Hotel check-in and the new discipline of guest service management

Pundits have been questioning the future of the hotel front desk for more than a decade. Is a hotel front desk needed any more? If so, how should it be staffed and far can it add guest value in the check in process?

Undeniably, post-pandemic economics has both re-asserted a strong consumer preference for contactless on property solutions, and accelerated the urgency for hoteliers to achieve cost savings by innovating creative deployment of hotel staff and personnel.

For the first time, however, the rapid progress of technology has opened a new world of creative thinking around what the future of guest check in should look like. It turns out to be a more expansive area than one might have supposed. Here are some key trends driving the new thinking.

Labor pressures are more intense than ever – and they are not going away

Hotels of all sizes and in every market are reporting unrelenting pressure to control labor costs and balance the challenge of hiring and retention with the need for seamless service and guest satisfaction.

The American Hotel and Lodging Association reports that staffing shortages at its 32,000 member hotels are accelerating at “alarming rates” and significantly impacting not just profitability but the core guest experience.

A friend and industry colleague reports returning to his five-star hotel in Berlin one night from a late business meeting and not being able to find a bottle of water or a staff member to provide one, anywhere on property. At a five-star hotel!

My friend ended up accessing the fitness center with his room key, filling up paper cups with fresh water from a cooler and bringing then back to his room. It’s not what he expected to be doing at an internationally renowned downtown luxury property. And by no means is it an isolated incident or anecdote.

The lesson is clear: Labor is tight, service levels are declining across the hotel industry and guests are beginning to take notice.

A re-thinking of how staff is deployed to meet guest needs at hotels is more urgent than ever.

Hotel brands and owners are more receptive than they have ever been to new technology and innovation

Ten years ago, it was difficult for innovators to get a hotel CEO or CFO’s sustained attention to focus on how technology can drive their businesses.

That is easy to understand: Hotels are traditionally an intrinsically real estate and asset-driven business, and the key stakeholders are lenders, financiers and the guests who drive revenue. The sea change is a rapidly growing acceptance of technology and automation as a driver of value for all these stakeholders.

In 2023, CEOs routinely cite new technology as a key business driver at industry conferences and on earnings calls.

Experts report that 73% of guests visiting hotels want better, more efficient technology to enhance their stays. Providers in the areas of PMS, Revenue Management and CRM have shown tremendous growth and are pushing the boundaries of flexibility and collaboration in how on-property solutions areconceived and deployed.

It’s time to ensure that expansive thinking reaches the front desk and guest service management.

In fact, it may be time that the concept of “Guest Service Management” takes its place alongside revenue management and property management as a distinctive category for how hotels manage and measure operational success and guest satisfaction.

If not now, then when?

Time is short

Timeframes for decision-making and implementing smart business solutions are more compressed than ever. Business process experts at McKinsey report that “making bold decisions quickly” is even more critical in uncertain times.

This compression of business cycles and decision-making is evident in the hotel industry, a business that has traditionally been resistant to quick change in operational practices.

The sales cycle for selling to hotel guests is shortening, and so is the decision-making process for hotel decision-makers and investors.

For example, Special Asset Purchase Companies (SPACs), seen just a couple of years ago as a path to liquidity and company expansion, fell out of favor overnight, taking the innovative potential of many promising start- ups with them.

Hotel brands cannot create and release new brands fast enough, for fear of being left behind in the growth of one or another segment, especially in economy lodging.

For their part, tech solutions that once seemed destined to lead the industry, are being quickly overtaken by generative AI, machine learning, robotics and automation – which promise better, more consistent results and quicker profit growth. In the area of hotel check in and Guest Service Management, several key learnings are worth noting:

• Guests still want the personalized service and focused attention of a real-life person when they walk into a hotel – but those people do not necessarily need to be behind a desk or perhaps, even sit on property;
• The entire check in process – from guest greeting to payment processing to dispensing room keys and night audit, are being consolidated quickly and made more efficient drawing on the power of automation;
• Accordingly, “Smart Reception” is evolving quickly into the new discipline of Guest Service Management – a wholistic stream of integrated property workflows that deserves to take its place alongside other hotel tech disciplines as an area for continued and accelerated attention, investment and innovation.