From the moment of hotel industry germination to the present, in this period of time, China’s hotel industry has undergone earth-shaking changes. Hotels as poorly equipped as the Longmen Inn have long since disappeared into history. Today’s hotel, has gradually developed into a “home” general existence. But innovation in the hotel industry doesn’t stop there.
Leyi Hotel opened recently. In the hotel, guests check in via a self-service check-in machine and can get feedback on their needs via a mobile APP. That is to say, there will not be any waiter in any link of the hotel. For the hotel industry, the emergence of “unmanned hotel” is a revolutionary “test water”, but also let us see the hotel industry from “somebody” to “nobody” possibility.
Nowadays, many emerging forces such as b&B and youth travel service continue to rise and share a lot of market shares in the big cake of the accommodation industry, causing a great impact on the hotel industry. In such a predicament, the rise of “unmanned hotel” may provide a new way for the hotel industry. But is it really feasible for “unmanned hotels” to give up human services? “Nobody”, is it a gimmick to capture the public’s attention, or the direction of the hotel industry’s future development?
Traditional hotels fall under attack from inside and outside
At present, the development of traditional hotels is suffering from severe tests, in addition to external forces, there are internal factors hindering its own development.
The disadvantages of human service are obvious. Traditional hotel services are mainly human-dominated, from the front desk to waiters and cleaners are composed of human, and human services are often accompanied by two obvious drawbacks.
On the one hand, service attitude is difficult to guarantee. Affected by various factors such as mood swings and low salaries, hotel service staff are often difficult to maintain a good service attitude at all times. Earlier, a Seven Days hotel chain in Nanjing was exposed by netizens for its staff’s poor attitude and rude remarks towards customers, and customers’ complaints were not effectively resolved. The end result is that the guests are annoyed by the service staff, and their impression of the hotel is greatly reduced, which damages the image of the hotel.
On the other hand, the service efficiency is low. Hotel check-in procedures, the process is usually more complicated. When the passenger flow is large, due to the limitation of manpower, the check-in time of the guests will increase correspondingly, which is quite inconvenient for the guests. In addition, in some traditional hotels, invoicing is more effort. Before many guests, want the hotel to invoice for its, back and forth after a few times to get the invoice. Such service efficiency not only increases the time cost of the guests, but also gives the guests a bad impression, which can be said to be more than worth the loss.
The service content is relatively simple. The mainstream service mode of traditional hotels such as Home and Jinjiang Star is generally “B+B”, that is, breakfast + bed. This kind of service mode is only in the residents’ food and accommodation efforts, for the increasing demand for the residents, the service content provided by this mode is obviously not enough.
This requires the traditional hotel to get rid of the inherent service mode and dig deeply in the service content to achieve more comprehensive service. If information service is provided, guests can browse the tourism information of the city and know the traffic conditions, weather conditions and other information through the information interaction system in their rooms. Or office services that allow people to work and videoconference from their rooms. As accommodation plays an increasingly important role in tourism, its service content needs to be expanded.
Of course, the so-called expansion of service content, not disorderly, disorderly to add things, but to widely collect public opinion on the basis of targeted expansion, so as to achieve better development of the hotel.
High labor costs. The cost structure of most traditional hotels is mainly composed of staff salaries, energy consumption and catering expenses, of which staff salaries account for about 20%, with an increasing trend year by year, which is a great burden for traditional hotels that strictly control costs.
However, traditional hotels cannot operate without human resources, so it is inevitable to spend a lot of money on human resources, especially for high-end hotels. After all relative to mid-range hotels, high-end hotel staff needs to be more strong, such as the Hilton Hotel due to large scale, in the operation of the entire hotel, the demand for the waiter is much larger than those mid-range hotel, in addition to the doorman, security guard, aunt at the front desk, cleaning and other service personnel, therefore, need to consume in the human spending more money. And if the traditional hotel can reduce this aspect of expenditure, its operating profit can also get the corresponding growth, so as to reserve more funds into the operation of the hotel, let the hotel get better development.
Sudden rise: The disadvantage of traditional hotels is the advantage of unmanned hotels
For traditional hotels in a dilemma, transformation and upgrading has become an urgent problem to be solved. The emergence of unmanned hotels seems to find a new direction for the transformation of traditional hotels.
First, simplify complexity and improve service efficiency. In view of the disadvantages of traditional hotels in human services, unmanned hotels make a breakthrough in the form of “unmanned”. For example, in the unmanned front desk smart hotel jointly built by shaohaihui members, it replaces the front desk with unmanned self-service check-in machine. Guests can easily check in and check out within a few seconds through this machine, greatly improving the service efficiency of the hotel.
In addition, in the smart hotel built by the members of Shaohaihui, cargo robots are specially equipped to provide services for guests. Through the in-room information exchange system, the customer only needs to give instructions through electronic devices in the room, and the delivery robot will serve the first time. And these electronic devices are controlled by voice, with high operability.
