The News: Spectrum Enterprise is advocating that automated preventative maintenance is a benefit available through smart hotel technology, potentially helping hotel staff get more work done with fewer people, a critical advantage during the hospitality industry’s current labor shortage. Read the Spectrum Enterprise Blog here.
Spectrum Enterprise Shows How Smart Hotel Tech Can Produce Sustainability and Security Benefits
Analyst Take: I applaud Spectrum Enterprise for shining the spotlight on the myriad benefits that smart hotel technology can provide the hospitality industry. Now that the prospects for hospitality are brightening as pandemic-related restrictions recede, I believe the hotel industry has new opportunity to invest in smart hotel technologies that demonstrate its environmental sustainability credentials while also improving business outcomes.
Spectrum Enterprise invoked the 2021 Hospitality Technology Consumer Engagement Study, which indicated that 58 percent of guests find it moderately or extremely important for their hotel preferences to show their commitment to environmental sustainability. In other words, by touting their sustainability initiatives, hotels can gain the dual sales and marketing benefit of showcasing their commitment to improving the environment, while also potentially gaining more business by making their facilities more attractive to a key segment of customers and prospects.
Smart hotel technologies include IoT-enabled sensors that can detect room occupancy and automatically render energy-efficient adjustments like dimming or turning off lights and decreasing temperature when a room is unoccupied. Likewise, smart hotel rooms can automatically reduce light bulb power during daylight hours and inform housekeeping when a guest room or conference room is unused and can be cleaned.
Spectrum Enterprise emphasizes that smart hotel technology can help decrease lighting electricity use by over 50 percent and trim HVAC system energy costs by up to 45 percent, which can yield enduring operational cost savings for hotel organizations.
Additionally, smart hotel technology can administer automated security oversight and responses as guests assign top priority to data security during their hotel visits. Of concern, only 25 percent of U.S. businesses, including hotel organizations, are completely compliant with current data security best practices (according to the “How to Prevent Malware Attacks and Promote Cybersecurity at Your Hotel.” Hotel Tech Report, 26 Jan. 2022).
From my view, Spectrum Enterprise’s recommendation that considering a managed security service that administers the hotel organization’s cyber-defense strategy on a constant basis (24/7/365) merits consideration and priority.
I believe Spectrum Enterprise is shrewdly capitalizing on the resurgence in the hospitality and travel industry in the post-pandemic era by promoting its smart hotel room portfolio, including managed services. During the pandemic, I perceived the travel and hotel industries as relatively and somewhat logically neglected in relation to other key segments such as health, public safety, and distributed workforce, due in large part to pandemic-driven restrictions and lockdowns.
As a frequent traveler, I welcome Spectrum Enterprise’s portfolio development and marketing focus on smart hotel technologies and managed services that can bolster sustainability and security aimed at traveler topmost needs as the hospitality market segment resurges in the post-pandemic era.
Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this Futurum Research.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.
The original version of this article was first published on Futurum Research.
Image Credit: Spectrum Enterprises
