Technology landscape of Hospitality – emerging trends and best practices

1. Technology Landscape of Hospitality Emerging Trends and Best Practices

2. Introduction: Customer experience is all set to become the key brand differentiator, leaving product and price behind. Industries worldwide are investing in the latest technologies that will enable them to garner the highest customer satisfaction ratio. Hospitality industry, being a purely customer-facing domain, should take the lead here.  Gartner predicts that by 2020, more than 40% of all data analytic projects will relate to an aspect of customer experience. By undertaking digital transformation, companies are modifying their operational and value delivery processes. About 31% of the companies have already invested in technology such as Artificial Intelligence to stay ahead in the competition.  Edmund Tan, Director of Quality Assurance and Support, recently spoke on our podcast along with Kalyan Rao Konda, President at Cigniti and Head of the North America East business unit. The two eminent speakers talked about the emerging trends and best practices for implementing quality assurance within the hospitality domain. This blog is an excerpt from their insightful discussion.

3. How does the technology landscape dovetail within the hospitality domain? Given the growing prominence of customer experience for brands, there are several emerging trends that technology is defining for the hospitality domain:  On-board connectivity: Ed believes that on-board connectivity, especially for airlines, will open abundant opportunities in the retail and commercial space. At present, there are more than 8000 commercial aircrafts worldwide that provide in-flight connectivity. The on-board connectivity market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.8% in the next seven years, reaching an estimate value of $24.44 Billion.  Internet of Things (IoT): The IoT devices record everything and thus helps businesses to connect different units and product lines. With IoT transferring and transitioning data across decision-makers, hospitality industry is able to take calculated, data-based decisions for their customer service strategy.  Big Data: Although Ed notes that big data is not a new trend but an ongoing trend, he emphasizes on the emergence of the next level of big data from a predictive analysis standpoint. With the help of predictive analytics, hospitality sector can trace the past behavior of their clients and offer personalized services based on the obtained insights.  Augmented and Virtual Reality: Hospitality companies are leveraging the AR and VR technologies to improve engagement with their customers. As Ed says, combining virtual and augmented reality allows the customers to either experience a specific service or offering before they approach it or relay some critical information through them. AR and VR services help hospitality sector to meet its goal of deliver better and more satisfying service experience to the customers.

4. How quality engineering efforts can enable a strategic and results–oriented approach Ed points out that all customers look for three main factors in any product, service, or technology – accuracy, reliability, and security. Exercising a quality engineering strategy enables an early and often feedback loop by bringing in the mindset of end users.   As the emerging technologies are still fairly new, there is a lot of apprehension and concerns surrounding them related to security, reliability, and data. A quality assurance or quality engineering team solidifies the foundation of an application through testing, empowering businesses to maintain the desired levels of quality standard. QE seeks to measure and repeat these tests to perform a series of qualitative and quantitative analysis of the process.  Read Full Blog at: https://www.cigniti.com/blog/hospitality-qa-qe-trends-best-practices/