While there’s no equivalent to learning a hard lesson firsthand, some of the best lessons come from the mistakes others make.
That’s why I’m hoping every company out there has watched what has happened with Southwest Airlines and immediately double- and triple-checked with their IT department to make sure their situation is nowhere near as dire.
If you are for some reason not aware of what happened with Southwest recently, here’s a quick overview: The combination of a bad winter storm with Southwest’s outdated scheduling software led to countless flight delays and cancellations over the holidays.
The Dallas Morning News published an article breaking down the company’s long-standing tech issues. Southwest historically has been slow to update existing technology as well as practices that would introduce technology — such as electronically delivering baggage, weather and other reports to pilots and managers — instead of a paper-based system, for help streamlining 4,000 flights a day.
Its crew scheduling system was digital, but it’s an internally created system that can break down even in mild weather events, leaving employees to have to call the crew scheduling help desk. When there is a large number of people trying to use the system, it gets overwhelmed.
There’s been a lot of discussion around whether Southwest should have invested in updating its systems instead of its latest round of stock buybacks. Sure, maybe, but honestly, such a major tech overhaul would take a long time to do and require the company to have made these moves long before the winter storm over the holidays.
What does that tell you? You can only kick the can down the road so far. At some point, your luck is going to run out and your systems, whether they’re property management or revenue management or whatever, are going to slow you down, possibly even crash, and leave you in the lurch.
The hotel industry is known for being cautious about adopting the latest in tech, and that’s fine in some cases, but brands, owners and operators can’t take that approach when it comes to the technology they’re already using. Updates and new systems are expensive and can be a big pain to implement, but they're necessary to make sure your business stays operational.
If nothing else, think about your hotel employees who are doing their best to work with angry, confused and/or tired guests who just want to check in to their rooms. It's not their call whether to invest in tech upgrades, but they're likely the ones handling the brunt of guest frustration should anything go wrong.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.