With lockdowns lifting and vaccination rates rising across the region, leisure activities such as traveling are picking up pace. With the advent of virtual education and work from home, consumers today are considerably more connected and consume digital products and services extensively, relying on connectivity to a much greater extent.
In fact, according to mobile network operator Globe’s latest data, there were 560,000+ customers on 5G devices in March 2020 in the Philippines. In April, the number went up to 620,000+ or a 10.7 percent increase and 700,000+ or a 12.9 percent surge by the end of May. There was an average of 11.8 percent increase in device count during the same period just last year (2021).
As such, customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry today depends greatly on the organization’s ability to fulfill the need for fast and efficient connectivity. Organizations are also investing in connectivity capabilities, not just for their customers, but also because it enables these organizations to better collate, analyze, and harvest customer data from an ever-expanding source of digital touch points and channels.
5G’s capabilities are multi-faceted; if deployed effectively, 5G has the potential to thrust businesses towards growth, and this is particularly true for businesses in highly competitive, customer-facing industries such as hospitality. With the capability to enhance various offerings and services, 5G has the potential to significantly impact guest convenience, engagement and the modernization of hotel operations.
Before delving into the specifics of what businesses need to consider when it comes to deploying 5G effectively, it would be pertinent to first unpack a few points on how 5G can be a game-changer for businesses in the hospitality industry.
Benefits and Impact of 5G/Connectivity in Hospitality
Enhancing Streaming Capabilities: People are watching more content on more devices than ever before. With mobile viewership on the rise and the rollout of 5G mobile networks expected to drive even higher stream viewership in the coming years, the future for video streaming technology is bright. Hotels need to stay ahead of these tech trends as providing the latest in connectivity is essential when it comes to bringing quality service to customers. As connectivity standards rise, customer expectations rise as well.
Leveraging AI/Machine Learning towards increased sustainability and operational efficiency: From an operations perspective, with 5G, hotels should have greater ability to monitor and track hotel assets, such as room temperatures and lighting throughout the hotel, enabling efficient and sustainable energy consumption. To add on, new asset tracking capabilities mean that operators can easily locate equipment, luggage racks, and cleaning carts. And robots, unified through a speedy 5G network, can be implemented for routine tasks such as cleaning common areas, security, delivery services, and guiding guests.
With effective 5G capabilities, hotels will be able to increase the amount of throughput, significantly reducing the cost of delivering a stream, thereby, helping to potentially reduce total cost of ownership.
Furthermore, 5G enables organizations to gather and analyze customer data more effectively as time needed to process data is significantly reduced with greater connectivity.
It’s no surprise that emerging technologies such as 5G are being increasingly used for the afore-mentioned projects. The connectivity that underpins them is critical. To ensure cloud migrations happen smoothly, enterprises need to focus on flexible, high bandwidth, low latency connectivity.
To do that, it is absolutely pertinent to identify the right partners with the necessary skills and expertise in emerging technologies like 5G to elevate your business offerings. Organizations need an ecosystem of partners working together to deliver for them and their end customers.
Led by capable professionals with over 19 years of experience in elevating Information and Communication Technology (ICT) standards in the hospitality industry, FID Solutions is an established, leading ICT service provider with extensive experience in elevating communications technology.
With a range of highly competitive offerings, superior design and exceptional support, FID Solutions strives to take what’s always been in your DNA to create an environment of constant transformation that puts organisations in the best possible position to tackle today’s business challenges.
Setting up the right platform
5G will elevate customer satisfaction, and enable businesses to process data more effectively — enjoying lower latency even with the most data-rich retail analytics. 5G is bringing about transformation, but in order to reap the benefits of transformative technology such as 5G, a fundamental re-assessment of approaches and architectures is required.
In order for organizations to keep up with rapidly evolving technological trends, IT leaders and business owners are prioritizing one particular characteristic as they upgrade their infrastructure — flexibility. First and foremost, the key to accomplishing your communication network goals is putting the right CPU at the heart of your infrastructure.
Conclusion
Customer needs shift in accordance with rapidly evolving technological trends; to provide a straightforward example in line with the topic of this article, the emergence of 5G has generated the need for faster connectivity. Anything slower than what customers are used has the potential to cause great frustration. Customer-facing organizations, such as those in the highly competitive hospitality industry, are in need, like others, to constantly stay ahead of technological trends.
The author is the managing director for sales at AMD Asia Pacific region. This article was co-written with Tesa Paras-Bognot, founder and managing director of Fix n IT Design Solutions
