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Let’s start with a simple math problem.
According to Oracle
Hospitality, 73% of travelers want a mobile-first, self-service hotel experience. Yet 65% of hotels surveyed by AHLA still suffer from staffing shortages.
Cue Jeopardy music.
Why is the industry so hesitant to adopt the automation that could help solve both problems? Do we fear it will diminish the guest experience? Or is it simply self-preservation?
The truth is, many hoteliers still cling to the belief that technology somehow cheapens hospitality, mistaking an outdated, labor-heavy operation for premium luxury.
Too often, great hospitality is still defined from the hotel’s point of view instead of the guest’s. We’re so convinced that the human touch is what makes hospitality special that we’ve become wary of anything that threatens to replace it. We fear what technology might take away instead of asking what it could make better for the guest.
We invest heavily in teaching our teams to become better firefighters once something goes wrong, while moving far too slowly toward technology that could help prevent many of those fires in the first place.
That’s not the future we should be preparing for.
Stop trying to perfect yesterday’s model and start designing tomorrow’s for the modern traveler. Maintaining traditions that no longer align with guest expectations isn’t hospitality.
It’s nostalgia.
Personalization Is About Control
The future of hospitality is not more personal touches. It’s more personal control.
No two families want the same vacation. Yet we still treat personalization like a checklist: a note from the manager, a welcome amenity, a little front desk small talk.
Those can all be great touches. But they aren’t necessarily personalization.
I recently checked into a hotel with my wife after a long day of travel. Within the first hour, we had two different employees knock on our door. One wanted to know if we needed more towels. Another asked if they could audit the minibar.
Both interactions were clearly well-intentioned, but minibars can be monitored electronically. Guest requests can be handled through apps, touchscreens and other in-room technology.
In trying to provide hospitality, the hotel interrupted the experience we actually wanted: to unpack, relax and start our vacation.
As blunt as it sounds, sometimes personalization means leaving me alone.
And I suspect that desire for control will only grow with each generation. Guests will increasingly have the audacity to expect their vacation to adapt to them, not the other way around.
The nerve of them.
Technology has taken much of the guesswork out of understanding our guests. Pre-arrival communication, preference data and loyalty profiles can tell us what they value before they ever walk through the door.
That is real personalization. It isn’t deciding for the guest what a great vacation should look like. It’s giving them more control to create the one they actually want.
We Are Not the Vacation
Hoteliers may not love hearing this, but we tend to overestimate our role in people’s vacations.
But good hospitality is hospitality you don’t notice.
When I think back on family vacations, I remember swimming at the beach, riding roller coasters, roasting marshmallows and simply being together. I don’t remember the hotel staff.
The vacation wasn’t about them. It was about us.
That doesn’t mean the hotel itself doesn’t matter. Of course it does. The room should be immaculate. The pool should be pristine. The food should be great. The property itself can absolutely become part of the memory.
But our job as hoteliers is not to insert ourselves into that memory. It’s to make sure nothing gets in the way of it.
A clean room isn’t extraordinary hospitality. Having the room ready when promised isn’t exceptional. Getting the reservation right and making sure the air conditioning works aren’t reasons to pat ourselves on the back.
That’s our job.
A lot of what we celebrate as great customer service happens after the guest experience has already failed. A talented employee steps in, apologizes, fixes the problem and saves the day. That employee absolutely created value. This isn’t to diminish what they accomplished.
But why did we need the save when better systems and technology could have prevented many of those problems in the first place?
We shouldn’t expect a standing ovation for fixing a problem we created.
Consumers Have Already Made This Choice
Why are guests still standing in line to process payments, recite license plate numbers, collect room keys and receive information that could have been delivered digitally before they even arrived?
A guest can rent an entire vacation home today, pay for it, verify their identity, communicate with the owner and unlock the door without ever standing in a line. Yet much of the hotel industry still treats the traditional front desk as sacred.
The most common objection to all of this is that technology is cold and guests will always want the human touch.
Maybe. Some will.
But consumers do not necessarily mourn the human interaction that disappears when the replacement experience is materially better.
Think about Amazon. Do you miss driving to multiple stores looking for something that may not be in stock? Do you miss standing in line to pay for it? Do you value the conversation with the cashier enough to give up near-endless selection and next-day delivery?
Probably not.
At some point, convenience became more valuable than an interaction we once assumed mattered. Hospitality should be very careful about assuming we’re immune to the same shift.
Technology keeps raising the bar for speed and efficiency. Today, an eight-minute wait for an Uber feels like an eternity. Remember waiting an hour for a cab?
Sadly, that patient consumer is a dying breed. The next generation will have even less tolerance for friction and inconvenience. Can you blame them?
Take the Audit
For many legacy hoteliers, technology still feels less like an opportunity and more like a threat to the way hospitality has always been delivered. The fear is simple: as technology takes on a larger role, something human and valuable must be lost.
Before assuming that, take an inventory of your own life.
Think about everything you once needed another person to accomplish. Banking. Shopping. Buying airline tickets. Paying bills. Ordering food. Booking a hotel room.
Which interactions do you actually miss? More importantly, when did you stop missing them?
Usually, it happened when the alternative became faster, easier, more reliable or simply better.
Now walk your hotel with the same mindset.
Watch the check-in process. Watch where guests wait. Watch where mistakes happen and where your best employees are forced to spend their time fixing them. Don’t ask whether the employee solving the problem is valuable. Of course they are. Ask whether better systems, automation or technology could have prevented the problem before anyone needed to step in.
Then confront one more uncomfortable question:
Are we preserving this process because the guest genuinely values it, or because this is simply how hotels have always operated?
AI agents. Digital concierges. Automated check-in. Predictive systems that identify problems before the guest ever knows they exist. Do we really believe these tools won’t outperform humans at many of the routine tasks we still insist on protecting?
The answer isn’t building a better employee. It’s embracing the technology that helps us build a better guest experience.
That is the future we should be preparing for.
The hotels that win the next decade won’t be the ones that get better at putting out fires.
They’ll be the ones that prevent the fires before they start.
Want to learn how Brittain Resorts & Hotels creates experiences that turn guests into lifelong advocates? Connect with us to explore our guest-centric management approach.