WHAT IS ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION AND HOW IT CHANGES THE TRAVEL AND HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY
You see automation everywhere you go: once you visit the local café and pay contactless together with your phone, once you hop during a cab ordered online, once you reach the office and sit right down to check your scheduling software. McKinsey Global Institute reports that over 40% of employees waste their time on manual, repetitive tasks. If you’re one among them, you recognize the worth of business process automation: it gives you longer to grow the business instead of run the business.
The travel and hospitality industry faced many challenges within the last two years, from total lockdowns and closed borders to strict health and safety regulations. Knowing that mundane tasks like request processing, answering calls and queries, approvals, and cancellations take an enormous a part of the employees’ time period, these front-office and back-office operations are the primary to automate.
This article is that the start line of learning about robotic process automation and its applications in travel and hospitality. First, we’ll define RPA and its types, determine how it works, and the way to use it in hospitality. Then, we’ll check out the advantages of robotic process automation and therefore the opportunities it brings for the travel and hospitality business.
What is robotic process automation (RPA)?
Robotic process automation (RPA) may be a business process automation technology that employs digital workers — software or hardware systems — to perform repetitive tasks. RPA often comes within the sort of AI (AI), machine learning (ML), and data processing algorithms focused on primarily office-type functions. For instance, RPA software are typically programmed to try to complex multistep operations like autofilling forms, sending messages, checking document accuracy, updating spreadsheets, moderate content, hunt and notify about malicious data patterns, and more.
The best part is that RPA requires minimal (or none at all) human intervention, works 24/7, and reduces the error rate to a practical zero. As a result, everyone benefits from workflow automation: employees consider their role-specific tasks and eliminate do-overs; business owners save company costs and obtain more work wiped out less time. This might be the rationale why robotic process automation software successfully replaces human employees in nearly any industry, from banking and healthcare to manufacturing and production, fueling the pace of worldwide hyperautomation.
RPA within the hospitality industry From an end-user perspective, using robotic process automation tools is simply as easy as using the other office software. In fact, office software has already adopted business process automation as its key feature. For instance, Microsoft Power Automate offers workflow automation across Microsoft products, including Microsoft Teams and OneDrive.
With that information in mind, here’s the punchline: robotic process automation in travel and hospitality is not any different from the other industry, but it’s its specifics. RPA takes care of front-office and back-office operations and may be a neighborhood of booking engines, hotel property management solutions, and different hotel management software that handles billing, invoicing, guest check-ins, etc. So, while the essence of automation remains an equivalent, operations like guest check-in or hotel reservation require industry-specific expertise.
As is usually the case in software development, the key to success is finding a team of qualified automation-wise developers. Blackthorn Vision accounts for over 10 years of providing hospitality software development services and partnering with companies within the hospitality sector. Our business process automation solution, Until Web Management, is employed in additional than 13 countries round the world. It brings all restaurant data together and leverages robotic process automation tools for data management, price and menu updating, and generating custom reports. Check our robotic process automation case study here.
How does RPA work?
Without digging into technical details, the entire process of RPA configuration are often divided into three parts: training, operation, and orchestration.
Training takes up to 90% of the time and doesn’t require any coding or technical skills. Typically, users give instructions through an easy interface or screen capture: they complete a task once in order that RPA can capture and reproduce it step-by-step.
Once training is completed, RPA can operate in two ways:
· Attended. It means users got to keep an eye fixed on RPA, triggering bots to start or finish completing their tasks.
· Unattended. Unlike attended, unattended RPA operates without human intervention. These bots run within the background of servers or virtual machines and begin their job automatically by using pre-programmed trigger events.
Attended vs. unattended RPA
Subsequent step is optional and preferred for multiple robotic process automation solutions that employment as a team. A team of bots, each performing a special task, needs human-controlled orchestration. In practice, orchestration means employing an instrument panel that permits users to put in, configure, manage, and monitor bot activity.
Regardless of the task complexity, RPA workflow depends on the sort of robotic process automation software. So, let’s take a better check out the foremost common sorts of RPA and their use cases within the travel and hospitality industry.
Types and samples of robotic process automation solutions
There are various approaches to categorizing robotic process automation tools, yet all of them fall under two categories: rule-based automation and cognitive automation.
Rule-based automation
This type of RPA is more traditional because it doesn’t require decision-making or analysis. It mostly refers to rule-based systems that believe user commands: what data to gather, where to save lots of files, when to launch, and so on. Rule-based RPA is that the most ordinarily used RPA in business and shows astounding leads to handling simple tasks and scaling many business automation processes.