Second, turn more into less and save labor costs. An unmanned hotel opened in Chengdu on New Year’s Day, attracting many customers soon after its opening. If attendants are ubiquitous in traditional hotels, unmanned hotels are at the other extreme. You will not see any service staff in this hotel. And this will be the human services out of the door, greatly saving labor costs. According to hotel management, the 20 percent labor cost in a traditional hotel is negligible in a unmanned hotel.
Third, turn simplicity into refinement to create quality living space. There is a unmanned hotel in Hangzhou’s dream town. In this hotel, each room is equipped with an intelligent speaker. As long as the command is given, you can control the TV, lamps and other household appliances in the room, which is quite convenient and quick. In addition, there are some user-friendly mode Settings in the room. For example, when the watching mode is on, the curtain is automatically closed; When the sleep mode is on, the lights in the room turn off automatically. These Settings let us see the unmanned hotel with the operation concept of “science and technology service life”, committed to creating high-quality and comfortable living environment for guests.
In addition to comfortable living environment, unmanned hotel will also be equipped with the corresponding information service system, to meet the various needs of guests. For example, Zhiyi launched the hotel video system integration service for the hotel. This system takes smart TV as the carrier, so that guests can order food, order flowers, check out and other needs through the system in the room, which brings great convenience to people. In the future, services provided by unmanned hotels will also include transportation, weather, food and other aspects, to maximize customer needs, so that they can get a better hotel experience.
The future of unmanned hotels: Don’t let sharp tools get in the way
Although unmanned hotels have brought many surprises to traditional hotels, their operation model is still in the exploratory stage. Therefore, unmanned hotel still has some disadvantages.
First of all, machine service lacks “human touch”. Although smart devices such as self-check-in machines and delivery robots help optimize hotel services, it is undeniable that cold machine services are far less humane than human services. Whether it is a sweet smile, or a warm greeting, machine services are currently difficult to achieve.
For guests, comfortable and fast service is important, but heart-warming emotional experience is also indispensable. After all, when people are in a different place, if they get the warmth of others, it is like getting the comfort of the soul. Therefore, the lack of “human touch” machine service will be difficult to bring long-term development for the hotel, the hotel in the future should be two-way combination of people and intelligence, not too magnify the role of intelligence, and ignore the key role of people in the service of this link.
Secondly, the “unmanned” mode is not mature, and the security problem needs to be verified. On the one hand, we should pay attention to property security. The biggest characteristic of unmanned hotel is unattended, in this case, it is easy to appear theft. Although such cases have not been found in unoccupied hotels that have officially opened at present, it does not mean that concerns about this issue are unfounded. In the future, unmanned hotels should further improve the security system to improve the security of hotels, so as to truly make guests feel comfortable and secure.
On the other hand, we should pay attention to information security. Recently, hyatt Regency hotel suffered a hacker attack due to a loophole in its system, resulting in the leakage of hotel guest information, causing adverse impact on the hotel and its guests. Although unmanned hotel has not yet happened such incidents, but the Hyatt hotel thing also sounded the alarm for unmanned hotels. After all, unmanned hotels largely rely on various integrated systems to achieve operation, so the risk of facing hacker threats may be greater. Therefore, how to better maintain the information security of the hotel is also a topic that unmanned hotels need to discuss more in the future.
Finally, smart devices are expensive to maintain. Luckily for the hotel, it saves a lot of money by shutting out the hotel staff. But while we feel smug about saving one expense, another is creeping up. In the final analysis, unmanned hotels rely on all kinds of intelligent equipment to operate, so for the normal operation of the hotel, it is necessary to regularly overhaul and maintain the equipment. It should be noted that the maintenance cost of intelligent equipment is no less than or even higher than the human cost, which is no small burden for the hotel. Therefore, unmanned hotel can really achieve cost reduction is still open to question.
With the upgrading of tourism from sightseeing to experience, people’s demand for accommodation is increasingly diversified. In the situation of many non-standard accommodation such as homestay, traditional hotels are suffering from the impact of new forces, and the passenger flow is gradually being diverted. In addition, with the further optimization of China’s tourism environment, more and more foreign hotels settled in China, fighting for the cake of China’s accommodation industry. It can be said that China’s hotel industry is facing great challenges. In such a difficult situation, if the traditional hotel still relies on the traditional mode to operate the hotel, it may face the crisis of elimination. Therefore, traditional hotels need to find new ways to transform and upgrade, so as to better cope with the challenges.
The rise of unmanned hotels has changed the traditional human service model, which provides a subversive direction for the transformation and upgrading of traditional hotels. Although there are still some problems in the specific practice of unmanned hotels, with the continuous development of intelligent technology, unmanned hotels will play an increasingly important role in the future development of the hotel industry. However, it is still necessary to be vigilant that science and technology can not completely replace the role of human beings. The emergence of unmanned hotels is to become a tool to assist the better development of hotels, rather than making hotels become a stumbling block to intelligent appendage.
Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110, this article is the first FT Chinese website