The hotel has an investment but no return? how to get your hotel to solve IT problem

Original: Li Sheng

Information technology is gaining more and more attention

For decades, information technology has flourished

I see that we have moved from era of computer Internet to era of mobile Internet and Internet of Things and are rapidly moving towards era of Internet of Everything

Formed a powerful force for change

Past

The hotel improves operational efficiency by automating manual operations, improves management capabilities through process changes, and implements electronic distribution via a global network

Now

In Age of Mobile Internet and Internet of Things

The hotel uses "SoLoMo technology (SocialLocalMobile) and Smart Sensor technology"

Get closer to your customers, listen to their voices, share cloud-based management best practices, and improve overall industry management

Using Big Data to Make Better Decisions and Rapidly Grow Your Business

More and more hotels are moving from labor-intensive to technological and smart

I'm making a module.

Example:

future

In era of Internet of Everything and AI, with AI, machine learning, smart objects, digital twins, immersive experiences, mixed reality, conversational platforms, edge computing

One more

If more new technologies emerge, such as blockchain, hotel management will continue to undergo disruptive changes

On such a large background

The value of information technology is recognized and appreciated by all

The positioning of IT department of hotel group has also been changed from traditional systems management and maintenance to business-oriented, i.e. with Internet thinking and advanced and mature information technologies

Continue to promote innovative hotel business models, optimize management system and transform marketing channels

And

Slightly larger group of hotels

The person in charge of IT is no longer a middle manager, no longer called a CIO, but becomes an executive director

Called as CIO or VP and reports directly to CEO

Access to highest level of decision making in group. The information system is no longer a technical tool whose main goal is to increase efficiency

Become a strategic asset representing core competitiveness of group

Hospitality today

All hotel groups have invested heavily

Creating various systems such as WIFI with full coverage, mobile application

Self-service equipment, room management system, central booking system, centralized purchasing system, revenue management system, etc.

Any problems with apps

However, in this process, many people miss a key point, namely "return on investment"

Current hotel market

Many hotels don't care about status quo

Whether you need it or not, watch others change system and change it yourself

It is built for construction, but forgets about original intention of investing in informatization, which was "obtaining cost-effective results with appropriate investments"

For example

Some old-fashioned hotel groups started informatization early and their systems are outdated, but they can meet basic needs

However, in order to keep up with trend, decision makers showcase their internet-thinking and technological business management

Based on a lack of overall planning and systematic thinking, concept was rushed into bidding and heavily invested in launching new system

But

The launch of new system did not lead to any significant improvementmanagement, nor to a significant improvement in business

Because business model and operating conditions have not changed qualitatively, this is just a system with more complete functions

There is a partial performance improvement, but it also brings new problems such as unstable interfaces. Advantages and disadvantages balance out, and huge investments are traded for almost zero effect, which makes these hotel groups very disastrous

Understood

Launching a new system

Consulting companies and IT vendors have made money, and hotel's IT department has also created 'performance', but not only has hotel management department not seen any obvious benefits

On contrary, due to IT cost-sharing, operational pressure becomes even greater. If you look at whole country, this seems to be a common occurrence, but it did not attract due attention from hotel managers

I watch market

A large number of investments in IT have not paid off, and one after another there have been cases of low-level overbuilding

What caused this result

I analyzed

There is nothing but following three reasons

One

CIO is incompetent, amateur pretends to be an expert

The most basic requirement for a competent CIO is to understand technology and business

Some CIOs

Not from hotel business, but transferred from a technical position in another industry or internet company

No bottom-to-top hospitality experience, and no deep understanding of hospitality business

But I am very confident and feel that hospitality business is not difficult and can be done quickly

In fact, this is not case. If you want to become an expert in hospitality business, then 10+ years of experience is clearly not enough

Besides, because I don't know business

This type of CIO is most likely to make following three mistakes

First

No distinction is made between importance and importance, too much focus on building infrastructure and core marketing tools, and not knowing how to build an end-to-end platform integrating marketing, service, and management

Second

Reinventing wheel is a waste of time and money to reinvent a mature solution that has been used in hospitality industry for several years

Third

An incomprehensible direction, unable to truly understand business needs of hotel, unable to grasp internal logic and laws of development of hotel industry, based on experience of other industries

Taking it for granted that some unreliable plans are being implemented, it's easy to make serious mistakes in direction.

There are even a few CIOs

I came from departmentand hotel business. I'm business savvy, but not tech savvy. I thought it was very simple, so I found a well-known international consulting company to find a solution

Let top three IT vendors in industry hit ground and you can succeed

So

These hypocrites were fooled by Party B, who chanted value slogans but really wanted to make money.

Unscrupulous CIOs have smashed piles of white money and built one tasteless system after another, which is frustrating

I think

One of most important responsibilities of a competent CIO is to pool resources of all parties

Perform overall layout and design of upper level "on your own", which should be up to sky and have a significant height and perspective

It is also necessary to stand on ground, which is quite feasible and practical

Instead of blindly listening to Party B movies or doing whatever you think

Unprofessional phenomenon

Building a system is like building blocks

There are many building blocks in market, and CIO must be able to choose them. You must understand that most powerful technology may not be suitable for you

Be able to adapt to current situation in enterprise, prescribe right medicines, formulate right plan and build right system

You need to be advanced, but not aggressive. So that you can distinguish which ones are real kung fu and which are embroidered legs

You need to know which parts of solution to buy, which parts to develop yourself, and how to combine them

Two

It's hard to find a good solution, we can only choose a higher one from shorter ones

Over past 10 years

Many hotels, especially high-star hotels, do not generate income

Insufficient IT budget has meant that products from local IT vendors cannot be sold at a good price

