Hotel automation: Boost efficiency while cutting costs

Hotel operations are inherently complex, from front desk management and revenue optimization to guest communication and marketing.

This complexity often leads to inefficiencies and challenges in maintaining smooth collaboration between departments, making it difficult to keep costs down and provide an impeccable guest experience.

However, with the rise of hotel automation, hoteliers can digitize routine tasks and improve workflows, allowing teams to focus on delivering exceptional service while reducing costs.

The accessibility of self-service, plug-and-play solutions offered by hospitality tech companies means that now, even smaller properties can implement automation affordably and efficiently.

Embracing automation is key to staying competitive in 2025 and beyond—both for major hotel chains and boutique hotels.

In this blog post, we’ll explore the pros and cons of hotel automation, real-life use cases, and key technology providers offering solutions.

Are you a hotel tech startup looking to build your brand’s reputation through strategic PR? Drop us a line.

What is hotel automation?

Hotel automation refers to the use of digital tools to streamline and automate manual tasks, such as check-ins, check-outs, handling guest queries, managing service requests, assigning tasks, and adjusting pricing. By automating these repetitive processes, hotels can operate more efficiently and improve the guest experience at the same time.

While automation in hotels may seem futuristic, many of these technologies have been in use for years in other industries. For example, the self-checkout systems used in supermarkets are the same technology behind digital check-in kiosks at hotels like Hilton and Marriott.

Today, common software solutions like property management systems (PMS) and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) to deliver advanced automation capabilities, like predictive demand forecasting.

One example of hotel automation is energy management using the Internet of Things (IoT), which connects smart devices and cloud-based systems to create a more cohesive, efficient operation. IoT-enabled devices can control energy consumption by automatically adjusting lighting, heating, and air conditioning based on occupancy, reducing utility costs.

What are the benefits of hotel automation?

Hotel automation has multiple benefits, including:

• Enhanced guest experience and engagement: Automation streamlines guest communications through chatbots and AI-powered virtual assistants, which handle routine queries before, during, and after the stay. Contactless check-ins, digital access, and smart room controls improve convenience. Personalized marketing automation boosts guest satisfaction through tailored promotions, and automated guest feedback systems help improve future guest experiences.
• Improved operational efficiency. As the pillar of the hotel technology stack, the PMS centralizes bookings, guest data, housekeeping tasks, and more, streamlining day-to-day operations and cross-department communication. Task management tools automate internal workflows like task assignment and communication between staff members, resulting in smoother teamwork and more efficient operations, from logistics to housekeeping.
• Reduced costs. Self-service kiosks lower costs by reducing the need for front desk staff and handling the routine tasks of check-ins and check-outs. Chatbots, virtual concierges, and automated guest messaging tools cut costs by handling guest queries without human intervention. Energy management systems (EMS) allow hoteliers to control energy consumption and save on utilities. Housekeeping tools provide real-time room status updates and optimize cleaning times and staff availability, while room service robots help hotels cut costs during low seasons or staffing shortages.
• Increased revenue: Revenue management systems (RMS) and dynamic pricing tools automate rate adjustments and demand forecasting, ensuring better profitability through optimized occupancy and pricing strategies. Personalized marketing automation and upselling tools allow hotels to increase their bottom line while boosting guest satisfaction. Loyalty program automation tools keep guests coming back by offering personalized offers and rewards.
• Data-driven decision-making: Business Intelligence (BI) tools provide advanced data analytics and insights, allowing hoteliers to make data-driven decisions. PMS, customer relationship management (CRM), and RMS platforms each play their part in providing rich insights that allow hoteliers to optimize all areas of their business, from operations to marketing and distribution.

What are the risks of hotel automation?

While hotel automation has countless benefits, it also presents some risks.

The initial cost of investing in hotel automation can be high. As a result, some hoteliers—especially smaller ones with a tighter budget—may perceive automation as more of a financial burden than a money saver.

It’s crucial to invest in tools that deliver genuine cost, time, and resource savings over time, rather than jumping on the latest hospitality technology trends that can drain funds without a good return on investment.

Plus, automation systems require regular maintenance, which can add to operating expenses and affect the guest experience. For instance, if a smart room malfunctions, guests might struggle with basic functionalities like adjusting lights or temperature.

