PERISHABLE SPACE
“ It ’ s all just been the same with different carpets and wallpaper ”
— Mark Liversidge , Chief Digital and Experience Officer , The Student Hotel
manage that flexibility . We partnered early with Ireckonu who developed a middleware logic layer specifically for hospitality and over the last couple of years has evolved into a rich product set that has enables us to move rapidly with our technology transformation .
The other big thing to address is that we ’ re clearly now in the era of hyper individualization , which we see delivered by the digital retailers and service providers . People now expect you to understand who they are and serve them to their distinctive unique behavioral needs and journeys .
“ And again , the hospitality space in its broadest context just doesn ’ t do that right . It actually has abandoned the original fundamentals of hospitality in personal service and it ’ s now a homogenized thing at a time when everybody wants to get that individualisation . So the other critical thing about middleware is that it gives you the ability to start creating a core central customer data platform ( CDP ) with individual lifelong guest profiles .
“ I would argue that a middleware logic layer is fundamentally going to be critical to almost any multi-product hospitality operator in the next five years while the operational systems try to catch up . And then if you look at the key systems , the property management system ( PMS ) in our category , they ’ re very limited and very linear . Most of them are based on the same dimensioning , which is the historic per room per night stay .”
PERISHABLE SPACE
The problem , Liversidge maintains , is achieving the optimal use of space . A fully booked hotel may have all its rooms booked according to the legacy system , but upwards of half of the ‘ space time ’ is never used . Once the time has passed , so has the opportunity to leverage its use and sweat the asset for incremental revenues .
The Student Hotel has been partnering with Mews Systems in delivering a PMS which “ will fundamentally allow us to drive our dynamic space x time model more intently in activating all types of space use within a single harmonized technology system .”
209 technologymagazine . com