IoT in Hospitality: Transforming the Industry Post-Pandemic

Businesses are forced to adapt to survive in different ways every day. The COVID-19 pandemic brought the hospitality industry to its knees, quickly leading to the adoption of new digital technologies. With the digital revolution well underway, hotels and restaurants have learned that they need to get on board now or risk being left behind.

The hospitality sector today cannot go back to traditional, pre-pandemic operations, due to staff shortages, high customer expectations, and employee burnout. To offset their current issues, the Internet of Things (IoT) is playing a significant role in automating the processes while reducing operational expenses as well as enhancing customer experiences by making physical assets smarter. IoT can drastically change the way businesses function. Let’s explore how IoT is transforming the hospitality industry.

What is IoT and why is it important?

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a network of physical objects embedded with software and sensors that use the internet to communicate and exchange data with other systems. IoT is revolutionizing the way businesses operate through sensors that can monitor things like motion, light, temperature, moisture, air quality, and more. These sensors enable businesses to anticipate potential needs before they arise, ultimately saving time and money. With IoT, companies can gain real-time access to critical information from any location.

Even in the hospitality industry, particularly in hotels, IoT has introduced a new paradigm, enabling businesses to become more intelligent and efficient, thereby redefining the guest experience by addressing real-time guest inquiries and providing hyper-personalized recommendations. To date, hospitality is one of the leading industries that has adopted IoT to create innovative services. It has revealed many facets of the industry in which it has played a crucial role in:

• Helping understand the guests’ context and predicting their needs
• Providing the ability to learn the guests’ physical location and present them with real-time and personalized content
• Creating a sense of intelligence in content generation by taking historical data, preferences, context, and time into account
• Improving hospitality’s back-of-house management by making business operations efficient, preventing critical system failures, and utilizing better use of existing capacity

Moreover, IoT integration in hospitality has helped maintain and grow service quality by relieving employees of routine duties and allowing them to concentrate on high-value tasks that improve overall customer satisfaction enhancement, thereby creating a competitive advantage in the market.

How can IoT benefit the hospitality industry?

It has been three years since the coronavirus pandemic upended the labor market. Restaurants, bars, hotels, and casinos remain short-staffed, with nearly 2 million unfilled openings. The leisure and hospitality industry, which accounted for much of the country’s job growth before the pandemic, is still short of roughly 500,000 employees, even though many other sectors have recovered.

As the world has gradually returned to normalcy, many of these businesses face the very real challenge of living up to high customer expectations and excellent customer service, all while operating with a reduced workforce. They expect a more personalized, fast-paced, and technological environment, and they expect a seamless experience.

The service now expected from the hospitality sector is nearly impossible to meet. Hotels and restaurants are understaffed, and these shortages put additional strain on current employees. Staff may be required to fill multiple job roles for which they are not qualified, as well as work long hours to compensate for the staff shortage, all while dealing with complaints if the anticipated service is not delivered.

To alleviate the hospitality sector's increasing consumer demands while operating with fewer than usual staff, the use of IoT will improve how hotels and restaurants care for their customers and employees. Here are a few of the most noteworthy advantages of the Internet of Things listed below.

Overcoming Staff Shortages with Predictive Maintenance 

The hospitality industry has long been known for its high burnout rate, which has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the last two years, hospitality employees have dealt with everything from unpredictable hours and lockdowns to worker shortages and a surge in rude customers. In a 2021 survey by The Hartford, 61% of employees reported feeling burnt out.

Recent surveys show hospitality workers are quitting at the highest rate and experiencing more burnout than other industries due to the stressful nature of hospitality work. Fewer restaurant staff members means overworking team members to compensate for staff shortages, or closing early due to inefficient operations. For hotels, less staff means reduced maintenance and housekeeping hours, dining options, and front desk assistance. Both result in a negative guest and customer experience. With customer service suffering, complaints will likely increase in person and online. This can lead to reputational damage for businesses.

