Contactless technologies in the hotel industry

COVID-19 was first discovered in December 2019 in China. Our generation has never witnessed such a disastrous outbreak that essentially wiped out tens of thousands of people from all over the world. However, as the vaccine has been created and distributed out: it was time for our world to carry on with our lives. The hospitality industry was hit one of the hardest. 

There are over one million people employed by hotels (IBISWorld), which means all those people wouldn’t have a job if hotels were closed. That is why hotels have started implementing contractless technology into their hotels; prior to the outbreak, contactless technology was already being adopted but not at such a rate that most hotels now have it. The reason being is because people were, and still are, afraid to come in contact with other human beings because they don't want to contract the disease (Rahimizhian, Emerald). 

More specifically, between 38%-44% have considered adopting these changes, between 17%-43% have already made these changes (Statista). By having contactless check ins and payments, keyless entry (Skift), they’re able to eliminate that one-on-one contact. Precisely, “80% of respondents said they would download an app so they can check in and check out; 73% would download an app to use keyless entry; 47% would order room service if the hotel used an app; 48% would be more likely to go to their restaurant if they used an app to order” (hotelmanagemnet.net). This shows how relevant contactless technology is within the hospitality industry and why we are conducting our research around it. 

The main aspect of this research paper is that with our findings, contactless technology is one change that should stay within hotels because of all its pros. Our purpose as a research group is to discover how people’s preference has changed when choosing between contactless technology and with human staff. We want to discover if people are actively looking for hotels that use contactless technology, and our implication is that people are.

In order to get a better understanding of what was going on in the hotel sector, especially after Covid 19, in regards to changes in technology being used, research had to be done in order to pinpoint the key areas. It was important to look at a variety of sources to gather as much information as possible, and determine the changes that have been put in place with technology in hotels. It was also important to know some of this information as we needed to create a rationale for how customers would react to said changes, and how they feel like it affected their experience, whether that was positive or negative. Initially we decided to research two different topics, one being contactless technologies in hotels, while the other was the use of artificial intelligence or AI in hotels. After working through and many decision making procedures we came to the conclusion that for our research that the contactless technologies would fit best and as a result we began to research as much as possible about them. 

Our purpose while looking at this was to see changes in technology. This research  was looking at how when Covid 19 hotel travel was affected. Hotel usage essentially dropped to zero and made it so that hotels had to quickly instill consumer confidence and get guests back through the doors in order to survive. Hotels in China did a few things that helped and changed the way they were running hotels. One such thing was making check-ins contactless and online. Also an AI took the temperature of the guest to make sure that they did not have a fever. The source discusses many more approaches they took in China to salvage hotels during Covid 19. The data was taken in the form of notes and examples, with key findings and implications being some methods used to keep hotels afloat while also upping service quality. It is important to have access to information such as this because it shows not only how quickly hotels had to react but also how customers may have felt about their experiences. This all sets a huge backdrop to the rest of the research and our methods as one can understand some of the changes we looked at and how in other examples or places how people may have felt about the topic at hand. 

While this example may have shown that guests have liked the service quality and the new contactless technologies that were instituted. A report and study from Skift about travelers in the United States actually came to the conclusion that many travelers actually still favored in person and real life service as they felt as though machines couldn’t accomplish the job to the same degree of satisfaction. This could be due to the reasons such as confusions with contactless technology interfaces as well as technical issues that may be present. It is important to note these could be due to things such as generational differences and a varying quality in technology offerings. 

All in all, all of this information was very relevant to our rationale and hypothesis decision making as we thought that it was better to lean on the idea that people may have difficulty understanding and using contactless technologies, and thus rate its service quality lower. Even though there were some examples of the opposite, we say this as the most logical choice and decision.

For our research, we collected data using a survey in Qualtrics. We had three drafts. All three drafts were about people's opinions on their experience with contactless technologies in hotels after the Covid-19 outbreak. We decided to have 10-15 questions because we did not want people to have survey fatigue while doing our survey. Our final draft has 12 questions. Our first draft was very general. We asked people if they had stayed at any hotel with contactless technology during the pandemic. Moreover, we wanted to know if they want to return and which technologies they would like to have and use in the next stay. Our second draft targeted people who visited Moxy Hotel. We asked more specific targeting questions ("Have you stayed at the Moxy East Village hotel since the start of the pandemic?"). We wanted to send the survey to a GM to share it with loyal customers of the hotel. However, we had some challenges with meeting the hotel's policy. Thus, we had to make the third draft where we returned to more general questions, and we shared with our friends and other people we knew. 

