We recently worked alongside Techtalk.travel and Hotelschool The Hague to map out the history of hotel and travel technology. The goal was to visualize how technology has evolved in hospitality, going as far back in time as possible. The result is the History of Hotel & Travel Technology infographic. 

Download the infographic (PDF) here. 

How to read this chart

The chart shows the chronological evolution of the major technologies in hotel and travel technology, ranging from elevators up to today’s cloud-based PMS systems. 

Global Impact Timeline

At the top of the chart are major global events that serve as anchors. One can often see major leaps in technological evolution happening shortly after a major event. 

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Industry & Education Events 

The next category is made up of major educational and association events. It was important to look at these events in order to see how they impacted technology and evolution within the industry. 

Global Tech Development

Next, we added global technological inventions, or mass market launch of inventions. These help understand how fast something was adopted in hotels, and if the gap between invention and implementation is getting shorter, or not. 

Hospitality Tech, E-Commerce, Hotel Market

Then we have the hotel industry-specific technology, which was further divided into three main categories. During hundreds of hours of research that went into making this chart we devised multiple systems of categorization with the Techtalk.travel team and two classes from Hotelschool The Hague. After putting it all together we settled on these three categories as the most relevant. 

In Summary

It is fascinating to see how the industry has evolved. Looking at this chart, one can see that the hotel industry has often adopted consumer-level technology before it became available to the mass market. Especially when it comes to things that directly impact the guest experience. 

Download the chart, zoom in, play with it. And let us and Techtalk.travel know what you think about it.