Almost 9 out of every 10 hotel businesses sell online

The report has been prepared within the framework of the Observatory for Digital Skills and Employability, for which a personalised survey has been conducted, in addition to consulting statistics, surveys and reports on the sector, interviews with experts, and focus groups organised on the promotion of the digitisation of hotels, among whose reasons include the digitisation of customers and sustainability criteria.

The report points out that practically all companies with more than ten employees make online bookings and use social networks (90%, compared to 67% across all sectors). However, experts point out that few tourism establishments incorporate other competencies, such as big data analysis, internet of things, augmented reality, business intelligence, loyalty programmes, revenue management, automated logistics or automation.

Moreover, a very important bias depending on the size of the company must be taken into account. For example, only 11% of companies with 10 to 49 employees use big data, a percentage that rises to 39% in companies with more than 250 employees. This technology is not yet widely used in the hotel sector, and the companies that do incorporate it use data generated from social networks and, to a very small extent, data generated by sensors or their own smart devices.

As for the use of artificial intelligence, this reaches 35% in large companies and is focused on data analysis, workflow automation, decision making and the identification of people and objects based on images. This percentage, however, is much lower in companies with 59 to 249 workers (18%) and even lower in companies with fewer than 50 workers (11%), values that are on a par with the Spanish average. Robotics, on the other hand, is very little implemented, even in the largest companies, since its use barely reaches 5%.

"On the other hand, there are reasons that slow down or hinder the digitisation of hotels. The most prominent are the cost and the lack of training and specific knowledge in the new digital skills of professionals. But there is also uncertainty about the results. Examples were collected of innovations that did not contribute to improving results because there had not been a good detection of needs or the expectations generated were too high. Added to this uncertainty is the excess supply of applications, solutions or software, which makes the choice more difficult," explains Alba Escolà, manager of IMANcorp Foundation.

Digital skills of hotel sector professionals

From 2019 to 2023, according to data from the Commissions i Obreres trade union (2023), cleaning personnel decreased by 9%, directors and managers by 3%, and the category of building maintenance and cleaning supervisors, janitors and stewards by 3%. In contrast, there was a 41% increase in administrative employees with customer service tasks, which is still the category with the smallest relative weight (13,058 compared to 105,422 cleaning staff).

The impact of digitisation on occupations is very uneven depending on the functional area of the hotel. The most qualified profiles, such as, for example, data analysts, are in the central offices of hotel chains, not in the hotels themselves. The reception area is the most digitised, due to all the operations of reservation management and customer service.

"A new competency is what could be called 'emergency', acting when devices are not working (e.g. at check-in). Digitisation has allowed a few hotels to share night receptionists, with a greater need for these emergency competencies. The automation of reception tasks has made it easier for the receptionist profile to have a more commercial dimension of customer service (upselling and cross-selling), and website and social network management. It has also generated a greater need for data protection skills. In hotels that have a concierge profile, competence in home automation (access control, detectors, "smart" building sensors) will be necessary in relation to the implementation of these devices," summarises Rafael Merino, lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the UAB and academic head of the study.

A proxy indicator of digitisation is whether the company hires ICT specialists (operational development or systems maintenance). Here, again, the size bias is very large: about 75% of companies with more than 250 employees employ ICT specialists, while this percentage is 31% in companies with 50 to 249 employees and drops to 8% in companies with less than 50 employees.

Most of these positions are occupied by men: only 30% of ICT specialists are women in companies with fewer than 50 employees and in companies with more than 250 employees, while in companies with 50 to 249 employees, women employed as ICT specialists account for barely 5%.

At the opposite end, in terms of digitisation of the workplace, are the housekeepers, with physical and scarcely digitised jobs. The report points, in fact, to a certain reluctance to use devices in this area of hotels, for several reasons. The first is that, although they tend to be user-friendly and do not require a high user level, not all housekeepers have the minimum digital skills for this level of user. The second is that the use of these devices can increase time control, vigilance and higher productivity requirements (by reducing the average cleaning time and increasing the number of rooms per day). The third is that, in some cases, housekeepers are asked to use these devices for new tasks, such as rapid communication of lost items, tasks not included in the job definition.

The report concludes that the level of digitisation also depends on the type of accommodation. Higher category hotels are the most digitally developed establishments (around 50%), while lower category establishments and guesthouses and rural houses are the least developed in this regard (around 20%). They are also differentiated by size, with micro-businesses being far behind small businesses.

"The hotel sector suffers from a lack of attractiveness for the incorporation of trained and qualified personnel for the performance of tasks, from managerial positions to less qualified profiles", summarises Merino, and goes on to add: "In higher studies of tourism and hotel management, the number of new students has decreased by 33% in recent years and practically half of the students do not finish their studies in the theoretical years of duration. One of the reasons given for this loss of attractiveness is that training in this field is too generic, and it is assumed that more specialised or focused training could be more attractive to students".