Hospitality… Post-pandemic evolution of the industry

Just like every other facet of life, one thing is certain that businesses will continue to evolve. They evolve with the experiences faced and what one can imagine the future to be like. Hospitality too, even though it has perhaps the largest experience profiles, will change to provide services in consonance with the changes taking place in the society it caters to. Covid19 pandemic has possibly been one of the largest worldwide disrupters in recent times and while it may be looking manageable at present, it is certainly not over with new variants likely to emerge with fair amount of regularity in foreseeable future. Therefore, some new practices which help deal with this disruption will become de rigueur in the hospitality spectrum…, there will be some which will not only reinforce these practices but hope to build on the same… for a brand-new future experience. What are these practices likely to be? What would be the future ‘trends’ that… then will define hospitality or travel for that matter…?? Good questions to debate…

The future evolution in my mind keeping the current mind-set after the pandemic is primarily going to revolve around three broad buckets and these are:  

• Safety and health
• Climate change and environment; and
• Evolving customer needs on experiences and personalisation

Safety and health are clearly the uppermost in the mind at moment having just got out of the pandemic. We know the havoc that can be caused to life, limb and livelihood should another incident like the one just experienced occur again. It stopped our life the way we have known it and it has a possibility (however remote) to happen again specially now as the variants are still being manifested though its effect may not be as virulent as we have seen before. The timely advent of vaccines and health care facilities have all helped in saving lives and a much bigger disaster, but it’s not the full cure. In an interconnected world, infections can rapidly spread and therefore, a strict protocol of practices which can prevent the same is now considered paramount. While hygiene and masking was the first practice adopted by the hospitality chains, but as the world travels again, the service providers will need to rapidly evolve certain more functions on a contactless mode. Hospitality has traditionally been high on people-to-people contact depicting its core asset of warmth and hosting which may now have to change. Functions like marketing, traditional welcome, front office functions, keyless entry system, contactless delivery, contactless payment and even service delivery for housekeeping may change to provide the safety norm. Many models are already in existence and many more are being enhanced. However, the most likely delivery of such services will require a huge dose of AI (artificial intelligence) or IT and this would require substantial investments in IT systems, its operation as well as training. Part of the skill sets considered core to hospitality are likely to be taken over by software as well as machines… so while the current systems presently adapt to these new practices, the hotels of tomorrow will need new hardware as well as software to handle the new evolving world and its demands. My take is that these investments will become necessary if one wants to remain in the hospitality business of the future!

We live in a world which is very fragile and years of misuse without the required care of the environment has now brought us to a point where Climate Change and Environment has become a huge area where change is happening and is looking imperative. Hospitality is connected to the climate change and environment paradigm at the hip as any change in the latter will change the former business substantially and it may not be in a good way. Therefore, future hospitality practices have to have policies for climate change and environment as a virtual must. Use of solar power, environmentally friendly use of building material, environmentally friendly washing as well as cleaning materials along with environmentally friendly laws in developing eco sensitive places again need to be made mandatory... All this with the other investments in new systems as well as IT will make the hospitality business of the future expensive… for the developers of this business at least in the short run.

In addition, the Evolving customer need on Experiences and Personalisation in now becoming more obvious. The customer of tomorrow while he does want to see new places but also wants experiences and that too personalised to his needs. Solo travel is the new trend and individual living experiences with Airbnb are slowly taking precedence. There is a general fear that group tours and travel will slowly give way to planning for individual travel… which then will also question the need for travel agents since part of the travel now is already digitally possible. For hospitality owners, this then is a fundamental change as to the source of their business. It may mean them to being more prominent digitally on their offerings, giving better customer experiences, having better digital payment systems and a change in the way their working capital cycle operates. There is still a jury as to what will happen to the MICE segment specially with changing work guidelines. All this may mean that realisations could be better than before but would most certainly require a different managerial approach and of course, more investment.

There are other ways too which will change the hospitality business of the future than the three areas that I have listed above… but change it will. The lesson today is that the disrupters that we witnessed in the recent past is not the only change that one will have to live with… in the future. Money power, investments in IT, change in service guidelines are the areas one will have to deal with. Commoditised services with no brand differentiation and maybe a little premium for location may be what hospitality of the future may look like. Niche brands may still survive though. General retail is facing this problem as digital service and delivery takes root. Being a diehard purveyor of good hospitality service… I hope it does not come to this.!!

Take care and safe travels!