Voices of the Future - Stella Nathalia Ignacia. Master in Hospitality Strategy and Digital Transformation student at Les Roches Crans-Montana, Switzerland.
About Stella, "I was born and raised in Indonesia, the largest archipelago country in the world – where hospitality genes are inside our blood and tourism destinations are endless. I am a proud pioneer of hospitality professionals in my family, finding my life purpose through service for others. My favourite life principle is perfect to serve, serve to be perfect which involves service excellence and continuous improvement."
EP proudly provides a platform for the thoughts and voices of the future leaders of the Hospitality industry.
Hospitality Innovation: Actionable Steps to Get Started
Innovation is often associated with “thinking outside the box” to create something new or to improve something that already exists by increasing its value. The covid-19 pandemic is one of the significant catalysts to accelerate innovation adoption in hospitality, especially the adoption of digital transformation and technology.
Having been known as people-centric and traditional business, the hospitality industry is now still a technology trailblazer. According to Global Innovation Index 2022 Report, hospitality industry adoption to new technology is more limited compare to any other industries. One of the main reasons behind this phenomenon is because the hospitality personnel have a complicated nature of work. Besides that, considering hospitality is people's business, it would not be a good idea to implement high-technology features without balancing the high-touch (personalised) service.
For some people and generations, innovation sounds like a grand change. Therefore, some of them may resist the change. However, the good news is that innovation does not have to be something big. As long as it is able to increase the value to the customers; improve work efficiency, effectivity, or productivity, then it can be considered as innovation. Furthermore, people will embrace the innovation by the time they see how it benefits them and others through effective communication and evidence from the progress made.
Then, how to start creating innovation? In this context, as hospitality professionals, our strengths rely on a customer-oriented mindset and interpersonal skills. These are the amazing ‘tools’ to get started. To put into practice, we can start talking with colleagues to identify problems that they are facing at work. For instance, colleagues always have to extend their working hours because too much manual work has to be done in a day. With our customer-oriented mindset, here comes the very fundamental yet critical step to start innovation: to empathise for our colleagues with their existing problem.
Co-founder of Airbnb, Inc., Brian Chesky says that “If we tried to think of a good idea, we would not have been able to think of a good idea at all. You just have to have a solution for a problem in your own life.” As the hospitality spirit (the spirit of helping others) is cultivated and we have sufficient information about the problems, now we are ready to move on to the next step: brainstorming ideas. For simpler problems, we may quickly be able to think of practical solutions. However, what if the problem is too complicated to solve? It is a great opportunity to collaborate and learn.
I still remember the first time I created a system innovation – it was back in 2018, when I was a Front Office Management Trainee. The problem that I found at that time was the great difficulty and long time to reach Lost & Found Department because there was only a two-line call in their department which served over 700 rooms and villa in a 90 hectares resort area. As a result, when I was lucky, I would be able to reach them. If I was not, I would let the guest who was looking for their items wait, sometimes I would rather run to the L&F office instead of keeping them wait. The frustrating part was when a guest looked for her beach hat, the models were usually very similar and it was very difficult to describe using an audio call. Not also to mention how slow the manual reporting system was and how much time was wasted to connect the missing item to the owner.
Starting from empathy towards guests who were rushing to airports to catch their flight but missing their passports, I committed to find better ways in improving the L&F system. In short, I brought the idea to create an L & F system using google forms and automation - the found items were reported timely with pictures in detail, and receptionists having multiple platforms to access the report in seconds to help the guests. I was not a Google Form automation expert at that time, all I did was ask questions of the potential experts, learning to connect the dots, and completing the missing puzzle.
Eventually, innovation is all about how we improve people’s lives. Once we grab the opportunity to help others, we have one precious ticket not only to find contentment and happiness, but also to improve ourselves throughout the process. Unconsciously, we become more innovative problem-solvers and make the world slightly better.
