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Into the early 2000’s, it was all about making bookings easier, more transparent, and creating pricing consistency throughout multiple channels. While the implementation’s effects positive and negative for the industry reverberate to this day, one can arguably say that what we set out to do, was successfully achieved.

Since then, we’ve been looking mostly at failed initiatives, whether kiosk check-ins, or later mobile, guest service apps and even wearable initiatives, keyless entry and ‘pick your room’ projects, or even Roxxio or Alexa devices in the room. Still, what I am missing most, is an objective reflection on why these initiatives, to this day, didn’t produce the results we were hoping for. Don’t get me wrong here, I wholeheartedly agree there is a problem with the check-in process, but I am missing the lessons learned from these failures.

In software development, we talk about ‘failing and learning fast’ - I would argue that the culture of slow death initiatives in hospitality is precisely what prevents us from gaining invaluable insights. Failing fast is a development principle by which you focus on just one or two key assumptions you want to validate. You create your software to do only that and define or even build in feedback that allows you to gain the required insights. Yes, the initiative will fail, we know and expect that, and even want it to happen. Provided the limited functionality we built performed as expected and validated our initial assumption, the detailed observation and measurement allows us to make decisions on what the next most important assumption to test should be. A few rapid cycles like that, and you end up with slick, minimalistic software that does exactly what the vast majority of guests expect.

Instead, we tend to want to design a comprehensive, robust product based on our own convictions and biases – and in the process tend to forget that even the most experienced among us have formed their assumptions on an inherently limited experience.

So yes, I would agree that the check-in process is somewhat broken. However, instead of focusing on the means of performing the process, the delivery mechanism if you will (remember the ‘mobile first’ adage?) – I am arguing that we really need to learn to listen to the data we have, scrutinize it, question existing assumptions, and slowly work our way to truly understanding what a guest experience actually looks like and how to avoid launching another ‘shot in the dark’ initiative. Instead, we should tackle the improvement of the guest experience with focus and determination, one problem at a time.

For this, we need access to the data that forms the guest experience. That is where you, as the executive, need to rid yourself of your own biases, focus on top-line revenue, paired with an asset-light strategy.

I get it – from a shareholder value point of view it makes sense, and I won’t argue against it. However, that doesn’t mean you should take your eyes off the operation. After all, that is where the guest experience is produced. Industry standard KPI, the myriad of reporting and BI tools allowing you to measure these in real-time just won’t cut it. What you need is the hotelier’s ‘eyes and ears’ on the ground – or rather the digital equivalent of it. And once you truly understand what is wrong with the guest experience, then you can begin enhancing it.

If you happen to be at HITEC in Houston, come visit us at booth #418, and see ‘insights’, our operations BI at work. Insights includes a free tier because we don’t want you to spend money for software you’re not entirely sure you’ll need.

About the Author: Pierre Boettner (Founder and CEO, hospitalityPulse)
Pierre Boettner spent his entire life between hotel operations and hospitality technology. In 1993 he pioneered an industry-first forecasting and pricing tool for Mövenpick Hotels and was later involved in many system innovations, helping hoteliers improve their distribution capabilities. Recognizing the increasing difficulty of managing rooms operations, he and long-time colleague Denis Bajet founded hospitalityPulse in 2013. This company has dedicated itself to solving the most complex operations tasks still requiring daily human intervention. Pierre Boettner is a graduate of the esteemed Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne.

About hospitalityPulse
hospitalityPulse was designed by hotel technology and operations veterans tackling one of the most difficult problems hotels are facing: room assignment and its direct effect on guest satisfaction. Our patent-pending optimization algorithms, combined with an intuitive user interface enable hoteliers to assign the optimal room for every guest, every time, with consistent efficiency. Using the multi-dimensional FIRE engine, hoteliers can rely on providing the booker with the trueAvailability™ of room and feature combinations on the dates selected. roomPulse dynamically optimizes each room assignment in real time, all the time. Visit us at www.hospitalityPulse.com.