The hospitality industry has evolved significantly over the last few decades. The industry started with traditional hotels, then developed into airport hotels, motel chains, boutique hotels, and more recently capsule hotels. The next big step is smart hotels, which is a concept that has been discussed recently but in reality is misunderstood. There is confusion regarding the definition of smart hotels, destination hotels, and eco hotels, which are wrongly considered synonyms or equivalent concepts (Vo, 2019). It is vital to understand the difference and have an in-depth analysis of what smart hotels are to build up this concept from scratch. The hospitality industry is generally not considered a high-tech industry and is therefore lagging behind in the competitive application of new technology (Maria Delgado, 2006). Considering the recent emergence of the concept of smart hotels, this study focuses on the evolution of the concept and understanding of it. With the purpose of analyzing and discussing these two aspects, a literature review was performed. The analyzed literature includes hotel-oriented literature, IT literature, and hotel management literature on the concept of smart hotels.
After providing an overview of the ideas and concepts that smart hotels may encompass, future implications, effects, and the need for consensus regarding the smart hotel concept are discussed. This study also provides hotel management and IT researchers a better understanding of the concept of smart hotels, thereby serving as a basis for future empirical studies. Finally, this study suggests the necessary next steps in building the concept of smart hotels.
Evolution of Hotel Technology
The hotel and tourism industry has evolved significantly over the years, greatly influenced by technological advancements. According to (A. Siguaw et al., 2000) , the lodging industry had examined many recent technological innovations to determine possible strategic objectives driving adoption. Understanding historical technological development in hotels provides a basis for comprehension of present hotel technology. Moreover, it provides a reference point for future developments, as technologies are being researched and tested (Kecić, 2019). Hotels have transformed dramatically over the years, especially within the past five years, due to a combination of guest needs and the implementation of the various technology.
As of 1996, the majority of hotels in the lodging industry had many similar features. The room featured a comfortable bed, bathroom, desk and chair, TV and radio, and perhaps a small sitting area or couch. The hotel’s public areas had meeting rooms, restaurant/bar and perhaps health club. Concerns for hotel development were primarily related to capital expenditures, such as the cost of construction and furnishings. Although some hotels experimented with advanced technology, such as in-room computers, interactive TV systems, and smart cards for guest services, most of the industry believed in the conservative, traditional view of the hotel. However, in the mid-1990s a convergence of forces catalyzed rapid changes to room architecture and hotel service.
Concept and Features of Smart Hotel Rooms
Smart hotel rooms, also known as smart or high-tech hotel rooms, are an innovative evolution of traditional accommodation. Characterized by fully automated technological advances, smart hotel rooms augment accommodation experiences. Currently ongoing digitalization and automation paradigms, among other global megatrends, allow the significant integration of devices into everyday operations, including leisure and work environments as hotels. There are already examples of most of the in-room high-level intelligent solutions and automation globally and across Europe, but most of the smart hotel room solutions are still at the conceptual or pilot stage or not implemented at all in Finland (Ananeva, 2019).
With smart hotel room solutions, hotel guests can remotely check-in and check-out or process many other transactions using their personal devices. Guests can also check the hotel’s occupancy rate, choose a room type, scan a credit card using a mobile device for additional security, set up a welcome message, select temperature and lighting preferences, and control other guestroom conditions, energy costs, Wi-Fi data speed, etc. Automation adds an even wider range of options for hotels and their guests. The most cost-efficient and beneficial for hotels automated solutions regard energy management, guestroom automation, rooftop solar panels, etc. In contrast, the best automation solutions for guests include personalized in-room services for their preferences (I Dinçer et al., 2016).
Benefits of Smart Hotel Rooms
The 21st-century Smart travel trend drives Hoteliers to reconsider how properties adapt products, services, and technology to fit guests’ needs (Maria Delgado, 2006). Curating a memorable experience for visitors is part of the brand identity. Smart hotel rooms consider maximizing the impact of existing spaces, objects, furniture, services, and the data they generate. The introduction of personal smartphone technology has been a game changer, setting new standards for making the most of technological advances. Hoteliers and property owners must determine if the low touch/human-less experience is relevant to their guests. Recent research seeks to understand the perspectives of hotel guests about the benefits of smart hotel rooms. Sixty-two hotels were analyzed to assess the room’s attentiveness through an experiential contextual review. The output allows hotels to better frame value propositions suitable for their guest types.
Just as hotels target niche markets catering to family, business, or budget-oriented travelers, the decision node results highlight behavioral habits that larger brands would require relevant hotel room environments to develop. This study targets hotels investing in their product and experience offering guest convenience but needs to consider the different personas that match hotel environments. The study also adds Affective Heuristics for screening experiential marketing, with a concentration on sensory aspects furthering cognitive understanding of Smart. Hoteliers with product concepts that require extensive input on room preparation, occupancy, and pattern length should consider design qualities for room environments within the detachment-experience nodes (Huff, 2019).
Challenges and Limitations of Smart Hotel Rooms
Data Privacy and Management – The moment hotel guests open the doors to their smart hotel room and connect to its WiFi or Bluetooth, their personal data begins to flow between their device and the hotel’s digital services. As hotel guests use this data, they also expect it to be protected and monitored on their behalf. A company must collect only that data which is necessary and must ask consent for all other data. There are various types of data which hotels and resorts must protect on behalf of their guests/honoring confidentiality (Khodabakhsh and Yildirim Yayilgan, 2020). This data includes financial data, personal “satellite” data, social data, personal purchase data, instant purchase data, fingerprint data, location data, CCTV stored video stream data, reputation data, and guest preference analysis data. Types of data which hotels and resorts need not protect are those that they deliberately make public, opinions that they express as hotel guests, habitual travel destination information, travel network information, and travel experience.
