INDUSTRY WATCH
THE WHOLE SECTOR MUST QUICKLY ACCELERATE ITS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION TO FUEL LONG-TERM RECOVERY , OR RISK CUSTOMER ABANDONMENT AND FALLING FURTHER BEHIND .
According to research by Aruba , a HPE company , as of last year the hospitality sector was in a healthy – but not leading – place in its adoption of advanced technologies and moving computing to the Edge . Over half of hospitality IT leaders had started to implement trials or applications in areas such as Artificial Intelligence ( AI ) ( 55 %), Internet of Things ( IoT ) ( 70 %) and Machine Learning ( 57 %). However , that compares to figures of up to 75 % for AI in the financial services industry , or 77 % for IoT in retail , distribution and transport .
But it was also already struggling significantly with the data these new technologies produces . A quarter ( 25 %) of IT leaders in hospitality said there was too much data for their systems to handle and that they could not process the data they collected quickly enough to act ( 25 %). With data levels increasing exponentially over the past year , thanks to the COVID-induced rise of smart technologies , IoT sensors and connected devices , the depth of data sprawl will only be greater .
As hospitality ’ s doors finally reopen , the sector is quickly getting a sense of the evolved ‘ digital-first ’ world in which it is now operating .
The past year has seen a significant step change in the adoption of technology and digital services , but while some hospitality businesses were able to welcome online models , huge swathes of the industry were forced to remain dormant , leaving many digital advancements relatively untested or stagnating .
Now , the whole sector must quickly accelerate its Digital Transformation to fuel long-term recovery , or risk customer abandonment and falling further behind .
To get a handle on all this data and deliver the type of differentiated customer experiences to guarantee hospitality ’ s recovery , a new eBook by Aruba , Serving Hospitality at the Edge , lays out three key areas of focus for organisations in the sector – providing a clear roadmap to setting up the right network for future success .
Step 1 : Process data efficiency
Organisations must follow data to the Edge of the network to process it more efficiently , capturing it in real time at its source versus transferring it back to a centralised hub . Aruba ’ s research showed that 54 % of hospitality IT leaders were already using or trialling Edge technologies pre-pandemic and a further 16 % were already computing at the Edge . While this shows a smaller proportion of hospitality businesses are operating at the Edge compared to other industries
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