Impulsify, Inc. reports a 235% increase in deployments of their ShopPoP: Self-Service Kiosk in 2021. The hotel retail software company attributes the significant gain in self-service technology to the labor crisis in hospitality that has many hoteliers seeking ways to reduce traffic at the front desk.
With the grab-and-go retail revenue of hotels showing a 40% rise from 2020 to 2021, as measured by Impulsify POS retail solutions, the demand for packaged food and beverage has become a consequential burden for front desk teams. Many hoteliers have turned to Impulsify to add a self-service kiosk to the store to alleviate the need for guests to stand and wait in the check in line to purchase water, snacks, and quick meals from the store.
“Hospitality is a resilient industry for sure, but these front desk associates are exhausted!” empathizes Janine Williams, CEO of Impulsify. “We have select-service hotels ringing hundreds of transactions per month and full-service ringing 2-3 thousand! This means guests wait in line for check ins, phone calls, service issues while trying to just buy a bottle of water.”
ShopPoP was launched in 2017 as an upgrade to Impulsify’s award-winning front desk POS solution, ImpulsePoint: Retail Management Solution. The SaaS software solution automates inventory, retail transactions, and product performance tracking. For two years, the self-service kiosk was a quick, yet highly beneficial, fix for busy airport hotels and high occupancy hotels to offload some of the traffic a successful retail store creates in a hotel lobby.
However, in 2020, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, self-service became a lobby essential across the industry as restaurants closed, breakfast went away, and guests became hesitant to have strangers behind plexiglass touch their food and beverage purchases.
Now, as hospitality recovers amidst an unprecedented labor shortage further complicated by wage inflation, savvy hotel owners are actively seeking technology solutions that automate operations and reduce the need for additional labor that is hard and expensive to maintain.
“If you can reduce 500-1000 retail transactions per month from hitting the front desk, your team will thank you, and so will the line of guests waiting to check in while your associate stops to look up the price of a 2-pack of Tylenol… that matters,” says Williams.
The ability to purchase in-store at a self-service kiosk rather than wait in line at the front desk is a clear preference as 92% of retail transactions have moved to the kiosk when the option was made available, according to 2021 retail transactions.
“The owners and management companies who invest there win on multiple levels: increased revenue, reduced burden on tired front desk teams, and a better guest experience,” asserts Williams. ShopPoP: Touchless launched at HITEC 2021 this year allowing a guest to scan a QR code on the kiosk screen and complete the transaction using their phone to eliminate contact with the tablet surface.
