Imagine this: A housekeeper enters her first room to clean for the day. She wears a smartwatch that gives her a checklist of what to clean. While she’s at work, the smartwatch dings with an alert, letting her know that the guests in the next room on her shift have checked out.
When she’s finished, she taps her smartwatch and marks the room as cleaned. Then she views the status of the next room: Thanks to an electronic Do Not Disturb sign, she can tell if a guest wants privacy or housekeeping service.
Each time she finishes a room, she checks it off on her smartwatch. In one room, she sees that a light won’t turn on. Using the smartwatch, she phones maintenance to have them check it out.
All the while, the smartwatch keeps tabs on how many steps it’s taken her to clean a single room. That data is stored in the cloud, and at the end of the month the housekeeping director reviews the activity statistics and decides to add a supply cabinet on each floor to make it easier and faster for housekeepers to access.
Potential
Wearable technology is full of efficiency potential for hotel employees, not just in housekeeping but room service, F&B, maintenance, the bell team and the front desk. Mehmet Erdem, an associate professor at UNLV Hospitality College and president of the International Hospitality Information Technology Association, says wearables are even more attractive than tablets, which are currently performing many of the above duties. Using a wearable such as a smartwatch instead “will reduce the chance of accidental damage (and associated replacement costs) and make it easier for employees to execute their duties (less items to hold on to, account for, and carry),” he explains.
Led by the Apple Watch and fitness-oriented wristbands like Fitbit, consumers are becoming more comfortable with wearable technology, but the demand hasn’t skyrocketed. Along with a lack of infrastructure, a vague return on investment and tricky ethical issues, hotels understandably are hesitating – this might be the first time the hospitality industry gets a pass on being slow to adopt. Recent numbers released by International Data Corporation show market growth over the past year, but but one tech insider summed up the current market as “electrical garbage.”
Not only would employees be skeptical of a wearable, the hotel guest might not be comfortable dealing with an employee using one. Erdem says the pushback Google Glass and its attached camera received from the public over being too intrusive is largely why wearables haven’t succeeded in the hospitality space. “Depending on the type of hotel (and segment), guest-facing wearables could be a fad,” he says.
Dan Phillips, owners of Dare to Imagine, a hotel tech consulting firm, says hotel owners will have to drastically improve WiFi connectivity for employees to use wearables.
“The problem with many hotels is they will put WiFi at the front of the house, but in the back of the house it’s not that prevalent,” he explains. “The maintenance employee could wear a watch that has a phone on it so they don’t have to worry about wearing a walkie talkie or dropping a cellphone down a stepladder. But if there is no WiFi in that section where the employee is, then they can’t use the application.”
The cost of upgrading WiFi and connectivity makes sense to improve guest experiences. But along with the expense for back of the house, add the cost of the smartwatches, which start around US$100 each. “Everyone has to weigh cost versus return,” Phillips says. “You will have a few boutique hotels that think, ‘Hey, we are different from everyone else because we have this wearable stuff,’ but you have to have an ROI on it.”
A question of ethics
Wearable technologies for employees also come with ethical considerations. Will employees willingly agree to have their every move tracked and logged? Phillips says hotels already monitor their employees with closed-circuit televisions, facial recognition and beacon technology embedded in nametags. And Erdem points out that even the amount of time an employee takes to check in a guest or answer a phone call is monitored. Phillips says arguments can be made by the hotels in favor of security: In the event of a violent incident, the technology can help hotels track and account for their employees.
Erdem says hotels that implement wearables should give the employee the ability to opt out or take off the device when appropriate, such as when they take a break or go home for the day. Policies and standards regarding the wearables should be established before they are given to staffers, along with opportunities for employees to express their concerns.
“Living and working in a digitally connected world is almost unavoidable. And so is the potential anxiety and concerns the use of emerging technologies in the workplace,” Erdem elaborates. “Successful hoteliers treat their employees as good as, if not better than, their guests. Thus, having a pre-deployment communication strategy along with a well-thought-out workplace use policy will help both union and non-union properties.”
Wearables aren’t the future of hospitality yet, but they could be a nice helper.
“Technology is big on efficiency,” Phillips says. “I think as we run out of human resources that aren’t qualified to do the work then technology can step up and do the work.”
Beyond the watch
Other wearables now on the market and how hotels might use them:
Jacket: Google and Levi’s created a smart jacket that syncs with a Google Android phone. The tech is simple — playing music, giving directions, announcing the time — but once that advances, doormen and bellmen could use these to communicate with the front desk.
Hearables: Dash PRO wireless earphones are like mini-computers in your ear. While they would allow employees to answer phone calls without picking up a device, they also sync with iTranslate, helping front-line staff to better communicate with guests.
Panic ring: A ring, such as one offered by Nimb, might be the most useful wearable for hotel employees. When in danger, the employee presses the panic button, which sends an alert to the hotel’s response teams.
Contributed by Juliana Shallcross