Data Ownership – Data ownership is treating all data that belongs to a person the same way no matter how it is collected. A person who becomes a hotel or resort guest, as linked to hotel smart room control and relevant hotel services, creates a digital replica that flows in hotel digital systems. There is a need for the development of legal systems that honor the hotel guest as the owner of his/her hotel guest data. However, taking into consideration that in most of present-day countries, data supportive of frequent hotel contract breaches is a grey zone and questionable from judicial far-off, multi-locale, and time-consuming processes might be an impossibility (Buhalis et al., 2019). It is therefore proposed that each hotel guest is an owner of his/her hotel guest data unless he/she has knowingly agreed otherwise in advance (e.g. through loyalty program membership), and hotel smart environments system designs should presume that all hotel guests data’s ownership rests undisputedly with hotel guests. Data ownership legal system responsibility excludes hotel smart control environments from being responsible for the protection of any data relinquished by the hotel guest.
The Effect of Smart Hotel Rooms on Guest Experience
The impact of smart hotel rooms on the overall experience of guests is the research focus here. As with the hotel room positive and negative characteristics, the hotel room experience aspects include comfort, convenience, personalization, and sensory. In short, these upper-level aspects of the hotel room positively impact the experience of the guests. Smart hotel room technology can supply higher-level characteristics such as smart TVs, free wifi, and iPod connections. In addition to increased levels, it is vital to examine how upper-level aspects change the impact of characteristics on experience. The most substantial impact of characteristics on experience exists in personal aspects. This indicates that the smart hotel room technology characteristics elevate the overall experience of the hotel room guests, including positive effect paths, comfort, and convenience as characteristics, negatively affect path personalization and privacy invasion aspects (Usta et al., 2011).
At lower levels, the impact of smart hotel room technology characteristics on hotel experience is predicted. It examines a hotel room’s significant impact on guest experience aspects on comfort, convenience, personalization, and sensory. In addition to the upper level, this indicates that hotel room comfort technology negatively affects the price aspect of experienced comfort. It is noteworthy that hotel room technology impacts guest price experience negatively (Maria Delgado, 2006). Smart hotel room technology characteristics improve the overall comfort experience of hotel room guests by providing an air conditioning system, blackout curtains, and bed comfort. Improving smart hotel room technology characteristics provides comfort experience like heating/air conditioning control, blackout curtains, bed comfort, and TV.
The Effect of Smart Hotel Rooms on Guest Satisfaction
Smart hotel rooms have become a popular choice for hotels, as guests tend to prefer hotels that offer smart amenities. However, it is essential to understand how smart hotel rooms influence guest satisfaction. Exploring the impact of smart hotel rooms on guest satisfaction can reveal how smart room amenities influence guest satisfaction through perceived value, service quality, and the fulfillment of guest expectations. Moreover, understanding this influence is crucial for assessing the ultimate success of smart hotel rooms in enhancing guest satisfaction (Wu, 2018).
Smart hotel rooms are expected to enhance guest satisfaction. The well-known expectation-disconfirmation model of satisfaction argues that satisfaction results from the confirmation or disconfirmation of initial expectations (Maria Delgado, 2006). In the case of smart hotel rooms, guests may have preset expectations about the automated and smart environment of guest rooms. However, there is limited understanding of which expectations guests have prior to arrival at hotels with smart hotel room technology and whether hotels fulfill these expectations. This knowledge is crucial for hotels to avoid disappointment and negative satisfaction outcomes.
Future Trends in Smart Hotel Room Technology
The trend towards smart room technology has continued at a furious pace, with an ever-growing wheel rolling of greater innovation and sophistication of multiple property technologies rolled-up to the guest room. Any guest room still dependent on previous paradigms of individual guest room technological components and ‘dumb’ devices is clearly at a competitive technology disadvantage. However, this is a rapidly changing world of international 5-star corporate luxury brand hotels attempting to trump each other through new ‘high-tech’ gimmicks at hyper-expense, floundering through initial launches and five-year debts with no concept of longer-term return on investment through superior guest experience, while a tremendous bolt from the blue comes from under-five-star sustainable guest comforts and fully green functioning with environmentally-lessee rented bluesky companies. There is an exploding tsunami of earth-shaking competition from vehicles, hobos, and surfboards, manned by smiling new-world-women and green thoughtful young-adult couples or families, competing through breathtaking international nature sights and off-the-unplugged-grid-back-cheap living life styles (van Niekerk, 2016).
Growth on many fronts through research on usage satisfaction, new technology adaptation of web-controlled devices and switches/sensors and app-based menu development, old hotel ongoing guest function explorations, market research (Ananeva, 2019) , and new innovatory design and control developments by bluesky seed funding or venture capital companies moving into the accommodation landscape before a sideswiped sudden scruff of event-frosted-down-on-old-timers builds present equal competition. The launch of Mars Blue Sky with a three marque family that consists purely of technological smart concepts is an obvious challenge, especially given that this a low-price tagged three-to-five-star entry that will include downtown in-step competition with motel chains and youth hosteling daytime-remodeled to dormuse-movie style into chic-cool serving-up-under-nature-Gi, 7000-year-old-fire (analysis from South American surrounding fossil remnants) and pool-drawn water or ocean-wave electrical generator shared local functioning resort building-sites.