Hospitality's Wake-Up Call

To stay relevant in the increasingly mercurial hospitality industry, hotels are reinventing their relationships with guests and the local community.

- Jen Murphy

On a recent business trip to Boston, I checked into my hotel at an automated kiosk, ordered room service via an iPad, and used my smartphone to book an Uber to the airport. After my automated checkout, the hotel thanked me for my stay via Twitter. The experience was seamless, yet also soulless. Other than signing for my dinner, I had zero human interaction throughout my four-day stay. When, I thought, did hotel hospitality stop being hospitable?

Our cultural obsession with instant gratification has pushed the hotel industry to excel at customer service at the expense of good old-fashioned hospitality. Big-box hotels have embraced a model of efficiency and convenience that has turned the guest experience into a business transaction rather than a warm and welcoming stay. Guest loyalty, once created by human engagement and memorable moments, is now earned through reward points and Facebook likes. In keeping up with the digital times, the industry has failed to realize that the more connected we are virtually, the more we crave real human connection. I have yet to find an app that re-creates the sense of comfort I feel when I land in a foreign city and am greeted by a smiling stranger who is genuinely interested in taking care of me.

Nothing has reconfirmed our yearning for human connection more than the onset of the sharing economy. Airbnb’s increasing influence on the hospitality industry has been a wake-up call to hotels, which have been scrambling to personalize and localize the traditional guest experience. The 2008 launch of the home-share site fulfilled our desire for both ease and convenience, but, more importantly, it facilitated a relationship between people and place.