Narayan AmmachchiThe hospitality industry is drastically cutting back on IT spending, with some hotel chains embracing automation technologies to ride out the economic storm brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Automation is reducing the need for outsourcing, reports India-based news portal track.in, adding that IT contracts from the hospitality sector are decreasing in size and value with each passing day.
Marriott and International Hotels (IHG) has already scaled back on their sourcing contracts, reported the news portal, citing a Cognizant’s official based in the company’s headquarters in Teaneck, New Jersey.
“This is an industry-wide impact and Cognizant’s peers have also been hit,” stated the unnamed source.
TCS and MindTree are among the other major IT services providers with a large roster of clients in the hospitality industry.
With the pandemic dealing a deadly blow to their operations, hotels are going high-tech. In some hotels, robots are replacing receptionists, and they are offering digital keys instead of physical ones. A few large hotel chains have gone a step further and automated some of their back-office functions.
Considering a recent report by ANI newswire, Denver-based hospitality company Red Lion Hotels Corp is using its own IT staff to develop automation software.
“We have prioritized anything that has to do with automation” stated the company’s Chief Information Officer, John Edwards. “The reality is the pandemic has impacted all of our staffing levels, and budgets and forecasts.”
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