Tech Innovations Reshaping the Future of Work

Graham Perry, Managing Director, BWH Hotel Group

It was Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, who coined the phrase, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.” It is as true today as it was then.

My father and grandfather both had jobs for life. I still wear the gold watch Allied Supplies Limited gave my grandfather the year I was born after 50 years of service.

Influenced by this expectation, like most other baby boomers, I set out to find my job for life. The only difference was that I wanted an industry for life. That ambition led me to hold multiple jobs across the broader travel, tourism, and hospitality industry.

We baby boomers have a lot to answer for, as a result of our search for the answers for a new generation. We experimented with flower power and pioneered fashion, music, medicine, communications, and entertainment. We drove globalization whilst disrupting everything in our path.

But to our collective disappointment, we couldn’t achieve work life balance. We worked tirelessly and rarely took sick leave.

But why couldn’t we break this circle? Why couldn’t we find a way to implement four day work weeks?

The answer is firstly, tradition and secondly, trust. It was one thing breaking the tradition of working in a single job for life but quite another making the quantum leap to flexibility around where to work and when.

Hotel loyalty has much to gain from technology innovation where AI linked to member databases can offer more than just the ability to book a repeat stay at the same hotel or another hotel in the same brand

Baby Boomers focused on how we could make our offices and work space even more appealing so that we and our staff could spend and justify even more time there. Our offices became possessions like our house or car.

We believed in the adage “out of sight, out of mind” and just couldn’t bring ourselves to trust that things could get done differently and better outside the office. We just couldn’t see that the tools we had created like telecommunications, the internet, QR codes, and Zoom teams could be used to transform the way we and our teams worked and performed.

What we missed - perhaps as a hangover from previous generations - was the need to disrupt ourselves and our own work practices and ethics.

But the pandemic has finally changed all this and there’s no going back.

Employees have proved that they can be trusted to get the job done from home. In fact, we have learned that it is easier to hide in the office than it is at home. This transformation is having a profound impact on business and the hospitality industry in particular.

The hybrid model where we work part in the office and part at home means smaller and more adaptable work spaces. An increasing number of companies are sharing office space and the same common areas - meeting rooms, relaxation areas, private telephone boxes, or internet rooms, bars, cafe lounges, and restaurants. These places are modern, edgy, hip, trendy, agile, and all combined with a sustainable ESG conscience. This transformation is seeing landlords totally rethinking their business models.

The hybrid model is not just a choice between working in the office or at home but working from anywhere. This has led to the new so called Bleisure market where the new generation is linking business with leisure. This is changing the booking patterns at hotels leading to extended stays where guests work thursdays, fridays, and mondays and play there over the weekends.

But it doesn’t stop there. This new generation of travellers is demanding more from their stay. They want a real destination experience that they can collect and brag about. In a nutshell, they want to stay in a destination not a hotel. This is changing how hotels manage brand compliance. Even the trusted global brands have to provide more flexibility.

I remember Reg Bryson, Founder of Campaign Palace, Australia transforming hotel advertising in the 90s. When creating a campaign for Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays, Queensland, instead of taking the traditional approach and showcasing the hotel itself, he instead showed pictures of what guests would see from the hotel. It showcased the beautiful vista, beaches, and the sea surrounding it. This is a metaphor for what the global hotel brands have to do now. Their designs have to showcase the destinations in which their hotels reside, not the hotel themselves.

A case in point is the fast emerging lifestyle and extended stay brands that are looking to cater for this new generation by providing a place for them to stay longer and one that reflects the community that surrounds it.

Success will be measured by how much of the hotel’s revenue is generated from the community rather than the guest. It has to be at least 50 percent. Once achieved, guests will gravitate to these hotels as they will be the places to be and the places to mix and mingle with the locals.

So the pandemic has changed everything and has achieved what we baby boomers couldn’t. It has created a generation who demand a work life balance and a sustainable and environmental-friendly one at that.

This transformation provides extremely fertile ground for technology innovators fuelled by AI and this is already emerging.

Hotel loyalty has much to gain from technology innovation where AI linked to member databases can offer more than just the ability to book a repeat stay at the same hotel or another hotel in the same brand. It enables personalized experiences for members and the ability for them to book all the components of travel (air, hotel, car, insurance, tours etc) and all served up with their personal wishes and likes in mind. When staying at the hotel, technology can present members with a personalized virtual concierge of everything the member will want to see and experience in that destination- and in any other destination, for that matter.

But there’s one other hangover from the pandemic that is fuelling even greater and faster technology change and this relates to the current skills shortages. The hotel brands are looking to fast-track ways to supplement staff shortages while cutting costs and enhancing guest satisfaction. This is leading to the use of bot technology, EV Chargers, self-check-in kiosks, mobile key, and smart TVs.

The hotel industry has a lot to think about and it remains to be seen which brands respond and flourish and which will fall behind.

But what we do know is that the new generation is snatching the baton from the baby boomers and continuing the transformation and disruption and at an even faster pace. Just think about social media.

My three kids are part of this new order and the path ahead will be even more exhilarating and entrepreneurial. But intriguingly, like my grandfather and father before me, they will all still search for that job for life. The only difference is they want a job that allows them to live the life they want to lead - not a job for life that they would view as a 50 year life sentence. So as you can see the more things change, the more they stay the same.