In many cities across the country, businesses in the hospitality and tourism industry are vital to their local economies. Employees at hotels, restaurants, and other services help increase the charm of their destinations by crafting superior experiences for visitors and locals alike. Technology plays an integral role in helping companies elevate guest experiences, but it can frequently hinder their efforts.
Whether your company's IT is currently helpful or harmful, working with a managed service provider (MSP) can be an incredible partnership that helps both your team members and customers. With IT support for hospitality and tourism services, you can use technology to make your business more efficient, resilient, and secure. Learn how an MSP can be a back-of-house team player that makes all the difference for your employees and guests.
Efficient customer-facing experiences
Like other sectors, the hospitality and tourism industry relies heavily on technology to run like a well-oiled machine, keeping its businesses open and its customers happy. Every function depends on efficient IT, from managing reservations and customer-facing interactions to ensuring staff has the correct schedules and resources. If your IT is doing more harm than good, your business can suffer losses in productivity and revenue.
With an MSP handling your company's IT, your team members can better focus on delivering excellent customer experiences free from tech problems. With managed IT help desk assistance, your dreams of guest check-ins and other procedures uninterrupted by IT problems can be your reality. Your MSP can assess your infrastructure, create a schedule for upgrading outdated hardware and software, and identify automations to help increase efficiency in each process.
Infrastructure elements that support your team and customers
The hardware and software that comprise your company's infrastructure can sometimes feel like you’re trying to fit square pegs into round holes. Integrating the latest and greatest systems to enhance your services can be your biggest obstacle, from troubleshooting issues with vendors to ensuring your staff knows how to use them optimally. With so many layers of technology in physical and electronic forms, ensuring each component works is time-consuming and can negatively affect customer-facing interactions.
Partnering with a quality MSP means tech headaches are a thing of the past for your business. As part of their infrastructure assessment, your MSP can identify better ways for each element to collaborate for your customers' benefit. MSPs treat applications and equipment from various vendors like different pieces of a puzzle. Using the best configuration for your employee and guest needs, your MSP can arrange each part of your IT to ensure they work optimally—whether independently and with other components. Additionally, your team members can rest assured knowing that any tech issues will be resolved by an IT support provider they can trust.
Elements of your IT infrastructure that can be added or enhanced with an MSP can include:
- Network hardware
- Email services
- Cloud storage
- Internet of Things (IoT) devices
- Wi-Fi access points
- Antivirus programs
- Workstations
- Virtual machines
- Firewalls
Technology support and consistency across locations
Efficiency struggles can increase exponentially if your business operates from multiple establishments. Hotel and restaurant chains at any scale—from a handful of locations in one county to dozens spread across a state—must deliver a consistent guest experience at every site. Whether you have a dedicated IT person at each location or a team that works with all of them, these employees play a game of whack-a-mole in resolving individual site and interconnectivity issues.
Because MSPs often provide IT support to multiple clients, they’re naturally prepared to support each of your company’s locations. Whether they’re located within 50 or 500 miles of each other, your business establishments receive the same managed IT across the board. Additionally, each site’s team can better communicate and collaborate through the fortified IT elements and support that come with a dedicated managed IT provider.
Minimized service interruptions for guests
In combination with the pressure of creating consistent, memorable customer experiences, hospitality and tourism businesses face the added challenge of doing so around the clock. Operations are expected to run smoothly at all times to facilitate reservations, questions, and other customer service interactions. Without a resilient internet connection or IT infrastructure, your business could suffer significant reputational and financial losses from downtime that forces you to close your doors for good.
Another concern for hospitality and tourism companies is their destinations, which are often more susceptible to significant weather events. Losses from hurricanes and other natural disasters can cause catastrophic losses to the data and operations that keep businesses afloat. Without a comprehensive IT disaster recovery plan, you'll likely struggle to prepare and maintain your operations before, during, or after a significant outage.
