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Hotel leaders dish on the next big trends

As part of a recent roundtable hosted by the Wall Street Journal, HOTELS Editor in Chief Jeff Weinstein gathered industry leaders from major companies around the world. We’ve compiled their answers into several sections (catch up on how they are competing with disruption and addressing the exploding wellness trend, and read today’s story about what hoteliers should stop doing). Below, find out what these hoteliers are watching and how they’re defining the next big trends.

Greg Doman, senior vice president of development at Accor, is experimenting with pop-up hotels.
Greg Doman, senior vice president of development at Accor, is experimenting with pop-up hotels.

HOTELS: We heard a lot about co-working spaces. What’s coming next to the hot list?

Greg Doman, senior vice president of development, Accor: We’ll see if it gets any traction: popup hotels. We’ve got a Flying Nest at a ski resort in the Swiss Alps. They are 12 square meter rooms, full window, private bathroom. Then we’ll move it in another 90 days and put it somewhere else.

Sharan Pasricha, founder, Ennismore: The next decade will be about using technology. Whereas five years ago we started hiring designers, for the first time we’re hiring software engineers to start thinking about the proprietary steps required to start building technology to understand guests a lot better… Most of us are sandwiched between legacy systems and trying to extract data in a meaningful way to provide a true, single-customer view. Our industry is plagued with 40& to 50% turnover, so you can’t always rely on that individual to give you that amazing guest experience. So what else have you got? Our view is you need technology to really provide that single-customer view. It’s not going to happen unless you go and start building it yourself.

Brad Wilson, president, Atelier Ace: For our Sister City product we’ve just launched, we developed a network system that goes through the APIs (application program interface that specifies how software components should interact) of all of these different systems – from your PMS to your guest service software, etcetera. We created an API bridge that allows the guests themselves to manage everything within that network. So they build their own membership and profile so the front office knows who you are before you get there. You can make special requests before you get there on your phone direct off the website.

Bill Walshe, CEO, Viceroy Hotel Group: Artificial intelligence (AI). We’ve just started to roll out Alexa in our rooms and had no idea how it would work. Some guests (single digits) ask for it to be taken out because they think it’s listening to them. Other people use it all the time. Across the first 98 keys that we put it into, the average daily interaction is 46 times.

Danny Hughes, president, Americas, Hilton: I think the biggest trend is affinity through a values base. It’s going explode. People who want to do business with your company, work for you’re your company or invest in your company want to know the purpose of the company and share some of the values. Whether you want to call it authentic, or purpose, or anything else like that, it’s going to change the landscape dramatically. When I listen to my college kids and their friends, they’re going to make choices based on that.

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