CHARLOTTE, North Carolina — Technology must drive new innovations in the hotel industry, experts say, but those innovations must focus on creating a seamless guest experience and a secure IT environment.
During the "Transforming Hospitality: Unveiling the Power of Tech-Driven Innovation" session at the 2024 HITEC conference, Hyatt Hotels Corp. associate vice president of hotel technology products Rohan Jani said getting the basics right — including strong Wi-Fi — are still key. But he said it's fundamentally difficult to get a strong Wi-Fi signal in a hotel, and guests' expectations continue to increase based to the speeds they can get at home.
Jani said this is a space where tech providers have recently come up with some meaningful solutions.
"Providers in this space have really taken the time to rearchitect their future products, meaning leveraging the cloud," he said. "Most manufacturers have started leveraging the cloud at a Wi-Fi controller level."
That shift to the cloud is hugely helpful to hotel brands such as Hyatt because of limited IT staffing on property, Jani said.
"The less hardware we have and the more of the cloud we can leverage with trusted providers ... the more it helps us maintain service," he said.
Both Jani and Rodney Linville, global head of information technology at Nobu Hospitality, agreed that the fundamentals in this space mean improvements in three spaces: Wi-Fi performance, in-room and on-property experience, and cybersecurity.
More smart technology in rooms is key for guest experience as that becomes more in-line with their day-to-day lives and homes, Linville said.
"In the room itself, I think smart technology, smart room features are probably the most important things on the network infrastructure," he said.
Jani agreed, adding the hotel industry at large needs to do a better job using smart technologies to meet guest preferences.
"There are some basic challenges that we'd like to solve for at every Hyatt property," he said. "We could understand our guests and their preferences. If a guest likes it 72 degrees, and they've told you that through your app, I don't think they should have to go figure out where the thermostat is and how it works."
Both panelists said the hotel industry faces cybersecurity threats at various levels — including on property and at the corporate level, as basic as social engineering attacks to staff members to more sophisticated enterprise-level threats. Jani said the recent ransomware attacks on Las Vegas-based gaming and hospitality companies should serve as a wake-up call for hoteliers around the globe.
"Casino floors were completely out of order, and they had to pay major ransom in some cases," he said.
Hospitality has had some serious vulnerabilities when it came to internet-of-things devices, although there have been some improvements in that space, Linville said. For every hotel company "security has to be one of your top priorities," he added.
He said hotels also can't rely on their guests to be tech or cybersecurity savvy.
"Most people on your guest networks, there's no security, there's no firewalls," he said.
Linville said hotel IT needs to adopt zero-trust security models and "AI-enhanced networking protocols."
"Having the capability really locks down the network," he said.