IoT in hospitality is not seen just as a supporting technology any more. It is becoming mainstream in enhancing hotel businesses by inculcating safety and improving overall business operations.

Major pillars for any hospitality business are customer experience, operational efficiency, and health and safety. Health and safety is emerging as the #1 trend as people adjust to life with the Coronavirus and hotels consider health of their customers the utmost priority. During this pandemic, hotels have started to reimagine the processes and are adopting new technologies to provide a safer environment to their guests.

Some of the IoT and analytics-based safety initiatives include

• Health declaration
• Online/kiosk based check-ins
• Hotel app/ band based social distancing
• Staff and customer thermal scanning
• Occupancy-based sanitization scheduling
• Occupancy-based traffic control in common areas and hotel restaurant
• Reporting/incident management
• Touchless payments

The IoT advantage in the hospitality industry

Apart from health and safety, IoT is also changing the way products and services deliver value and redefining the guest experience by providing self-check-ins, personalized recommendations, and solving real-time queries in no time.

IoT is enabling reduction in operational expenses and improvement in staff efficiency by providing smarter facilities, which includes smart bin monitoring, smart parking, and smart restrooms and utilities management. It even enables tracking of worker staff efficiency.

Integrated energy management, which includes smart lighting, intelligent HVAC controls, and smart equipment with health monitoring and predictive maintenance capabilities along with usage analytics and insights, helps tackle the issue of huge energy consumption.

Reimagining customer experience with IoT

Besides providing customer experience through faster reservations, and quicker check-in-check-outs, personalized services and better room experience are equally important.

Customer experience is being enhanced through IoT  by enabling multiple use cases such as

• Pre check-in: Provide facial ID, upload soft copy of documents, confirm details, or contactless kiosks for self-check-in by eliminating queues
• Way finding: Using mobile app, navigate the way around the hotel
• Room service enhancements: Knowing the guest’s likes, the room service could suggest and serve his/her favourite meals
• Voice and chat bot enabled reservations for restaurants, spa, etc.
• VR-based virtual tours of amenities and nearby properties
• Proactive maintenance of room equipment and systems
• On demand housekeeping services

Figure 1: Customer journey inside a smart hotel

With the tremendous benefits of IoT, big hotels are lowering their labor costs while redefining guest satisfaction in an entirely new way. Making a guest feel safe and special is the biggest achievement in the hospitality sector.

Interested in knowing more about how IoT can help transform your business to meet the new requirements in the new normal? Want to know how we can help empower you for a resilient future?

Connect with our IoT experts

Tanuj Chawla

Pre Sales Consultant and SME - IoT, Cloud & Infrastructure Services, Wipro

Tanuj plays a key role in consulting for IoT in the US and APAC Geos. He has expertise across multiple industries including Retail, and Oil & Gas. You can reach Tanuj at tanuj.chawla1@wipro.com