But let’s get more specific. Here are some use cases of rule-based robotic process automation tools within the travel and hospitality industry:
- Customer support chatbots that answer queries
- RPA bots that get customers updated about booking status and flight schedules
- Hotel price comparison RPA
- Automated hotel reservation management
- Automated assignments for travel and hospitality stuff
- RPA-powered CRM with automated order processing, compliance reporting, and more
- RPA solutions for automated billing and invoicing
- Automated refunds
- Automated cancellation and issue resolution
Despite all the benefits of traditional robotic process automation software and unlimited applications across industries, this sort of RPA has its limitations. As an example, rule-based bots cannot suit changes in UI without human intervention or recognize images and human speech. That’s when the second sort of RPA comes into play.
Cognitive automation
Cognitive automation is that the sort of RPA that leverages AI and deep learning technologies to make independent, self-learning virtual employees. These intelligent robotic process automation systems can recognize human speech and handwriting, images, data patterns, also as analyze them and generate data-driven forecasts. When applied in travel and hospitality, these virtual assistants can personalize guest experiences, build up the communication process, and take hotel management systems to subsequent level of efficiency.
However, cognitive automation requires custom software development to suit a selected business case and company’s needs. Therefore, you would like to settle on a software development company with proven experience in machine learning and AI that gives custom software development services. Once you discover the proper software development partner, you’ll employ cognitive automation in rule-based workflows and multiply your business’s productivity and profit.
The transformation of travel and hospitality with RPA
Digital transformation and technology adoption remain the most important trends within the hospitality industry, and for an honest reason. Industry competition, pandemic-induced market shifts, and increasing consumer expectations drive business owners to vary their ways of managing hospitality business and guest experience. Besides, customers prefer touch-free digital experiences to flesh-and-blood human contact (check our article about trends within the travel and hospitality industry). They expect fast and hassle-free service that’s only achievable with technology.
Robotic process automation is comparatively new for the hospitality industry, but it offers numerous benefits for hotels, restaurants, and travel agencies, including:
- Effective revenue management and data-driven insights for better financial strategy
- Flexible scheduling that adjusts housekeeping to guest flows
- Personalized guest experience and seamless data communicatio
- Reduction of compliance costs
- Elevated data security and analytics
- Improved health safety for guests and employees
- Hassle-free booking process
- Automated upselling and bigger revenue opportunities
- Ability to leverage customer data to market customer loyalty and satisfaction
According to Deloitte Global RPA Survey, 61% of C-level executives met or exceeded their cost reduction goals by using robotic process automation. Moreover, 92% reported improved compliance, 90% enhanced quality or accuracy, and 86% up-leveled operation productivity. While IT, manufacturing, and healthcare sectors stand on the frontier of RPA adoption, travel and hospitality are only beginning to come to their senses after the worldwide pandemic and searching for tactics to grow. Time is an impatient thing, and therefore the sooner you join the sport and keep step with innovations, the more opportunities you’ll have in years to return.
Your easy start for travel and hospitality automation
While we’re only at the start of the digital business transformation within the travel and hospitality industry, it’s clear that RPA brings a mess of advantages. Let’s recap what we learned today:
- Robotic process automation utilizes software to automate repetitive office tasks and free human workers from routine.
- RPA within the hospitality and travel industry has its own workflow-related specifics; hence it should be developed by a team experienced therein domain.
- There are two sorts of RPA: attended and unattended. Attended RPA needs human intervention, while unattended RPA runs independently.
- As subdivisions of unattended RPA, we will highlight rule-based and cognitive automation.
- Cognitive automation is that the most advanced category of RPA and includes AI, machine learning, and computer vision systems.
- There are many robotic process automation benefits for the travel and hospitality industry, including cost reduction and enhanced revenue management.
- RPA market keeps growing, and following this trend from the beginning will offer you a competitive advantage.
Whether you’re trying to find rule-based or cognitive automation, you would like access to skilled professionals to make sure reliable robotic process automation software delivery. Blackthorn Vision implements business process automation for over a decade and knows all nuances of travel and hospitality software development. Apart from developing end-to-end hospitality software, we offer robotic process automation services across multiple touchpoints, and augment your existing workforce with dedicated development teams.
So, if you would like a hand in hospitality software development, leave us a message. We’re always able to assist!
