Interview With Kevin Sturm: Hospitality Technology Trends

Today I’m joined by Kevin Sturm, a hospitality technology consultant, to discuss some trends taking place in the hotel industry.

1) Kevin, thank you for joining us. First of all, can you tell me a little about yourself and how you help hotels use technology?

Sure.  To put it about as briefly as I can I help hospitality venues with the evaluation, purchase, implementation, and optimization of hospitality technology systems.  I focus mainly in hotels and resorts, but also work with stadium/arenas, restaurants, and food service operations.  My goal for any client is to simplify their technology decisions.

I spent a large portion of my career on the vendor side of technology.  Those years of experience taught me a lot about how a hotel can benefit from technology solution, as well as how they can get stung.  If a hotel is purchasing a new system, I make sure all their needs are clearly defined and implement a decision process that quantitatively and qualitatively evaluates each system.  I’ve found this works very well, and generally much better than the historical RFP process.  For customers that are generally happy with their systems but want more out them or still have highly manual processes, I provide assistance in optimizing their systems.  Often this ends up being complex system integration projects.

2)  A little while ago I wrote on how Sheraton is using interactive tables in their lobbies.  Do you see information entertainment like this gaining popularity in the years ahead?

I do.  I’m not sure Microsoft Surface technology is were it is though.  It’s cool and fun, but I want to see for a hotel how it is either decreasing costs or increasing profits to justify the still high cost.

I think we will see apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch (and other personal devices) make headway in information entertainment with hotels.  It’s more personal (the device is mine and/or I can take it with me) and it’s already at a high adoption rate because of a palatable price point.  For high end resorts it may be more cost effective and memorable to provide guests with an iPod Touch that has the same interactive solutions as the interactive table, and provides a way for the hotel to send personalized marketing and messaging to a guest.  Information entertainment is and will continue to gain in popularity.  I’m excited to see what we have not seen yet that can immediately provide value to hotels.

3)  How else are cutting edge hotels using technology as a drawing card for tech-savvy guests? Free WiFi no longer is enough, right?

I think this really depends on the hotel segment and the type of travel.  I fit the tech-savvy guest profile pretty well, and decently fast free WiFi is still a major plus for me on business travel.  My other requirements have little to do with technology, rather just good guest service.  But if I’m traveling on leisure and staying at a high end resort I have different requirements.

There is some cool “newer” technology out there.  One I personally like is a device that allows me to connect my laptop or iPod to the television and play the movies I have for free.  Allowing guests to easily access the entertainment content available on the Internet, things like streaming TV and iTunes, is going to be a big move for hotels.  Historically it has been that hotels have tried to stay ahead of the guest with technology: Pay-per-View movies, WiFi, flat screen TV’s.  But the expectation is changing.  Tech-savy guests want a hotel to have the same conveniences I have at home.

There is another technology that hotels can use to draw the tech-savvy guest, and that is green technology.  The demographic of tech-savvy is also often green-savvy.  I think Smart Room technology is going to be an interesting draw in the future.

4) If I don’t have a lot of money to spend on technology upgrades, what are the most cost-effective additions I can make to my hotel?

This is a good question, especially given the current economic situation.  But my answer applies even when a hotel can afford a new system.

The best advice I can give to a hotel is to invest as much time as necessary into making sure the current technology systems are setup correctly for the business goals.  Much too often I find hotels recently replaced a technology system only to have the same or similar struggles with the new system.  When money is tight the best thing to do is make sure you current solutions are configured to meet your business goals, your staff is WELL trained on how to use them (buy training if you need to), and that actual problems with the system don’t get resolved by the “we’ll work around it” approach.  A hotel should be contacting customer support when any problem arises, as work-around processes are often expensive and inefficient.

If all of the systems are working well and there is budget for a single purchase I would recommend looking into an analytics or business intelligence system.  But that is a difficult recommendation as each venues requirements are a little different.  As mentioned above, smart room technology may be the right choice for a hotel to decrease operating costs.

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To learn more about how Kevin Sturm can help your hotel, visit his website or contact him directly:

Phone: 805.425.0594
Email: kevin[at]kevinsturm[.]com