21 Jun Abigail Lorden is editor-in-chief f
Abigail Lorden is editor-in-chief for Hospitality Technology magazine which reports on the latest trends and headlines related to technology issues and applications in the hospitality industry.
Q: Please share a brief overview of your background in terms of your education, work experience, and current role and responsibilities in working with hospitality information technology.
A: As editor in chief of Hospitality Technology, I regularly monitor and report on industry news and trends that are relevant to hotel and restaurant technology professionals. I call upon industry executives to share their insights, and I analyze the overall travel and consumer landscape for information that is relevant to my audience. In my role, I provide strategic direction for all of the publication’s content, the Web site, and several industry educational events. I have been with the publication for more than five years, and before that, I covered travel industry trends for AAA (American Automobile Association). I hold a BA in Communication from Rutgers University.
Q: Given the state of the economy, it is no longer business as usual. How is information technology reshaping the hospitality business landscape and the service delivery process?
A: Economic conditions have forced many hospitality companies to cut budgets, reduce staff, overhaul their menus, and even close locations. When used in the right ways, information technology has the potential to help organizations use their resources for the greatest operational efficiency, which can offset the potential negative impact of a reduction in internal resources. In addition, IT can help hospitality companies better respond to guests’ needs. This is really critical today since consumers are so price and value conscious and willing to shop around to find deals.
Q: What roles should information technology play in the hospitality industry? What are the critical success factors, and how can the value derived from information technology be effectively measured?
A: In short, information technology should be used to create better guest experiences, in ways that are economically sound for the hospitality operator. For example, IT should be used to add efficiency, accuracy, and personalization to the guest experience; it should also be used to create meaningful, lasting experiences for guests, allowing them to take as much control over their interactions as they desire, without detracting from the level of personal touch that they seek. Critical to success are guests’ ability to use any guest-facing technologies with relative ease and minimal instruction. In addition, the technology must provide a return on investment (ROI) to the hospitality operator. This return can be “hard” (measured in dollars and cents) or “soft” (measured through improvements in the guest experience, customer feedback, customer loyalty, employee retention, etc.).
Q: How can hospitality organizations use information technology to create sustainable competitive advantage and drive business value?
A: Specific tools such as business intelligence (BI) and inventory management are great examples of areas in which information technology can provide competitive advantage. For example, if a restaurant operator can predict the number of employees it will need for a particular dinner shift and accurately monitor its product inventory to ensure it will have enough fresh salmon on hand for that shift, that restaurant will be able to better serve its guests without overspending on labor or having to inform customers that the restaurant has run out of salmon. This kind of information comes from having fully integrated systems that monitor sales, on-hand inventory, delivery lag times for food inventory, and much more. Integrated business intelligence across all areas of the operation has tremendous value for the restaurant.
Q: Where should hospitality business leaders look for new ideas and innovations?
A: New ideas are born every day—in board rooms, in test labs, in hotel guest rooms, in a technology manufacturer’s research facility, or scribbled on the back of a napkin during a business lunch. (I’ve seen that one firsthand!) To learn about these innovations, business leaders should attend industry educational and networking events, stay active in industry associations, subscribe to industry trade magazines, network with their peers online via social media channels, and communicate with their technology partners.
Q: In looking over the next three to five years, what do you see as the top industry trends and strategic priorities for hospitality companies?
A: I predict there will be greater integration of guests’ personal mobile telephones into their dining and lodging experiences—in fact, so much so that these devices will become an integral part of hotel and restaurant operations. Some examples of applications include room check-in devices, shopping and reservations/purchasing tools, location-based services, marketing platforms, and much more. I also see that guests will continue to want control over how they do business with hotels and restaurants; that is, when, where, and how they interact with hospitality providers—all on their own terms and increasingly through their smart phones. This will lead to ongoing involvement in social networking channels on a highly localized level and to even yet unexplored ways of inputting preferences and making purchases. For example, with location-based services enabled on a guest’s smart phone and opt-in preferences set with frequently used hospitality providers, a guest can automatically receive relevant information and offers after arriving in a certain city, say a text message from a favorite restaurant company with directions to its nearest location plus special offers or discount coupons. A third, yet continuous trend is that guests will be more inclined to patronize hotels and restaurants that can provide personalized services and experiences based upon their preferences and past purchase history. Hospitality is all about the experience; it is not simply a transaction.
Q: Whom do you consider to be on the forefront of these trends (i.e., the players to watch) and why?
A: In general, the lodging industry has been able to build more lasting and personalized relationships with guests than the foodservice industry due to the longer periods of time that guests stay at a hotel versus at a restaurant; however, both have much room for improvement and growth. On the lodging side, several hotel brands tend to be on the cutting edge of guest-facing technology. Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Fairmont Hotels and Resorts, and MGM Resorts International (formerly MGM MIRAGE) represent a few innovators. On the foodservice side, companies such as Pizza Hut and Chipotle have done very well in designing useful and dynamic applications for guests’ iPhones and iTouch devices.
Q: What do you consider to be the greatest challenges or barriers to information technology adoption in the hospitality industry?
A: In the current climate and for the next twelve to eighteen months, budget constraints will continue to pose a challenge to technology adoption in the hospitality industry. Looking longer term, limitations with the technology itself and integration between systems will be major challenges. Hospitality operators run vast numbers of systems (e.g., POS, CRM, inventory, payment processing, back office, labor.) from disparate vendors within their operations. These different systems don’t currently integrate at the level necessary for hospitality operators to have one guest record containing all information of the relevant guest information. In addition, on the lodging side, consumers are installing high-tech multimedia systems in their homes with access to things like high-definition content, digital records, streaming content from the Internet, and vast audio libraries. It is proving challenging for hotel operators to keep up with the pace of technology adoption in their guest rooms that consumers have in their homes.
Q: What parting words of advice can you share with current and aspiring hospitality business professionals?
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