leveraging technology trends
The hospitality industry makes up a range of different industries, primarily accommodations and food service businesses. And because there are so many different hospitality businesses out there, it’s important to always find ways to optimize your hospitality management.
Hospitality administration can be easily streamlined by technology. Hospitality technology and software platforms are playing a larger role in business operations for several types of hospitality businesses.
Table of contents
1. What role does technology play in hospitality management?
2. Manage a restaurant with food service technology
2.1. Online ordering
2.2. Inventory management
2.3. Reservation and loyalty programs
2.4. Employee management
3.1. Easy guest booking
3.2. Property management
3.3. Service automation
3.4. Green technology
What role does technology play in hospitality management?
The hospitality industry has seen an increase in the use of technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing, which make the tasks of hospitality management and customer service easier. Applying these technologies can save your business valuable time on mundane tasks like hospitality administration.
Digitalization is used in everything from processing customer orders to optimizing employee schedules, ensuring a safe workplace, enabling self-service, and administration tasks. Implementing hospitality technology successfully in your business means:
- Understanding customer behavior: Most software used in the hospitality industry depends on having a wealth of customer data to draw from
- Clarifying your strategy: When adopting a new technology, make sure you have a concrete plan for applying it
- Strong change management: You need to involve your employees in the implementation of new technology
- Technical capacity: Be sure whatever hospitality technology you are using is easy to understand and train your employees so they can use it
Every hospitality business needs to keep these criteria in mind when considering a new piece of software or equipment. Hospitality management is developing particularly well in the restaurant and hotel industries.
Manage a restaurant with food service technology
Technology is invaluable when you’re trying to manage a restaurant. Whether it’s making communication with customers easier or helping your kitchen run smoothly, hospitality technology is an essential part of restaurant operations.
Online ordering
During the pandemic, online orders from restaurants increased enormously, and the trend is here to stay. In fact, online ordering accounts for 40% of restaurant sales around the globe; so it’s a crucial part of food service management.
Your online ordering platform – either a website or, if possible, a mobile app – should have a simple interface that’s easy for your customers to understand, and should allow people to pay with a variety of payment options. That way, you can cater to the largest amount of consumers possible.
Inventory management
A major challenge for every restaurant is inventory management. Maintaining a regular stock so you can always serve customers while minimizing food waste is a fine line to walk. Inventory management software that calculates your needs using customer order data, such as materials requirement planning, can help you plan more efficiently.
Reservation and loyalty programs
Since the internet is a large part of how consumers find and schedule their dining experiences, offering online reservations are invaluable when you manage a restaurant. Like your online orders page, make reserving a table as intuitive as possible.
Another benefit of online reservations is that you can combine them with a customer loyalty program, which further incentivizes customers to return. By handling everything online, you can store customer data for future use.
Employee management
There are many types of employees who work in restaurants, from part-time to full-time to seasonal workers, and more. They all have different requirements when is comes to hospitality administration, payroll, and shift tracking. Robust employee management software that lets you create different user profiles makes tracking all these different needs easier.
Hotel management software
There are many things involved in hotel management. Hotels are one of the largest parts of the tourism and hospitality industry and they are an essential part of travelers’ experiences. By streamlining bookings, cleaning, employee schedule, and more, hospitality technology facilitates hotel management.
Easy guest booking
Just like with food service management, online booking is everywhere in hotel management. Guests search and decide on vacation destinations from their computers or smartphones, and appreciate the convenience of being able to book accommodations remotely.
To be successful in hospitality management, set up a booking system where customers can select their travel dates, select specific rooms, and include any special requests.
Property management
Property management software includes several essential aspects of hospitality administration, like room cleaning, staff scheduling, check-ins, and billing. The software is centralized, which makes communication between hotel staff easier.
Centralized information means that hotel staff can switch shifts and maintain consistency, instead of having to communicate in-person. Property management systems simplify hotel operations, which is why a quarter of U.S. hotels have already implemented them.
Service automation
A key way that hotels are innovating and serving their guests is by automating services. Advancements in AI mean that hotels can utilize chatbots to answer customer questions or arrange room service. That way, your staff can focus on tasks AI can’t do.
Green technology
Hotel guests consider sustainability when making travel choices – in fact, finding a sustainable accommodation is the greatest challenge many travelers face. That means a key way for you to differentiate yourself within the hospitality industry is to adopt green technology in your hotel.
You can practice sustainable hotel management by switching to low-flow showerheads, offering charging stations for electric vehicles, and using naturally-derived cleaning products instead of chemically-based ones. Automating your processes also helps you go paperless in your hotel, which further reduces your carbon footprint.
Improving your hospitality management processes is easier with a checklist app like Lumiform, which helps you measure the quality of your changes. You can create checklists to go along with procedures, making sure your employees are doing everything correctly and that your premises are well-maintained. These checklists cover everything from cleanliness standards to inventory management to customer feedback.
