What’s Next for the Future of Hotel Property Management Systems

Hotel technology systems have come a long way in recent years due to the rise of various innovations like the cloud, the adoption of open APIs, and the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to everyday business operations. The global pandemic has pushed certain sectors of the hospitality tech industry further into the future. SkiftX spoke with Shiji’s COO Kevin King to look at Property Management Systems, in particular, and how hotels stand to benefit from this new era of technological innovation.

Note: This article was originally created collaboratively by Shiji and Skift’s branded content studio, SkiftX.

SkiftX: Shiji has expanded globally over the last few years by growing its portfolio and opening new offices. What’s the strategy behind this?

Kevin King: Our chairman set some milestones on where we should be heading in the coming years. One of those points was to become a truly global company, servicing the hotel industry worldwide. We built a product portfolio that fit the needs of our customers — one that works with existing technology where customers can pick the products that work best for them or could be combined into a complete stack.

Our strategy has really been to listen to the market and the customers and grow our portfolio and offices accordingly. For a technology company, we’re quite different in that we started as a service company, so service and support are really part of our DNA.

SkiftX: Shiji has been researching the property management space in the last few years to uncover what’s top of mind for hoteliers. What are some of the most valuable findings from that research so far?

King: In a recent study, we confirmed that cloud migration has been a major influence on hoteliers’ technology choices. By 2023, it is estimated that the majority of hotel tech infrastructure will be completely cloud-based. As always, the guest experience remains the main motivation with hotel technology, and the need to create a frictionless, guest-first approach is essential.

We also found that while guest messaging solutions are entering their state of technological maturity, they are still pretty much underused in hotel properties. Despite the huge advantage of rapid interaction and service of guest messaging solutions, hotels are still reluctant to adopt them fully. This is an interesting space to keep an eye on.

SkiftX: In general, how are enterprise hotel companies thinking about property management systems at the moment? Has there been a mindset shift over the last few years, or due to the pandemic?

King: Enterprise hotel companies are looking for connectivity and security. While the two aren’t mutually exclusive, they pose a real challenge, especially when you consider thousands of hotels in dozens of countries and continents.

Another point we’re seeing is that in the past, when technology wasn’t such a central piece of guests’ lives, the smartest and best way for hotel chains to implement technology was to build their own. But as technology becomes so much more complex with more connectivity, more security issues, and more data protection issues, many are looking to buy technology that fits their needs.

Touchless solutions will continue to be important, and many of the older solutions can’t keep up with such quick and sweeping changes across an entire estate. This is where we come in and try to help.

SkiftX: What are some challenges you expect enterprise hotel companies will have to increasingly deal with over the next few years?

King: One is data security and privacy. An abundance of strict laws have been passed — and more are being written — in Europe, the U.S., Russia, and China, among others. We’re seeing what Apple and Google are doing with cookies, and it is clear that if guests can’t trust their hotel to keep their data safe, it becomes a critical issue for hotels.

“We get more scrutiny than probably any other hotel technology company. … it forces us to raise the bar in the products we build.”Kevin King, COO Shiji

Then come challenges like data sovereignty. Most of the legislation around this hasn’t been fully worked out yet, but governments are demanding that data from their citizens doesn’t leave their territory. Most systems today aren’t set up to deal with that.

As a Chinese company, we know how important this is, and we get more scrutiny than probably any other hotel technology company. This is something we welcome, as it forces us to raise the bar in the products we build. We subject our systems to external audits to ensure we’re in full compliance and beyond to make sure that European citizens’ data remains in Europe, that U.S. citizens’ data remains in the U.S., and so on. Our customers value this, but it will become a big challenge for global hotel companies.

Finally, I would say the challenge for hotel technology in general is change management. So many things are changing so fast. The technology solutions that have worked for the past few decades will probably not work for the coming decade.

SkiftX: How can a strong property management system help solve these issues?

King: I think the property management system is very much still associated with the old on-premise system, which hasn’t evolved in many years and is often a risk to the hotel’s ability to evolve and deal with security.

We would like to change the model from a property management system to a hotel’s technology platform. The system is the core part of the hotel’s technology, and other solutions connect to it. If the platform’s architecture is strong and well-built, then it becomes easy to adapt to change, new legislation, and connected solutions.