Last but not least, an over-reliance on automation can alienate guests. Limited human interaction may lead to feelings of anxiety or distrust, as shown by behavioral studies. And, while some automation can help guests feel more independent, too many self-service options can feel like work, leaving guests to do everything themselves.

Finding a balance between technology and human interaction is key to mitigating these risks. Hotels should ensure that staff are available to troubleshoot technical issues, offer personalized service, and provide local recommendations to enhance the guest experience while maintaining operational efficiency.

What tasks should hotels automate?

Here are six tasks smart hoteliers are automating:

1. Guest communication

Automating guest communication frees up valuable staff time by eliminating mundane manual tasks. This leads to quicker service and increased opportunities for upselling, add-ons, or extended stays.

There’s a wide variety of technologies that can enhance communication, including:

• Chatbots. These provide automatic responses to common inquiries, forwarding more complex requests to staff when necessary.
• Automated messages. Hotels can automate booking confirmations, reservation reminders, information on additional services, directions, and special offers.
• Automated review and survey requests. Staff can schedule automated review and survey requests to be sent after checkout to gauge satisfaction and streamline feedback collection.

Many hotel tech solutions allow for communication via guests’ preferred channels, whether it be email, text, or chat apps like Messenger.

Hotels can also use hotel automation to streamline internal messaging and workflows. For example, when a guest requests extra towels through an in-room device or the hotel’s mobile app, the task management tool automatically forwards the request to housekeeping in near real time, quickening the service.

2. Check-in and check-out

Automating guest arrivals and departures helps hotels address staff shortages, reduce wait times, and provide guests with greater independence.

Hotels have various options for streamlining the check-in process. They can implement self-service check-in through digital kiosks in the lobby or mobile apps to meet guests’ desire to manage their travels through their phones.

But digital check-in is just the start. Hotels can further automate essential guest services. For example, hotels can use historical data from the guest’s previous stay to automatically adjust the lighting and temperature in the room to the guest’s preferences.

3. Task scheduling

Smart hotel technology can automate task assignment and scheduling while providing AI-generated recommendations to optimize workflows, helping hotels maintain and improve operational efficiency.

For example, AI can analyze guest reviews and satisfaction surveys. It organizes its findings into recurring themes, like complaints about check-in delays, room cleanliness, or outdated bathroom fixtures.

Based on these insights, AI automatically assigns tasks to staff. It may alert the front desk manager to address poor check-in experiences, assign dusting duties to housekeeping, or prompt management to invest in updated bathroom fixtures. AI can even respond to guest reviews, thanking them for their feedback.

Hotel automation allows staff to perform routine tasks quicker so they can concentrate on more meaningful work like adding value to the hotel’s operations and guest experience.

4. Pricing

Automated revenue management solutions help optimize pricing strategies and increase profitability while saving hotels time and resources.

These innovative tools function as a set-and-forget system based on the data input provided by hoteliers or revenue managers. For example, a small hotel without the budget for a revenue manager can automatically implement pricing recommendations based on an RMS’s analysis of historical pricing data and real-time booking trends.

In contrast, revenue managers at larger hotels can choose what they want to automate, like lowering rates for last-minute bookings. They can also retain the final say and decide whether to implement the system’s recommendations. This ensures that expert insights and human intuition complement the technology’s capabilities—something that even the best AI tools can’t replicate.

As Rupesh Patel, hospitality tech investor and CEO of Zenique Hotels, told The Modern Hotelier podcast, “I’m a proponent of some automation in yield and revenue management. But I’m also a proponent of it needing a human element. The software is gonna give you a recommendation. You put in your own element about what you know is happening right now… and override or not…. so it saves time.”

He also noted “[Tech] is helping hoteliers that can’t afford an individual revenue manager still have some yield management that’s fully automated. So revenue management technology is definitely going to help hoteliers like that generate higher top and bottom lines.”

5. Inventory distribution

Manually updating hotel availability and rates across multiple channels (e.g, metasearch engines and online travel agencies or OTAs) takes time and increases the risk of costly mistakes.

Overbookings frustrate guests, harm guest loyalty, and can damage the hotel’s reputation. Underbooking results in lost revenue opportunities. Automating inventory distribution can solve these challenges.

