as such, our collaboration with STB will cover both micro and macro innovation,” says Arthur Kiong, CEO of Far East Hospitality. “Micro innovation will involve shared services, centralisation, process improvements and automation, while macro innovation is more complex as it involves working with government agencies, industry partners and vendors to create a seamless destination experience for the visitors, attract local talents to the industry and build a Singaporean core to support future growth.”
Far East Hospitality will be piloting solutions such as central laundry services, interactive smart kiosks and luggage tracking. These solutions aim to reduce manpower reliance and provide guests with a better customer experience.
Managing customer preferences
Even as hotels race to implement technology, however, they have to figure out how best to do so while still living up to customer expectations. A JD Power Hotel Guest Satisfaction Survey in July 2017 found that only 4% of guests are using mobile apps to check in and only 1% of them use apps to check out. However, guests who did use the apps reported higher satisfaction rates.
“Technology enhances efficiency but cannot replace the personal touch, especially in hospitality. Our job requires a lot of interpersonal interaction and understanding human emotion,” says Ken Ng, Pacific Club Manager at Pan Pacific Orchard. “From our experience, the ability to read the customer is critical to delivering guest satisfaction, as some people want more attention while others prefer less face time.”
Ng thinks new technology is most effective if customers see it as adding value to their stays. “I can see how automating the routine or repetitive parts of our jobs can increase our effectiveness and empower us to provide the best service, be it getting our guests the best seats at a concert or an exclusive discount from a popular restaurant, or giving tips on navigating the local culture or business environment,” he says.
“It is up to us to make technology work for us by using it to free us up from menial tasks and to channel that into more meaningful work — and to upgrade the skills of our service personnel to perform more creative tasks and engage in more human interaction.” This could include better tracking and management of customer relationships to deliver an experience more tailored to a customer’s preference.
These new technologies also force hoteliers and employees to improve service quality, Ng adds. “I find it healthy to think of [robotics] as competition, because it challenges us to up the ante and to perform acts of service to our guests which are personalised to their needs.”
Stefano Borzillo, associate dean of the undergraduate programme at EHL, says the human touch continues to be important to the hospitality industry. “[It] still counts for a lot. You need the human touch for an added value of service,” he says. “While many other industries will ultimately be automated, there are certain moments in our lives when we want to see human beings. And hospitality, I think, is one of those moments you want to see real people. We are social creatures. At the end of the day, what keeps us alive and the system functioning is that people interact face to face. The challenge that we have here in forming young leaders in the hospitality industry is creating added value compared with the machines.”
Irresistible force
Michel Rochat, EHL’s CEO, expects to see greater segmentation in the hospitality market over time. “Today, you have some customers requesting [that everything be done] online. The moment they enter the hotel, they don’t want to see anybody. When they leave, they want to see nobody. Everything has to be done automatically. But you have other customers who want to share something with the hotelier or the staff,” he says.
These varying demands create both a challenge and an opportunity. “The most difficult [thing] for the hotelier is that in the past, you had, in a way, one kind of customer. Everybody entering the hotel — from leisure to business and families — the answer was the same from each group. Now, each group has a specific demand. And the challenge to the hotelier is to address each specific demand. Therefore, you’ll see much more segmentation rather than evolution,” Rochat adds.
The opportunity is for hotels to better differentiate themselves with the right type of customisation. This would include blended systems with the options for both digital and human interactions, and systems that are dedicated to specific markets and situations. “That is the market of tomorrow. If you look at any market of tomorrow, there’s going to be more segmentation — from transportation to even education,” he says.
As hoteliers fend off disruption, Rochat says, it is important to also think about how they can disrupt themselves. “All these hotel chains have a huge amount of data about customers. But till today, nobody can [connect] the data in order to market different services,” he says. “Now, we are investing a lot in research into these topics in order for hoteliers to appropriate the market and generate their own disruption. That’s mainly the challenge of tomorrow, to generate our own disruption.”
This article appeared in Issue 813 (Jan 15) of The Edge Singapore.
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