With the rapidly changing nature of technologies, there is also a change in customers’ expectations and needs. Online platforms, devices, and markets are crucial tools for shaping customer service and customer relationships in the hospitality industry. These tools are also can be viewed as disrupters in hospitality as they hinder the work of the hotel industry by affecting customers’ preferences and behavior. This paper examines different disrupters in hospitality and their effects.
Disrupters, such as robots, pop-up hotels, and voice assistants seriously harm the customer experience. This is because the service provided for customers can be not good in quality. For example, the study of Wiastuti and Susilowardhani on virtual hotel operators in different Indonesian hotels found that operators did not fulfill the customers’ requirements, missing key information frequently.
Yet, these operators can be successful in the future although they are disrupters of hospitality in the present day. Wiastuti and Susilowardhani also suggest that such bad customer service can lead to a bad relationship with customers, causing a loss of loyalty.
Another study by Chang and Sokol explores Airbnb and its effects on the hotel industry, informing that hotels tend to compete for customers on such platforms neglecting the quality of service over the number of new clients. This shows how the emergence of online booking platforms can negatively impact hospitality and disrupt the customer experience.
On the other hand, disrupters in hospitality can be considered from a positive side. For example, Kane demonstrates how digital technologies are becoming a must-have aspect of the hotel industry, pointing out the importance of being trendy for hotels and their customers. People are more likely to rely on online reviews and digital images rather than going to places that are not known on the Internet.
Moreover, virtual assistance is an effective tool for managing customer service as customers themselves can decide what they want and when by clicking the right options. It is also mentioned that some customers want to minimize in-person interaction with hotel service, preferring to order and book a room online. Furthermore, the good online reputation of a hotel regarding its service can build good customer relationships.
In the nearest future, disrupters would turn into new opportunities for the hotel industry as businessmen are learning how to manage and use them effectively. It seems that hotels would continue to compete for clients and create more ways of attracting them by means of applying new technologies. Wiastuti and Susilowardhani argue that virtual hotel operators would replace ordinary hospitality workers as they can work all day.
People also would search for a webpage of a hotel rather than an actual call for them, so hospitality businesses should maintain their brand on various platforms including social media. Moreover, hotels would invest more in social media promotion and marketing due to customers’ behavior of using social media to obtain information regarding a certain hotel.
To conclude, disrupters in hospitality are associated with the application of various technologies, in particular digital ones. As such, the industry is experiencing great changes with regard to customer service and customer relationships. Due to the new technologies, hotels are losing their quality of service, causing worsened customer relationships.
However, hotels also have an opportunity to compete and attract more clients through the effective use of such digital disrupters. In the future, disrupters would provide a positive outcome on customer service and relationships.