In our survey, we tried to measure several variables: 

• ease of use- understanding whether it was easy for people to use technologies and from their previous answers on questions about what technologies they used, we could understand whether it is worth using them further or not

• guest satisfaction- how much did people like that they can use services of contactless technologies. We asked people to rate their experience using the contactless technology they encountered at the hotel to measure this variable.

• guest repeatability- this variable measured if people were ready to return to the hotel where they stayed and used contactless technologies. 

• preference of contactless technology in hotels by guests- by asking people which contactless technologies they would prefer in the future, it becomes clear which technologies should stay at a hotel, which should be improved or abandoned. It can also help hotels understand which one should be installed first without contactless technologies.

We believe that measuring these variables and understanding people's preferences and experiences will help us acknowledge what people feel when they interact with contactless technologies and what changes they want to have with the technical service to improve their stay.

After some difficulties and challenges, it took about a week for our research group to distribute our survey to peers, classmates, and family members to get more than 30 respondents which is what we were hoping for. Summing up the survey results we were able to see what exactly our respondents wanted out of a hotel and their thoughts and opinions on contactless technology. We did this by the questions we created which are stated above in the “methods” section. The results stated that out of the 38 respondents, most people (90 percent) after staying in a hotel that has contactless technology, would want to stay in a hotel like that again. Furthermore, 84 percent believe that using contactless technologies in hotels is "somewhat easy" and "extremely easy”: to the question " How would you rate the ease of use of contactless technology that you encountered at the hotel?". This proves that contactless technology is easy in use and not difficult for hotel guests. Additionally, 20 percent said they were “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied”, but the majority (34 percent) still indicated that they were "extremely satisfied" with their experience. Although that 20 percent still needs to be counted for, the overwhelming result is that guests are satisfied and find it easy to use. These results prove that contactless technologies make it possible for one to have a pleasant stay and it allows hotels to switch from continuous one-on-one contact service to a more technological and safer one for guests and employees. 

With our survey questions, our participants were able to give preference to which contactless technology they liked the best. For example, 44 percent of them said they would like to use contactless check-in, 23 percent liked contactless payment, and lastly 17 percent want to be able to have keyless entry in the hotel instead of having a keycard the next time they stay at a hotel. These are the most understandable and easy-to-use technologies that hotels should have; especially as the pandemic seems to have no end. People like to have the opportunity to enter the hotel and their room, and check out without the hotel staff's help, by only using their phone, apps and bank card. On average, those who took our survey are willing to pay 60 percent more for a hotel with a completely contactless service. This number being more than half indicates that people want to stay in hotels with contactless service and are willing to pay more for its benefits. This not only symbolizes that hotels will be eliminating that possibility of spreading the disease through their own employees but now they will be attracting more guests by having these technologies and can actually charge more for it. People see the benefits and convenience of using contactless technologies and are now starting to demand it and have started to shy away from those without those technologies that we stated prior because of its advantages.

Given the results obtained from our survey, it can be implied that people do not intend to stick with the hotels that we have known for so many years: those that are staffed with humans and rely heavily on only having that employee to guest experience with no contactless technology in sight. The data provide us with the evidence that our prediction in the beginning of our research was correct. By looking at the results, more than 90 percent would stay again at hotels with contactless technology and 60 percent would pay more; people are switching and going out of their way to search for the type of hotels where these hotels already have contactless technologies and are mastering emerging new technologies efficiently.  Hopefully with our results and data, this will help the hotel industry see that our world is changing, and we need to change with it or else we will be left behind. In other words, we hope this helps hotels see that hotels need to adopt these technologies or else they will be stuck in the past. The impact of having these technologies is that it shows that they are adapting and will continue on in the right direction. 

COVID-19 has changed us and our entire society as a whole. We have had to undergo so many changes that we weren’t worried about two years ago. The hospitality industry has been through so much and they have done so well in adapting to everything. By implementing contactless technology you are essentially helping stop the spread by not having hotel employees interact with guests; that is why these technologies are so important. However, it’s not just about COVID-19, hotels also become more efficient, faster, and more reliable which means they can charge more and will have less mistakes (Rahimizhian, Emerald). In the beginning we said hotel guests have started to change their preferences in regards to hotels they are staying at: and our data has proven that. Contactless technology is here to stay.

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