Data-driven hotels
The hotel experience might transcend into surrounding digital giant screens of Big Data, wearable accessories, cellphones and apps.
Human beings become switching stations of digital signals, the warm customer service we comfortably looked for in hotel vacations is in being replaced by a push to order room service menus.
Starwood Hotels is investing $100 million to create of tech-type amenities, among them iPad room-service menus and app-based temperature and lighting controls. Starlab, a Manhattan-based digital and design studio seeks out to be the next great hotel with such innovations; it has a pair of wall displays broadcasting a stream of photo guests were posting and tagging on social media, more than half the pictures were of food.
The most powerful existing effect of digital technology on design is the feedback loop of websites and social media that plays back the success or failure of each design choice in real time, displayed in walls and websites of these hotels.
Everything new is now instantly available to everyone. The Keyless program lets Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) members use their phones to unlock doors. The room-service menus are available via the SPG app at Le Méridien in Munich, and will soon roll out globally. The SPG Apple Watch app, will remind guests of their room number or provide directions back to the hotel, in both English and the local language.
Hospitality is keeping up with the times and technology. This is a positive change but in the other hand, it could also be narrowing the gap between the employment opportunities of in service, unless it’s for troubleshooting. This is where the modern tourism is heading?