Eine universelle Content-Management-Lösung

Die Gruppe wandte sich dann dem zu, was manche als den heiligen Gral des Content-Managements im Gastgewerbe betrachten: Eine universelle Content-Management-Lösung, die die einzige Quelle für alle Inhalte auf allen Plattformen wäre, die ein bestimmtes Hotel nutzt. Wie würde dies aussehen, welche Hindernisse gibt es, und was ist derzeit verfügbar?

Natalie Kimball: Wir [Shiji] müssen als Technologieanbieter berichten, welche Datenpunkte es gibt. Durch HTMG, wurden so viele Datenpunkte gesammelt. Wir haben bereits die Daten. Wir brauchen jemanden, der die Verantwortung übernimmt und sagt: “So wird es funktionieren”. Und dazu brauchen wir die Hilfe von GDS und von allen Beteiligten. Vielleicht müssen Wyndham, Hilton und Marriott irgendwann sagen: “Wir müssen aufhören, in dieses Hamsterrad stecken zu bleiben.”

Warum sollten die Anbieter aufstehen und sagen: “Okay, ja, wir machen das”, wenn es keinen Anreiz von kommerzieller Seite gibt? Vielleicht muss der Anstoß von einem großen Anbieter kommen, der über genügend finanzieller Mittel verfügt, um anfangs in die Sache zu investieren. Und wenn sie ein kommerzielles Modell entwickeln, das Einnahmen generiert, wird man anfangen, die Kosten zu decken. Aber es kann sein, dass es anfangs einen Verlust geben wird, damit wir es für die Branche anpassen können.

Gianna Rivera: Viele unserer Unternehmen denken über die verschiedenen Inhaltskanäle auf individuelle Weise nach. Ich glaube nicht, dass das nur für das eine oder andere Unternehmen gilt. Wir müssen dazu beitragen, dass diese Gespräche zu einem einheitlichen Denkprozess führen und dass sie verstehen, dass es im eigentlichen Sinne um Inhalte geht.

Hochwertige visuelle Inhalte

Zum Abschluss des Gesprächs diskutierte die Gruppe darüber, dass nicht alle Inhalte gleich sind, und tauschte einige Ideen darüber aus, wie hochwertige Inhalte tatsächlich aussehen.

Sarah Fults: Eine der größten Herausforderungen ist, dass man sein Hotel für das Fotoshooting vorbereiten muss. Für diejenigen von uns, die eine hohe Auslastung haben, kann es sehr schwierig sein, einen Termin für ein Fotoshooting für ein Hotel zu finden. Das ist die größte Herausforderung: Die Zeit zu finden, den Raum einzurichten und sicherzustellen, dass man überhaupt das Wissen dazu hat. Welche Blickwinkel? Von was sollte man das Bild machen? Wie kann man das im Rahmen des Budgets machen? Wie viele Jahre dauert es, bis man das nächste Fotoshooting machen muss?

Natalie Kimball: Es ist eine aufwendige aber wichtige Investition. Und jeder Geschäftsführer wird sich fragen: “Was ist mein Return on Investment?” Selbst wenn die Auslastung um 2 % steigt, ist das nicht genug.

Inhalte sind ein Verkaufsförderungsinstrument, und die OTAs haben uns das bewiesen. Es gibt einen Grund, warum jeder von ihnen Badezimmerfotos verlangt.

Ich glaube, es geht darum, dass ein Hotel nicht mehr darüber nachdenken muss, welches Foto wichtig ist und wie man es bekommt. Es geht um die Automatisierung. Und haben wir dann das Recht, das Foto auf jedem Kanal zu verwenden, der Zugang zu dieser Hosting-Plattform hat?

The word ‘platform’ really illustrates the concept well — even more than ‘hub’ or ‘system’ — because it can be the base for layers of technology and connections to be added and removed later. ‘Property management system’ is still the term that most people use and that’s fine, but we want to move beyond that old definition and bring it to the 21st century.

SkiftX: More hotel companies are beginning to show a great deal of interest in innovation and keeping up with new technologies, but don’t know where to start. What advice would you give them?

King: Firstly, I would recommend hotels look at guest safety, security, and privacy. These are real issues that need to be addressed. The immediate safety steps are probably done or well underway. For instance, reducing physical touch points as much as possible, such as payments and check-in. Data security and privacy enhancements aren’t as visually impressive as making a new app, but are much more important. Our industry is about trust. It is a hotel’s duty to ensure that trust is respected with secure and private systems that do not share data in an indiscriminate manner.

Put your guest first and think about the technology that will provide your guest with a better experience. Guests will have more choice in the short term, so find things that can help you gain a competitive edge.