It has been a tough time since the pandemic struck the world and changed the way everything works. Many industries managed to pivot rapidly and adapt to the new normal. The hospitality and hotel industry was one of the hardest-hit sectors of the global economy due to the global health crisis.
Fortunately, the hotel industry has also started seeing positive developments by adopting new trends that can reshape the sector and help it grow. There are a ton of new hotel industry trends to focus on for your hotel’s growth as 2022 arrives.
Today, we will take a closer look at the tech-driven hotel industry trends you need to focus on so that you can steadily adapt to guests’ changing tastes and expectations to offer them the optimal guest experience while ensuring business continuity and safety and security of everybody involved.
1. Mobile Apps For Convenient Access
Mobile-optimized apps are one of the most prominent hotel industry trends that hotel operators need to integrate into their infrastructure to provide a more convenient and optimized guest experience. Many hotels are developing or have already developed mobile-optimized websites and applications to allow potential customers easier access to information and bookings.
Providing a seamless browsing experience to guests through smartphones can help you turn potential guests into repeat visitors by offering them convenience as they have never experienced before. Mobile apps also allow you to improve your promotional activities in a unique and engaging manner.
2. Digital Room Keys For Quick & Easy Access
Digital room keys will become increasingly common throughout the hotel industry and replace swipe cards in the next few years. Smartphone apps that offer digital keys to ease check-ins and eliminate any issues caused by the loss of keys and keycards are making life far easier for guests and hotels alike. With the help of smartphones, your guests can use digital keys to go through the check-in procedure and access their rooms efficiently.
After a long day of meetings or travel, guests often feel rushed to get to their hotel rooms and unwind. Having to look through their bags or pockets to find their keycards amid all the chaos is a convenience that hotel guests would love to get rid of, and that is finally within their reach. Adopting digitized room keys could play a major role in ensuring a better guest experience.
3. Voice-Activated Virtual Assistants
Virtual Assistants are a new customer service trend in the hotel industry to focus on for your hotel’s growth in 2022 and beyond. It allows for a more streamlined experience for your customers while adding the peace of mind that they can handle different tasks without unnecessary contact with different surfaces.
Hotel guests can use this technology-driven solution to easily make room service requests, fresh towels, manage their room’s lighting, and much more. The technology has already proven to be successful with devices like Google Home and Amazon Echo in households. Hotels can now utilize it to offer a superior hotel experience.
4. Self-Check-In To Reduce Waiting Time
Perhaps one of the most inconvenient aspects of the traditional hotel experience is the waiting time your guests have to put up with when they are checking in. The modern customer expects everything to happen in a more seamless and streamlined manner, and hoteliers can implement a few simple changes to meet their expectations.
Guests no longer want to wait at the hotel’s reception desk anymore. Self-check-in through mobile self-service portals and kiosks is becoming increasingly popular in the industry. Integrating such technology-based solutions can allow your guests to quickly know when their room is ready, allow them to make requests for amenities, check their bills, order room service, and much more.
The hotel industry needs to make changes to improve the guest experience right from the point of arrival to when they leave, and a convenient self-check-in system could go a long way in helping you implement such changes.
5. Influencer Marketing For Faster Growth
As the world becomes increasingly digital, the world of marketing has changed. Travel influencers have effectively established themselves as the new generation of reviewers in the hotel industry. The travel vlogs and other user-generated content created by influencers provide their followers with valuable insights into real-life experiences that they wonder about.
Travel vlogs add a human element to the marketing efforts for hoteliers, showing potential customers exactly what they can expect to experience when they visit your hotels. As travel influencers provide a more personal touch and have the reputation of building strong relationships based on trust with their followers, they have the potential to help you engage with and reach far more potential customers much faster.
Many hotels worldwide are already capitalizing on influencer marketing by working with some of the top travel vloggers to create the content they need to market their establishments with terrific results. This is one of the hotel industry trends for your hotel’s growth in 2022 and beyond you do not want to miss.
Wrapping It Up
The turn of events due to the global health crisis combined with the adoption of new technology to rapidly spread in the hotel industry to make the necessary changes for it to succeed. If you have yet to embrace the new challenges for your hotel, it is high time you begin investing in the latest hotel industry trends that can turn your visitors into loyal customers and keep them engaged.
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