What Every Hospitality Business should include in its Tech Strategy 

Guest blog by Chief Technology Officer, Floor Bleeker 

 

The adoption of technology in the hospitality industry, including AI, is projected to grow significantly in 2025. A survey revealed that 78% of hospitality businesses plan to increase their technology budgets, with AI becoming a key focus area. Many hotels are leveraging AI to enhance guest experiences through personalized services, optimize pricing strategies, and streamline operations via automation. These trends are driven by the need to meet evolving guest expectations and improve operational efficiency. It’s clear that tech is front of mind and core to strategy, but what should hospitality businesses consider in the development of their tech strategies and in running their tech team? In this guest blog, hospitality CTO Floor Bleeker gives us his insights. 

Running a hospitality tech organization can feel overwhelming. There is an endless list of projects to be done, support cases to resolve, and something new to get excited about every day – and this is without other functions or customers that completely rely on tech, pulling you in all different directions. A tech strategy can help prioritize the right activity and communicate this to stakeholders, whether they are your board, team, boss, colleagues or customers. It’s a north star that can help make decisions and prioritize projects based on the agreed upon long-term deliverables. It will give the department a sense of purpose and buy-in. By involving the team, colleagues and even customers, the process of putting it together could be very motivational and educational. 

Strategies will change over time and what works for one organization doesn’t necessarily work for another, for example a SaaS service provider has different priorities than a hotel franchise organization. What is key (and not easy!) is to shorten and simplify your strategy as much as possible so it can be understood and used widely. Here are some key components to consider including in your tech strategy and questions to ask to develop it: 

Vision or purpose 

In one sentence, what are you planning to accomplish in the long term? Why do you exist as a department or team? It can be as big as Google’s “to organize the world’s information” or as focused as “providing the best guest experience through technology in my hotel“. 

Objectives 

What are the 3-5 high-level tech objectives for your organization and how do they support your vision and the wider business strategy? What are the key performance indicators and key results and how do they align with and link to the objectives? What transformations need to happen within technology and within the business? If this is an existing organization, a SWOT analysis or an “as is” and “to be” picture can be useful as well. 

People 

What does the ideal organization look like to execute the strategy? What specific talents do you need, how will you attract and retain them, and how will you keep them engaged? How will they be organized and how will you keep them accountable? What is the operating model and what is the sourcing strategy; will you hire, contract or outsource? What core values will you be looking for? All these questions will help guide you to put a people framework in place to support the execution of your strategy. 

Technology 

What does the high-level architecture of the tech stack look like? Are you building or buying? Are you looking for best of breed or a single platform? What about integrations, APIs, data, cloud, applications and infrastructure? How much time and resources are you putting aside for innovation and emerging technology? Depending on the nature of your business this would also include your strategy around scalability, resilience, and support. It may also mention your strategies for PMS, CRS, ERP, CRM, BI, digital, guest tech or any of the other acronyms we use to describe our systems. 

Compliance and security 

What are the non-negotiables when it comes to cyber security and regulatory compliance? Depending on your jurisdiction there may be requirements related to data, privacy, payment and sustainability and regulations such as PIPL, PCI and GDPR. There may also be recommendations from internal and external auditors that need to be taken into consideration. 

Money 

How much is your plan going to cost and what is the split between capex, restructuring and/or opex? How much is ‘business as usual’ and what has a direct return on investment? How will the operating cost and investments be recovered through revenue streams or charge backs and how should your pricing be structured (per device, per service, per user, etc)?

Partnerships 

Who are going to be your partners on this journey? Are you using consultants, big tech, internal partners or specific tech vendors? Is there an eco system such as a public cloud that you will be leveraging? 

Governance 

How are you going to ensure that there is accountability in the process? What are the checks and balances? What project management methodology will you adopt, agile or not? What committees and reports are you going to use? Will there be an IT steering board and if so who will be on it? 

Roadmap 

Finally, you need to map the key deliverables, changes and milestones on a timeline that is realistic and easy to understand. This exercise is also a test to see if your resources, time and money match the ambitions outlined in your startegy.  

 

Once the strategy is done, it’s time to cascade and communicate it but that is a topic for another blog entirely.