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Workplace transformation in Hospitality- The human-machine relationship
Workplace transformation in Hospitality- The human-machine relationship

September 6, 2023

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Hospitality is a service-based industry, and this industry has seen many global disruptions in the past few decades. However, the pandemic was a completely different type of event that has made hospitality rethink its customer approach. Gone are those days when customers only looked at the pricing factor. They are more aligned to the experience that they would get during their vacations or stays with family and friends. To deliver a seamless customer experience (CX), there needs to be equally good employee experience (EX).

Workplace transformation, the term itself talks about bringing change to the workplaces. Customers today, especially Millennials and Gen Zs align themselves with organizations that have a Purpose‑Driven Workplace and respect social interactions. So, the question is, how do you bring change in workplaces like Hotels and Resorts? What could be the challenges and most importantly how do we measure the effectiveness of workplace transformation on customer experience?

To reinvent a workforce would mean granting employees access to digital platforms or setting clear goals. But would that be enough to create a seamless customer experience? Would that mean Hotels and Resorts need to invest more in technologies like Generative AI and ML and deploy robots or Cobots for higher efficiency? Are we looking towards an era where humans are replaced, as their jobs are transferred to the machines. These questions have one strong answer. Machines should be a partner to humans and not a replacement for humans.

This is where the idea of human machine collaborative workforce comes to light. The future will see a symbiotic relationship between humans and machines. There could be a huge displacement in the division of work between humans and machines.

Technology driven operations: The human-machine collab

In the next few years, it is expected that the machines will perform the usual and mundane jobs that humans are currently doing. However, humans will be more aligned towards jobs which require cognitive thinking and metacognitive skills, analytical thinking, social and emotional intelligence. These would be the skills of the future. The hospitality industry may see roles like digital hotel service specialist, inclusive officer, storyteller, wellness travel specialist, tourism marketing specialist, sustainability consultant, cultural awareness specialist and so on. Let us understand this in terms of the Hospitality industry perspective. For instance, machines can be deployed to enable front desk services, storage services, check-ins and check-outs via biometrics and voice recognition. They can also help in room service and can support multiple languages to greet customers from various geographies and cultures. The machines can take up the hotel security task where it can help in detecting unwanted or harmful things at the check-ins. The machines (robots) can act as robotic porters and leverage artificial intelligence and collision detection system to navigate across the hotels. The machines can be adaptive in nature, and they can continuously learn with each customer and staff interaction. On the other side, the human staff can do cognitive problem solving, take care of personalized queries, leverage social and emotional intelligence to provide a seamless customer experience.

A classic example of human-machine collaboration has been leveraged by few hotels globally from a housekeeping perspective. The machines clean the corridors of the hotels, which are easy, whereas the housekeeping human staff clean the rooms and set them up as per the customer preferences. This way the human staff can perform more important tasks, leaving the non-important or relatively easy tasks to the machines. So, digital technologies like AI, Cloud, Internet of things have a key role to play in future workforce transformation.

Immersive experiences for customers

With the human machine collaborative workforce coming to the mainstream, how would the customers benefit? There are 4 key areas where it would benefit customers: First is the concierge services. The AI enabled machines could help in remembering the preferences of the customers and thereby aid in providing a personalized experience. Second is check-in and check-outs. The machines can decrease the wait time and perform basic validations at the counters thereby cutting down on the wait times. Third would be housekeeping where, as mentioned in an example earlier, robots and similar machines can carry food and beverages to the rooms as well as perform cleaning activities. This could help in improving privacy for the customers. Lastly the security and privacy part where the machines can keep an eye on the questionable activities of the staff as well as people in the hotel.

On the human factor part, the human staff will take care of more important things like wellness, comfort, emotional connection, empathy, sustainable stay for customers and so on. The machines not only benefit the customers, but they also help the staff to be relieved of all the non-important work.

How should Hoteliers prepare for the future

The hoteliers can focus on 4 key areas in future with respect to workforce transformation.

Reorganization to optimize: The organizations need to reorganize their workforce and have the best resources for the job. The hotels will have to optimize the use of humans and machines together to get the highest productivity.

Purpose driven impact sourcing: This could be a significant driver in creating an innovative work culture. Empowering the high potential yet disadvantaged people in the hospitality services would create a new stream of inclusivity and cultural change and help hotels manage costs.

Reskilling, continuous learning and building on skill currency: While machines take over the repetitive and mundane tasks, the employees will have to apply design thinking, creativity, and constantly upgrade themselves from a digital point of view; solving complex challenges. Training and development are a key area for hoteliers to focus on.

Fluid workforce ecosystem: Multiple hotel players could establish partnerships among themselves and include other industries / gig economy participants, to share labor and deploy flexibly.

The future of hospitality

Global experts have envisioned a symbiosis of machines and humans at the workplaces, where machines would act as an extension to the humans rather than replacing them. As collaboration increases, the work processes will be more adaptive and fluid in nature, allowing hoteliers to reimagine both customer and employee experience. Humans and machines both have their limitations at work, and it would be very important to see how organizations adapt to this change and optimize the overall utilization of the human and machine resources. While there are challenges in acceptability and adaptation of machines, it would be interesting to see how the capability of futuristic workforce is leveraged keeping conflicts and data privacy challenges at bay.


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Romil Shah
Senior Research Analyst

Strategic Research Advisor and Senior Analyst with an experience in market research and visual design, assisting sales stakeholders on market and competitive intelligence, thought leadership (authoring whitepapers), customer advisory research initiatives and strategic research initiatives for leadership.

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