How Smart Hotel Operations Increase Profit and Satisfaction

In an exclusive interaction with Adlin Pertishya Jebaraj, correspondent of Homes India Magazine, Abhishek Bhattacharya, General Manager of Cygnett Hotels, shares his valuable insights on the growing demand for smart hotel technologies and how it's creating a tremendous momentum for the rapid development of smart hotel technology, such as mobile check-in and service automation using AI. 

Abhishek Bhattacharya is an experienced General Manager in the hospitality business. He has successfully led the way to increased revenue and profit by developing employee productivity and performance, increasing the effectiveness of hotel operations, and creating high-performing hotel teams through his ability to motivate and lead through team empowerment.

How do you see the evolving guest expectations shaping the adoption of smart technologies in hotel operations today?

The fast-changing nature of guest expectations, coupled with rising operational demands, has rendered this a particularly critical issue in the contemporary hospitality industry. The current customers are quite different. They are very tech-savvy, and the concept of smartness has been equated with convenience and ease. For instance, in Cygnett, we value a seamless guest travel experience, especially a smooth and stress-free experience of checking in.

Technology has improved to such an extent that mobile check-in and check-out have become the norm, and digital room keys give the guest the chance of opening his/her room with the use of their mobile phone.

Automation is a powerful factor, in particular, automated requests for services and AI-powered applications. Today, guests appreciate the ability to have control over their stay, and smart solutions allow them to personalize their interactions without having to sacrifice the quality of service. These changing demands are concerned with these dynamic expectations, and smart technology and the guest requirements are becoming inseparable, and the hospitality industry is evolving fast with these innovations.

What are the biggest operational gaps you see in hotels that technology has not yet fully addressed?

The industry has certainly changed with the advent of technology, but it still has a long way to go. Hospitality has always been entrenched in personalized service in India. This is a human relationship that will be central to the satisfaction of the guest and will never be substituted, no matter how advanced the technology can get.

Personalization - particularly the capability to know the likes of the guests, make personalized suggestions, and carry out personalized service recoveries- contains a huge emotional aspect that cannot be replicated by technology. Combining it with real-time feedback tools, however, the hotels will be able to realize dissatisfaction at the earliest stage, respond to any issues immediately, and lower the risk of a negative review. This not only enhances service results but also increases participation in the loyalty programme.

At the operational level, there are several hotels that do not have completely integrated systems that will enable them to consolidate equipment and operational data into one dashboard. PMS and POS systems are problematic when it comes to the development of cohesive guest accounts and the facilitation of automated processes. All these technological inconsistencies cause gaps that need to be filled to ensure that operations become better and more efficient.

Also Read: Leveraging Tech for Seamless Architectural Workflows

How can personalization engines and real-time guest feedback platforms improve satisfaction scores and loyalty program engagement?

At Cygnett, it is highly concerned with the knowledge of the guest expectations and experiences. Hospitality is no longer a food business or a room business; it is a lifestyle business. We are not only selling a product, but we are staging experiences. This experience now revolves around sustainability, responsibility, and personalized engagement.

Personalization engines ultimately increase levels of satisfaction score greatly as they offer personalized recommendations, be it about the room preferences, special offers, or recoveries of the services. Real-time feedback tools enable the hotels to monitor the satisfaction levels during the stay, and not only after checkout. This will be a provision of instant feedback on issues, and the guests can proceed without hitches.

Individualization and real-time feedback not only improve the quality of services but also increase loyalty program interaction. The relevant benefits are delivered to guests at the appropriate time, thus promoting the desire to keep associating with the hotel. These tools alone form a very responsive and guest-oriented ecosystem.

What are the critical factors that determine the success or failure of smart-operations integration in hotels of different scales?

In a diverse portfolio, including luxury, mid-scale, and budget hotels, every type requires service set-ups, staffing patterns, and infrastructure variations. The success of smart operations relies on a number of aspects.

To start with, technology should have a particular business requirement. It must not merely modernize some operation, but it must actually reduce time utilization and ease things for the guests and the staff members. Feedback mechanisms, environmental indicators, and the publicity of hotel operations now make good motivators of customer decisions.

Second, employee involvement and education are important. The employees should know that technology does not replace human service but improves the workforce. Hospitality is all about emotional and physical closeness, and technology must not water down the same.

Third, there are investment discipline and ROI evaluation. Hotels can be of different sizes with different budgets, guest mix, and staffing models. Lack of alignment during implementation of the system, lack of integration, or less than proper training can lead to a breakdown in operations. In the event that these aspects are synchronized, technology can play a major role in improving the guest experience and efficiency.

Also Read: Boutique Hotels Redefining Luxury Through Personalization

How do you see the next generation of smart hotels, and what technologies will define competitive advantage in the future hospitality sector?

Change is the only constant thing in this industry. The upcoming traveller generation, Gen Z, millennials, and more, come in with more expectations, and thus, flexibility is necessary. The future smart hotel will be determined by highly sophisticated AI-driven operations that can anticipate the maintenance requirements, optimize the energy use, and staffing that will be performed dynamically.

The technologies that are facing the guests will keep advancing in the direction of a frictionless experience. The voice-based systems are being advanced to a level that they can comprehend, interpret emotions, read situations, and offer precise solutions, which in most cases cannot be distinguished from human interaction.

The capacity to centralize the data, predict the needs of the guests, and provide uniform personalization on a massive scale will be a competitive advantage. Through the introduction of improved technologies in the hotels, the operations will be streamlined, and the guests and stakeholders will be more comfortable, efficient, and reliable. The sector is evidently headed towards very intuitive, fingertip-based smart ecosystems - and the change will characterize the hospitality landscape in the future.