Mr.Lallan Gupta

industry VIEWS: Sir, as an IT manager of such a prestigious hotel, as per your view what is the role of technology during this period and how it will support in future and is there any challenge also expecting?

Mr.Lallan Gupta: Technologies plays a very important role now and in future as well. The Covid-19 has fasten the need to use technology to allow least contact with humans, some of the examples are:

1. Contact-less check-in, check-out.
2. Applications for room management to connect all the switches in the room and bathroom to avoid touch
3. Live views on display in each room and guest areas of restaurant, pool, bars etc. to maintain social distancing.
4. Contact-less ordering system.
5. Digital payments methods.
6. Kitchen Display solution need to be implement at each segment of properties which helps in social distancing.
7. Virtual meeting solution.
8. Virtual training solution
9. Contact-less elevator
10. Contact-less door opening
11. Digital newspaper
12. Face mask recognition system

The challenge here is change in guest priorities and behaviours . Today’s guests are less interested in low price and now their priorities are more on health, safety, social distancing, less touch or touch free environment etc. So hotels need to meet the guests expectations. Else they can manage their business travel needs through technology and guest will avoid personal travel.

industry VIEWS: What is the change in guest behaviour you noticed?

Mr.Lallan Gupta: This is a very good question actually prior to covid, guest used to book their room few months in advance. But now this practice of booking change to last minute booking. So it is very difficult for the team to adjust, but now industry is used to this new pattern. So, these are basically new learning for us. 

industry VIEWS: What lesson for industry from this pandemic and how it will support in future crisis management?

Mr.Lallan Gupta:See it is very clear that hospitality is the one who effected first from this Covid and we people are managing things very hard and will recover at last, so definitely we will learn a lot of lessons from this which will surly help us as a case study in future as this is a biggest disaster till now and we always learn from our tough time. There are lot of things we learnt from this but the most important learning is time management, quick decision making and multi-tasking.

industry VIEWS: What is the most common issue faced by everyone during this period?

Mr.Lallan Gupta:As per my point of view the universal problem which arise is communication due to compelled remote working for long duration.

industry VIEWS:What is your view about international travellers to india ? 

Mr.Lallan Gupta:Regarding this I feel it will take some time for international business to return, so domestic guest and tourism will be now important than ever.