Smart technology helping hospitality industry in reviving their business

The hospitality industry is no stranger to turbulent times and global crises. As one of the world's oldest business models, the industry has been through World Wars, epidemics, Gulf tensions, recessions and now the Covid-19 pandemic.

While the whole world is talking about the unprecedented nature of this crisis and how there is a need for a new normal in the hospitality industry, marketing consultants like Frost & Sullivan are taking a step back and analysing the situation to look at the bigger picture.

Things are bleak at the moment. The global hospitality market has hit rock bottom, and the once-growing beacon of hope, the GCC hospitality market, has seemingly lost its brightness. In the pre-Covid period, the growth in the tourism and travel sector in the Gulf region was about 10 per cent during the past five years and would have reached $110 billion in 2020. Instead, as per recent estimates, the GCC hospitality and tourism market has lost nearly $20 billion in the first half of 2020.

The Covid-19 pandemic has taken a severe hit on the revenues of the Indian hospitality sector – organized, semi-organized and unorganized. The total revenue loss for the sector in 2020 is estimated at Rs 89,813 crore as against total estimated revenue of Rs 1,58,113 crore in 2019, a report said.

Of this, the revenue loss for organized players is seen at Rs 40,309 crore, semi-organized at Rs 8,379 crore, and unorganised at Rs 41,126 crore.

Industry's leaders anticipate that when the storm passes, the hospitality domain will see a sprint of transformation, creativity and new normal lasting change in consumer behaviour. Hence, the hospitality industry should take steps in the direction of creating safe vacation spaces for our guests.

In order to ensure safe distancing, the industry will have to make arrangements for long stays at the private villas and apartments. To mitigate the effects of Covid, it can also practice a cool down period between occupancies.

Hospitality industry is one of the most affected industries because of covid-19. However, with everything resuming slowly and getting back to normal, safety and hygiene is the top priority of every brand and consumers. Since people are more concerned about social distancing, personal hygiene and safety, hospitality brands started engaging with smart technology companies like Lockated, to help them provide contactless service and experience to their customers.

Lockated provides a contactless solution for hotels & hospitality chains to restart their operations with contactless solutions and smoothen management and operations for guests with contactless check-in to check-out management, contactless payment, and contactless room services. Post-Covid is the new era for both the hospitality and smart technology industry. Hotels chains are moving quickly to offer contactless services to their guests for clean stays whereas smart technology companies are launching innovative features to support hospitality brands.

Lockated is a smart app that helps one change their normal lifestyle to smart living. With the increasing penetration of mobile phones and the evolution in technology there is a rising demand for smart living. Smart living provides comfort by way of high-tech security, state-of-the-art facilities, energy efficiency, Project/Complex & Home Automation, & convenience of integrating all the shopping on a single platform.

Lockated brings all this and more that can be controlled remotely from outside by a phone or the Internet. It is a modern-day software designed & developed to meet the ends from a contemporary tech-friendly consumer to real estate developers & builders. Lockated proudly makes its offerings relevant to anyone partially or completely in some way or the other, and hence it is One App that all one needs.

It is "all-in-one" app to create a hi-tech/smart/modern living with a virtual concierge at your fingertips. The aim is to make a lifestyle statement and take present consumers to smart living models compared to a traditional living. Technology is the way forward is what we deeply believe in.

What is the collateral damage in terms of costs, jobs, growth and to the market-place?

Costs and growth did get impacted in the initial lockdown phase. However, the marketplace has opened up to a new outlook of the new normal where the growth has accelerated due to companies spending on post-Covid safety features for re opening.

Metaphorically speaking it's like a rubber band effect where the growth reduced to negative but got triggered to a triple digit growth with large scale adoption to prop tech with open arms.

What has been the response to contain the damage by the industry?

The adoption of technology and remote working has made companies and societies cognizant of the fact that technology can help in containing the damage, i.e. from low involvement adoption like digital thermometers, sanitization tunnels, UV scanning devices to ERP systems, remote working and collaboration softwares to adoption of hi-tech property technology related solutions the industry has shown maturity and acceptance to make positively impact lifestyle experiences of tenants and property owners.

What smart solutions can technology offer to help the hospitality industry regain lost ground?

I'll answer this in three words:

1) Contactless (entry and check in)

2) Lifestyle (convenience at your fingertips)

3) Secure (scanning of infected individuals to provide a safe environment to guests)

All 3 are driven, managed and enabled by technology and smart solutions.

What solutions is Lockated offering to the industry?

Our vision is to provide the end consumer with an experiential lifestyle solution be it residences, offices, retail or hospitality spaces.

Our tech enabled solutions do this by empowering facility managers to deliver a better experience to end consumers.

How cost effective are thesesolutions?

These solutions once implemented reduce traditional property management costs by 40 per cent and drive turnaround time and efficiency by 60 per cent to resolve queries and issues.

What is the success rate of these solutions in India?

Currently we have had leading developers, facility management companies and commercial (offices, retail and hospitality businesses) sample us and recommend, renew and refer us regularly saying the last five years.

This experience of retention and repurchase has been quite reassuring which is evident of a positive success rate.