With automated distribution, a single channel manager can push inventory to multiple channels simultaneously. Using API-driven tools, hoteliers can integrate multiple systems—channel managers, revenue management systems (RMS), property management systems (PMS), and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms—to work together in real time. This ensures instant updates across all platforms, synchronizing inventory distribution and rate adjustments while keeping the front desk and revenue teams in the loop.

As a result, automation distribution reduces the risk of errors, saves time, and ultimately increases profitability.

6. Energy management

Saving money on utility bills and providing guests with more eco-friendly solutions is so important in hospitality that over 70% of hotels say they plan to use AI to run more energy-efficient properties.

Hoteliers are taking advantage of motion sensors connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) to automate lighting and heating across their properties. For example, hotel room automation can include lights that turn on if a guest gets out of bed at night, reducing energy waste.

Besides motion sensors, smart thermostats linked to self-check-in systems can activate the AC unit before the guest arrives, adjusting the room temperature to their preferences.

IoT can also regulate energy use in public areas, such as lobbies, conference rooms, and restaurants, for even greater cost savings.

6 hotel automation technology companies

There’s a growing number of hospitality tech companies offering diverse hotel automation solutions. Here are six that hoteliers worldwide are using to enhance their operations, guest experience, marketing, and distribution:

1. Operto

Operto helps hotels with managing the entire guest stay.This hotel tech solution offers several tools connected to a central dashboard that hoteliers can use to automate routine tasks.

With Operto, hotels can provide digital check-ins, guest messaging, and mobile keys to automate the guest’s day-to-day experience, while using energy and noise monitoring to reduce costs and implementing property care automation to streamline operations.

2. Mews

The cloud-native solution Mews can automate nearly every part of hotel operations, from pricing and booking management to check-in and in-stay experiences.

Mews’ automated rate management solution offers hotels a customizable rules-based system to create dynamic pricing that updates daily. It can also automate guest payments, including pre-authorization, processing, and even reconciliation, which helps to do away with night audits (i.e. end-of-day reconciliations).

Mews also helps hotels enhance the guest experience with a virtual concierge to automatically respond to questions and recommend local activities.

3. Apaleo

Like Mews, Apaleo offers automated operational solutions and payments that can integrate with a hotel’s current tech stack.

With its API-driven tech, Apaleo automatically rounds up a hotel’s bookings and payments across different channels and unifies them in one centralized system. Apaleo also includes automated housekeeping technology, accounting, revenue management, and inventory capabilities.

4. eviivo

eviivo offers an automated booking and property management solution with a cloud-based PMS.

Hotels can rely on eviivo’s digital concierge to reply to guests instantly 24/7, and automated emails to reduce staff’s monotonous tasks, like sending booking reminders and guest review requests.

eviivo also enables hotels to automate payments, invoicing, and message integration, which unites direct guest requests with those from other channels.

5. NextPax

NextPax makes channel management automation easy. This tool enables hotels to automate their inventory distribution and pricing across multiple channels and partners.

NextPax also includes automated payment and booking management and specific features for proptechs, like automated length of stay optimization and multi-unit management.

6. Beyond

Beyond specializes in automated revenue management with a dynamic pricing solution that uses real-time analytics.

Hotels can adjust and sync prices across channels automatically based on real-time data, like demand, day of the week, and seasonality. Their smart-tech algorithm enables hotels to act more quickly and make better decisions on revenue opportunities they could have missed without the speed of AI.

FAQs

Why is hotel automation the next big thing in hospitality?

Hospitality automation can achieve greater operational efficiency while reducing costs and improving the guest experience, making it an important tech trend. For example, automation in the hospitality industry means hotels can process routine, manual tasks with speed, like responding to common information requests and scheduling tasks to staff.

What are the latest hotel automation trends?

One current hotel automation trend is dynamic pricing, which can update rates in real time based on analysis of historical and current booking and demand data. Other popular automation tech includes contactless check-in and chatbots, which can automatically answer common guest questions.

What is guest room automation?

Hotel room automation uses innovation like smart tech and IoT to control room settings, like temperature, lighting, and entertainment. It enables guests to customize settings, even via voice-activated controls, speak with the front desk, and access amenities, such as ordering room service or extra towels.

Are you a hotel tech startup looking to build your brand’s reputation through strategic PR? Drop us a line.