If there’s been a silver lining for the hotel industry in the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders in technology roles say it’s spurred needed changes.

Speaking during the “IT leadership” panel during the online HT-Next 2020 conference, Choice Hotels International’s Chief Technology Officer Brian Kirkland said he saw a marked shift in his company’s—and its franchisees’—appetite for change during the global pandemic.

“Even our leadership’s appetite for change evolved overnight,” he said. “Red tape basically disappeared. So we’ve been able to transform even faster during the pandemic than ever before. And we never really had to stop a lot of our major transformation initiatives, which as the CTO, I’m very happy about.”

He noted the company continues to migrate more operations to the cloud and continues to invest in a “long-term digital transformation.”

John Laplante, chief information officer for G6 Hospitality, said migrating his company’s core systems—including property management and central reservations—to the cloud has helped keep its operations “more agile.” Ultimately, having that data and information available at a moment’s notice across G6’s portfolio was key to ensuring a positive guest experience.

“So when we really had to look at being able to stay open, and frankly, by the minute changing what was happening at hotels across the brands, we were ensuring that when guests were looking at the website or an OTA that when a room said it was available it actually was available when they booked that room,” he said.

One of the biggest, recently unveiled projects for G6 and its Motel 6 and Studio 6 brands is a new website, Laplante said, adding he’s glad to see that project continued unabated during the downturn.

“So we’ve continued down our cloud journey, and our website was our last piece of critical architecture,” he said.

Michael Mrini, director of information technology for Edwardian Hotels London, said that while some of his company’s efforts have been slowed by the pandemic, it has benefited from having a focus on technology over the years.

“It came in extremely handy in the pandemic because of our technology focus for many years, especially since 2015, has been on empowering both our guests and employees through mobilization,” he said. “So, our employees have been working on the mobile apps since 2015. And we’ve augmented it with (artificial intelligence).”

Mrini said the company’s AI chatbot has been extremely useful in this period. He said employees spent years marketing it to guests as a value add but the environment shifted so much during the pandemic the guests started asking about it on their own.

Sources said technology has been an increasingly important aspect of keeping their workforces as efficient as possible in trying times.

Laplante said moving all of G6’s systems to the cloud was a huge benefit when the company’s corporate offices closed down and the employees who manage those systems transitioned to working from home.

“So, because of these systems, our team members did not miss a beat supporting our own operations or our franchise operations, which was critical for them to be able to move forward, as well,” he said.

He said the transition to working from home for his IT team was “really quite seamless.”

That’s increasingly key as it gives G6 a leg up in retention, and in a low-revenue environment, his company can’t invest in recruiting new talent.

Mrini said technology has played a key role in making sure his company was staffing at appropriate levels in low-demand environments. He said AI-driven revenue management systems helped project occupancies as the portfolio began to gradually reopen in August, which helped predict the right number of housekeepers needed and where they’re needed.

That shifting environment also brought communications challenges for the workforce, which once again Edwardian Hotels London looked for solutions via its AI chatbot. He said the chatbot can access its workforce management system and can relay information on things like their schedules.

“It’s great because it knows every employee, it knows who is scheduled to work and who is not,” he said.

Kirkland said the focus for Choice has been on doing what it can to keep franchisees in business, such as pivoting tech efforts to focus on things like helping them get federal aid and retain employees.

Kirkland said he’s thankful that IT staffing has been stable from a corporate standpoint, which helped deal with the “massive evolution” spurred by the pandemic. He said continuing the evolution will be key, noting that what things look like after the pandemic is unclear.

“What we’re trying to figure out is what’s the next norm,” he said. “Everybody knows the world we’re in today is a temporary state, but what is the end state going to look like when we get past the pandemic? What does that do to evolving how we work?”

Kirkland said the only way to cope with that is retaining a highly skilled workforce. He’s hopeful that offering the ability to work remotely opens up new recruitment possibilities for his team.

“Now we can recruit them from anywhere,” he said. “They can come work for us even if they aren’t near our technology headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. We can hire somebody anywhere to come work for the company. So that’s opening up our opportunity to bring talent in to drive that innovation even further.”