Post pandemic recovery: Hospitality must accelerate digital transformation and adopt data-focussed approach

There has been a significant step-change in the adoption of online technologies in response to the pandemic. Digital transformation has continued at pace for organisations in the midst of Covid-19, and this has been no different for many parts of the hospitality sector.

Research by Aruba found that, although there have been many technology success stories for hospitality during the pandemic (think online deliveries, virtual events and contactless hotel experiences), other parts of the industry found their efforts to keep up with digital advances stifled by government restrictions.  

With the easing of restrictions, leading experts are predicting major digital growth across all areas of hospitality. Against this backdrop, the report found that the main barrier to progress was the vast amount of data these new technologies produce. 25% of IT leaders in hospitality said there was too much data for their systems to handle, and they could not process the data they collected quickly enough to act.

For hospitality’s digital transformation to be truly successful, businesses need to be able to handle data effectively and transform it into actionable insights. The report suggests three key steps to tackle data overload:  

1: Process data efficiency

2: Analyse data intelligently

3: Store data securely

The report is further confirmation that putting data at the centre of the digital strategy is clearly key to ensuring the success of an IT transformation project. This applies both for hospitality businesses and more generally.