Summary

BY DAVID EISEN @DAVIDEISEN3

LOS ANGELES – It’s lodging’s age-old question: What will the hotel of the future look like? Mobile check-in? Smartphones that unlock guestroom doors? Rooms that adjust and react to guests when they are in and out of the room? It all sounds pretty futuristic, and— well—much of it already exists. The question really is: What’s next?

The future of lodging, many agree, is focused on the guest expe- rience, particularly as millennials commit to more travel. “It’s the notion of experience over possessions, and travel is such a part of that,” said Lauren Chewning, VP of consumer insights at Marriott International.

The experience, Chewning alluded to, is not just specific to the physical hotel anymore. “Consumers view travel broadly; it’s not just the hotel experience, but beyond it. They are looking for authentic travel experiences—internally or beyond.”

Chewning pointed to Marriott Moments, which allows custom- ers to book “unique experiences” the world over using Marriott Rewards points. Not unlike eBay, rewards members can bid on experiences, of which some 100,000 exist.

A COMMUNITY EXPERIENCE Ron Swidler, a principal at Chicago-based design firm The Gettys Group, is also on the experience train, and sees it continuing to define the hotel of the future. Design, he said, will help fuel it. “We used to think that our role was to just take care of basic guest needs, but now design is a differentiator, creating memorable experiences,” Swidler said.”

Hotels, Swidler added, are an opportunity for transformation. He sees hotels serving the community as much as their paying guests. The idea is that hotels should be fulcrums of a neighborhood, to transform neighborhoods, what he called “the responsibility to contribute to the overall betterment.”

Elizabeth Keating, partner and president at creative consultancy Revolver New York, took it a step further, remarking that hotels should have a sense of service toward the local community. She thinks hotels have a duty to staff the hotel with those in the im- mediate location, which not only promotes job growth, but also gives the hotel a level of authenticity. “It brings a local flavor,” she said.

Labor is a salient issue for the hotel industry; finding and re- taining talent is no easy task when the country is essentially at full employment. Scarcity of labor, said James Biggar, EVP of hotel management company HHM, has to be factored into the hotel of the future. “As the cost of labor goes up, hoteliers have to look for ways to be more efficient with labor, while also upping the guest

experience,” he said. Biggar said technology can help, particularly in the prearrival experience and with the advent of mobile check-in. “If that mundane stuff can be done in advance, then labor can be focused more on the guest experience,” he said.

Future hotels, many have suggested, won’t need humans to run them, but will rely on robots or other nonsentient beings. If this is the future, Chewning wants no part of it. “A hotel without anyone working in it would be creepy,” she said. “You have to deliver the human element.”

A NEW PERSPECTIVE This seeps down into the design of the hotel. Swidler expects the traditional front desk to go away, in favor of what he referred to as “stations, needed for guest arrival.” He also thinks that as more technology and automation trickle into hospitality, employees will be tasked with doing more than just one singular job, such as a traditional front-desk employee also pitching in in retail or F&B.

Swidler cited the citizenM brand for the way it staffs and oper- ates hotels, hiring actors and employees with theater backgrounds. Building on that is the idea of hotels cultivating an environment that promotes interaction between guests and between guests and employees, such as staging TED Talk-style seminars, for example, a hallmark of RLH Corporation’s Hotel RL brand and Marriott, too.

Interactive public spaces, like these, are the wave of the future, Chewning said. “Academics and actors engaging with guests,” she said.

Still, not everyone is sold on the future. If it’s up to Keating, a nod to the past is what the hotel industry needs; what she called a “return to classics with a twist—a blending of the old and new.”

Keating said the industry has gone too far in the other direction. “You don’t always want to be public,” she said. “Some guests want more private moments.” She pointed to the NoMad Hotel, with outposts in New York and Los Angeles, as a brand that has been able to strike the right balance.

New technology, from virtual reality to artificial intelligence, has and will continue to be intertwined in the future of hotels. Mar- riott, for one, has been at the forefront of the movement, creating what it calls “additional points of engagement for guests, powered by artificial intelligence.” Last September, its Aloft brand launched ChatBotlr, a chatbot available via text message that gives guests an additional way to make service requests.

The future hotel, Swidler said, will allow prospective customers to experience the hotel virtually before physically through VR. Hilton now uses VR technology to experience its Canopy and Tru brands. “This will progress,” Swidler said. HM

ALIS COVERAGE

What’s next for the hotel of the future

H OT E L M A N AG E M E N T. N E T | M a r c h 2018

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NEWS 9

Looking into the crystal ball. [From left] Ron Swidler, principal, The Gettys Group; Lauren Chewning, VP of consumer insights, Marriott International; Bob Alter, president, Seaview Investors; Elizabeth Keating, partner and president, Revolver New York; and James Biggar, EVP, HHM.

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