Overworked employees can find themselves utterly exhausted, moving slowly, lacking focus, and being less productive than usual. If your top-selling bartender’s sales take a dive or your lead line cook suddenly forgets key ingredients, they are likely exhausted. Exhaustion can be dangerous since exhausted employees are more prone to workplace accidents and injuries. Some organizations have found that exhausted workers are as prone to accidents and injuries as intoxicated workers. These overworked employees should not be expected to run businesses smoothly, as they barely have time to care for themselves. Telesystem’s IoT sensors have the ability to fulfill tasks without human intervention, which reduces the chances of error, improves safety and efficiency, and increases productivity among the organization. For example, restaurants and hotels could lose thousands of dollars in food if their freezers fail; our IoT sensors can prevent this by alerting a manager if temperatures begin to drop.

With Telesystem’s IoT sensors, the hospitality sector can monitor their resource consumption, control the sensors by hand, or allow the sensors to do their thing and turn everything on and off when approached or left by active employees. The money saved from deploying IoT sensors would alleviate financial stress and by delegating tasks to the machines allow room for employees to take care of guests and enhance the service experience through co-creative activities, which allows for guests to have an advanced experience and receive greater loyalty from their consumers.

Ensure the Safety of Hotel and Restaurant Staff

An old adage reads, "If you take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers, and your business will take care of itself." Perhaps, no better example exists of this workplace sentiment than the hospitality industry. Hospitality staff’s primary responsibility is to care for and anticipate guests’ needs; hospitality management’s primary responsibility is to care for their staff by providing a safe, connected, and support-driven workplace.

A primary concern in the hospitality sector is workplace violence, which has far-reaching ramifications and creates a domino effect. Sexual harassment, for example, pervades the US hospitality industry, which has the highest number of reported claims compared to other sectors of the American economy. To clarify, a recent study found that 89% of hospitality workers have been sexually harassed while working, and 84.7% have witnessed colleagues being harassed. Hotel and restaurant employees are vulnerable to harassment because they often work late at night and deal with stressed, tired, and intoxicated guests and customers. Furthermore, hotels have many isolated areas, and sometimes, staff members work without team supervision or support.

To mitigate risks and ensure that hospitality staff is safe from accidents, falls, harassment, or abuse, Telesystem’s IoT safety solution panic button can safeguard your organization by keeping staff safe and your establishment operating efficiently. An IoT panic button provides a dependable and real-time duress alerting system that prevents threats from escalating into violent situations. It allows staff members to discreetly send panic alerts to the security team from a button on their wearable badge, indicating their need for assistance and location. Improving emergency response times prevents staff injury, creates a safe work environment, and reduces the number of lost workdays. In addition to keeping employees safe, panic buttons can even help prevent problems that aren’t employee related. For instance, employees can use the technology to break up feuding guests, call for help in a medical emergency and report human trafficking incidents.

The use of panic button technology can effectively transform the high-risk nature of the hospitality workplace into a safer and more connected environment for guests and staff alike. As the world continues to commit to enhanced safety protocols, panic buttons and enhanced staff safety protocols aren’t just a ‘nice to have’ – they’re a must-have. 

Technology Solutions to get you there

The hospitality industry is fundamentally about human connections and the art of receiving and treating guests and strangers with warmth and generosity, which makes it one of the most exhausting and draining fields for its employees, especially during significant labor shortages. Since the pandemic, employees in this industry have worked longer schedules, taken on additional responsibilities, and dealt with an increase in workplace violence. At Telesystem, we believe the industry designed to make people feel at ease and at home deserves to be taken care of as well.

With the capabilities of our IoT sensors, such as asset management, predictive maintenance, and emergency response, we can work together to alleviate employee stress and responsibilities, allowing them to concentrate on enhancing the customer experience. If you take care of your employees first, they will be able to take care of your consumers, and your business will be able to care for itself.