While the Internet of Things continues to heat up both imaginations and balance sheets - to the tune of $3.2 billion for Nest - there's a new buzzword brewing in the contextual cauldron - the Internet of Caring.
This trend, brought to us in full by the prescient people at Trend Watching, has some extremely likely applications in the hospitality space.
Especially as hotel brands focus on health and wellness, new technologies that allow for greater care of the guest will likely quickly gain traction. The rise of cloud computing and cheaper processors also adds to this inevitability, as it becomes cheaper to create and integrate various IoT technologies in hospitality.
With Cisco projecting 50 billion objects by 2020, connected hotels will be the reality that guests come to expect. Cisco has handily created a live graphic to show how quickly the interconnected universe of (mostly) inanimate objects is growing:
If that number has got the mental juices flowing, here are a few specific tech concepts from the Internet of Caring that could impact the hotel guest experience (more here).
Fit desks make it harder to be sedentary
Work desks have been iterated extensively to include multiple connections and chargers for various devices that accompany business travelers.
A new innovation brought by the IoT/IoC could be a desk that ensures movement at the right times, and could interject posture recommendations and other activity monitoring in the hotel experience.
The Stir Kinetic Desk is the first one to market on this front, and it's expensive: $3,890 per, which will certainly limit this particular model's roll out in any hotel. However, a lower market model - or an iteration on the idea - might find traction at some of the more health-minded hospitality businesses, or perhaps in limited rollout to conference rooms.
The desk moves up and down at the touch of a button, and automatically adjusts throughout the day to remind the user to change position. This functionality could be directly integrated into all sorts of desks and workspaces in hospitality-focused businesses.
The desk could interface with other tech - such as FitBit - to ensure guests reach maximum impact for their work time throughout the day across work surfaces.
Smart locks
This one is already rapidly gaining traction, with startups like CheckMate steadily moving towards elimination of the front desk/key work flow.
Hardware also plays a role in this process, as updated smart locks mean that users could simply be allocated access to a particular room for the duration of their stay. By eliminating the cost of plastic keys - both in the actual resource and the time it takes to manage guests needing keys - hotels can focus staff resources on delivering higher-value service.
Some of the players in this market are Goji and August, which have different approaches.
Goji sets itself apart in a hospitality use case with the ability to take a photo of the person who's at the door - this added security feature would be welcome for those wanting to know who's at the door without having to physically step up to the peep hole.
Goji also allows for custom welcomes. As the various connected devices begin to talk amongst each other, this sort of thing will be a de facto delivery of hospitality.
Connected lights
Philips' Hue collection is certainly going to lead to a wholesale switch of bulbs across the world, especially for hotels looking to give guests a specific way to control their lighting situation via smartphone or tablet.
Imagine a pre-set sunrise-style alarm that involves all light bulbs, or the ability to set a disco-hued setting for a more party-style atmosphere. These things are starting to happen already in some hotels, and as customers start to have these experiences at home, they will begin to expect this functionality everywhere while traveling.
The ability to tie lighting to mood and well-being is how the interfacing of these connected objects will really start to impact the travel experience in a wholesale, healthful way.
Mothering brands
The ability for brands to develop nurturing, caring personas that thrive on ensuring the health and vitality of their charges could very well become a reality. Discussions of creepiness aside, connected technologies facilitate opt-in tracking of the well-being of guests throughout a stay - and deliver of-the-moment solutions to help guests stay rested and well.
Sen.se claims to have "reinvented the mother," and while the startup currently targets the home for full monitoring via individual sensors, this sort of comprehensive tracking technology is already steadily being rolled out in hotels seeking to have more complete control over the various aspects of a hotel experience - especially related to things like sustainability and minimizing energy usage.
A completely connected hotel room would allow guests to track motion - for example, to see if a maid is in the room - or to pre-set energy usage for the desired temperature upon return. The startup has also opened up the platform with an open interface for developers to create on the platform - this is something to be leveraged by brands as they see fit.
Mothering takes on a physical component with the T. Jacket - a hugging hoodie that responds to smartphone commands related to biometric indicators of well-being. While in one case it may be your mother that is notified when you're stressed out to give a virtual hug, the reality could also be that the hotel could hug you when you need it most - creepy, perhaps, or maybe wonderfully comforting for a lone road warrior?
Like all of these things, it's never been done before, so only time will tell. These are consumer-facing devices, indicating a sizable enterprise opportunity to leverage the future now.
And with tens of billions of devices to be connected within this decade - in just five years - some incredible shifts are ahead of the entire hospitality industry.