And this directly leads to a general lack of good R&D people in IT companies, especially great system architects and product managers

Exists

Imperfect research and development methodology

The study of hotel management mode and user experience cannot be systematic, thorough and future-oriented

As a result

Manufactured products are unsatisfactory, support for hotel business is not enough to effectively help hotel increase its income

The goal is to reduce costs and improve employee and guest satisfaction

The hotel is even less willing to spend a lot of money on purchase of system, thus forming a vicious circle

Danger

For business

Suppliers painted their products

Insert cloud computing, big data

All sorts of labels for new technologies, such aslike artificial intelligence, launched technological innovations in market one by one. It seems they really reached this height

Let CIOs choose one of these products

You can only choose high among low ones, no matter how you choose, there are many problems

Three

Promotion is not effective, system is not fully functional, no matter how good system is, if used incorrectly, it will not be able to win back its value

For example

The PMS has a "customer preference management" function

Preferences discovered by hotel staff can be synchronized with other hotels through system

When a guest stayed at another hotel, he was pleased to find that service of staff was very in line with his habits

Such a basic function

If all employees of all hotels in group use it according to same rules, quality of service will improve significantly

Customer satisfaction and repeat purchases

Unfortunately, this is not case. Some groups of hotels lack effective management of guest preferences.

Employees either forgot to enter customer preferences into system in time, or mistakenly replaced invalid preferences with real preferences

But no matter how simple and low-level system is

Combined with effective work rules, this can also play a role. We often mistakenly focus on building system

And lack of sufficient attention and investment in operation of system

For example, use of rule formulations, training, checks, etc., which significantly reduces effectiveness of system

Therefore

Some groups of budget hotels

Relatively good job promoting system

Although their system is simple, it is only suitable for basic applications, not advanced ones, but it can be effectively promoted

A certain effect has been achieved, indicating that system should be built in three parts and used in seven parts

What I said

Incompetent CIO, unskilled technical solutions

This does not replace promotion of application, as a result of which technology becomes more popular

Buy a shop to build a system, everyone boasts of experience, but it's a scene of false prosperity with no obvious payoff

Then

How to fix this situation?

The changes I see are in

About 2017, there were some changes in hotel market

I remember

Early 2017

Trip

Easy Living hotel strategy released

Introduced self-selection, express check-in, self-check-inand departure

Many new technologies such as intelligent customer management

Ctrip doesn't seem to be content with just bookings and marketing

Start by connecting smart devices, docking or replacing PMS

Join hotel's intercom to increase control over hotel's resources

What previously guests could only do on official website of hotel, in future it will be possible to do on Ctrip

Later

near future

Guests can do more than just search for hotels on Ctrip

When booking a room, you can also check in in advance, choose a room yourself and open door with your mobile phone immediately upon arrival at hotel

Set up air conditioning and lighting, just check bill on your mobile phone and pay before leaving

Leave comments and share information after check-out, you can enjoy all services before check-in, during check-in and after check-in

Later

Ali does this too

Referred to as largest hospitality technology provider in China

Collaboration with Shiji

On one hand, continue to control Internet resources, on other hand, plan future hotels

However

Influential hotel groups are also taking action

Start making "platform layout"

The night after that

Two new companies entered market

One is called "WeHotel" and other is called Mengguang

I noticed

The first one is actually Jinjiang Group

Product of strategic transformation "Internet+"

Platform company with $10 billion target market value

Last product is Huazhu Group's IT corporatization product

Technology company with a target market value of 30 billion yuan

I spent 17 days analyzing

Their goal is to platform existing IT systems

On one hand, to compete with OTA

On other hand, export your own management capabilities and core resources through platform to create new revenue opportunities

Follow trend

Knowledgeable hotel management software vendors are also pursuing a platform conversion of older products with great fanfare

For example

There is an old manufacturer "PMS" Hangzhou Green Cloud Technology

Upgraded his PMS to cloud and partnered with many technology companies to jointly build an end-to-end technology platform

How to play

It formed a whole new industry trend

OTA extends from marketing side to internal hotel services

Hotel group moves from in-house hotel services to marketing platform

Software service providers start with a management software platform

In end, everyoneand will lead to same goal, forming an integrated platform that combines "marketing + service + management"

Next

The resulting overarching platform will be

"Heaven and Earth"

Capture entire guest journey and entire hotel lifecycle

It contains "content, marketing, management, maintenance"

"complete and intelligent"

Industry platform

As they say

"day"

This is an online platform based on Internet technologies; so-called "earth" is a smart hotel based on Internet of things and intelligent hardware technologies

Actually

This platform

This will effectively solve problem of non-obvious IT ROI

First

The platform is co-created by one or more powerful companies in industry, all of whom understand hospitality business

It is convincing in terms of enterprise scale and business efficiency and is generally recognized in market

Therefore, R&D funding is not a problem, nor are management ideas and R&D methodology contained in system

Next

This platform is used by industry, not just hotels, so construction and operation costs can be effectively separated

Improve overall industry efficiency and wealth creation

Finally, platform is rented out on a daily basis and hotel investments can be made within its capacity, step by step

Sure

To achieve this goal, China's hotel industry still has a long way to go to establish one or more high-quality industry platforms

This will be a system project

>

There is a lot of time-consuming, time-consuming and costly work to be done

Example:

Set a single industry standard for coordinating and integrating multiple resources, summarizing and sorting best management practices, etc.

I thought about it. I'm also looking forward to it

If

One day in future, such a virtuous circle may form

The industry platform continues to leverage latest technology to drive innovative business models, improve operational efficiency and deliver significant value to hotels

So that hotel can allocate enough funds for IT

Support continued improvement of industry platform so that Chinese hotels continue to reach new heights with latest technology