In addition to having 24/7 support during minor outages, working with an MSP bolsters your company's overall resilience with the cloud. Cloud computing introduces redundancy to your systems and ensures your operations can be protected from brief internet issues, major disasters, and other common interruptions. Shielding your data is a significant component of resiliency, so your MSP will ensure you implement resilient data storage practices. Sam Blowes, Director of Solution Consulting at Bit-Wizards, shares a high-value service that's hard to find but standard for our clients.
"Most MSPs only create backups of client servers at a somewhat regular interval, meaning anything that's stored on your desktop is lost if an outage occurs," he says. "Our Wizards go above and beyond the standard MSP experience by creating and testing server and desktop backups daily, knowing it saves our clients time, money, and stress."
Adjustable operations to meet customer needs
Besides preparing for the unexpected, promoting your company's scalability is another element of maintaining resilient IT. To succeed, companies in the hospitality and tourism industry must follow the ebb and flow of travel seasons. While adjusting your capabilities for on and off-season periods may seem easy on paper, the logistics of doing so with your IT and personnel are complex. The success and resilience of your business directly depend on the agility of your team and infrastructure.
One of the most beneficial aspects of working with MSPs is leveraging their built-in scalability efforts. Because the cloud offers many cost benefits, your business can quickly become more redundant and scalable with minimal acquisition and maintenance expenses. Additionally, MSPs frequently bill their services based on the number of employees in your company, so adjusting your staffing and capabilities between peak seasons and slower months is a breeze.
Reinforced protections for guest information
The hospitality and tourism industry processes and stores an abnormally high ratio of sensitive customer data, making it a prime target for persistent cyberattacks. While major companies like MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment have recently made headlines, businesses of all sizes are just as susceptible to ransomware and other attacks. If your company falls victim to a breach, it may not survive the impending losses to revenue and consumer trust.
While there's no magic trick to eliminate cybersecurity risks, partnering with an MSP is the best way to ensure your infrastructure is as secure as possible. Your MSP can leverage common IT elements, like firewalls and alert monitoring, that minimize your company's network vulnerabilities and protect your data. Managed IT personnel apply their security expertise and industry standards to your organization, meaning your business can focus on its guests and worry less about potential threats.
Proactive cybersecurity tools for staff
Outside the information hospitality businesses store, IT infrastructure components and employees can leave gaps for hackers to exploit. From employee email security hazards to on-site Wi-Fi vulnerabilities, dozens of access points can be used to gain unauthorized access to your networks and data. While system-related IT security failures are common sources, Blowes highlights how bad actors usually extort the expected qualities of customer-facing personnel.
"Employees in the hospitality and tourism industry are expected to go the extra mile for their customers without hesitation, which is exactly what hackers look for in prospective victims," he says. "Social engineering depends on psychological and emotional manipulation, so a hospitality team member's friendliness and willingness to help makes them great at their job and the perfect target for cyberattacks."
People are often manipulated to permit cyberattacks, so your MSP may also offer tools and training to your employees as an added layer of protection. Because bad actors frequently leverage poor password practices, MSPs typically equip their clients with password managers like LastPass to ensure login credentials are unique, complex, and challenging to crack. Additionally, measures like multifactor authentication (MFA) reinforce foundational security practices. If a breach or suspicious event occurs, your MSP will remediate the issue and let you know how to move forward safely.
At Bit-Wizards, IT is our pleasure
Choosing the right MSP for your business is like searching for a new hire to join your company's team in a customer-facing role. Hospitality companies, no matter their product or specialty, sell experiences to their guests and need friendly, caring, and motivated people. While MSPs provide managed IT as their primary service, their skills are only relevant if accompanied by the people skills needed to assist their clients with empathy and care.
Finding the right provider to fulfill your company's IT needs while meeting your customer service standards can be difficult. With Managed IT Services (MITS) from Bit-Wizards, your business gets the magic combination of IT with a human touch. Our team members have the breadth and depth of expertise needed to deliver effective IT solutions, all while taking the time to understand your issues and how they truly impact your operations.
Ready to elevate customer and guest experiences with magical managed IT? Contact us today.