How Would Integrators Handle Hospitality After COVID-19 Shutdowns?

Restaurants, hotels, and retail environments are finally beginning to open after months of lockdowns due to COVID-19. Tell us what you think about this market reopening.

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COVID-19 has created a fundamental shift in the way hospitality environments must operate for the foreseeable future.

For a number of months, in many states across the U.S., restaurants were forced to only allowed to provide orders through delivery or curbside pickup. Retail outlets were by and large closed down completely. Hotels, while remaining open, saw a reduction in guests beside the reduction in countrywide travel.

Now, these environments are beginning to reopen. Restaurants were first allowed to only have customers eat in outdoor environments, while some have been allowed to open the indoor area with tables spread further apart. Retail environments may once again allow customers, but many can only allow a certain number of people in the store at a time. Hotels have had to implement a number of new health and safety protocols to ensure guests are safe while they stay.

Technology could potentially be helpful in these environments in two distinct ways.

First, technology can help on the health and safety side of things. For example, access control solutions and sensors can measure the temperature level of customers to potentially detect those that are in the early stages of COVID-19.

Second, technology can help entice people to leave their homes and return to these hospitality environments. For example, sound systems and digital signage at restaurants that provide an experience that customers can’t get at home.

Many citizens are still wary of returning to hospitality environments, even as they continue to open. The threat of COVID-19 is still serious in the United States particularly, and that means many customers are forgoing a return to normalcy for fear of catching the disease.

We wanted to know what integrators think about the return of hospitality market verticals such as restaurants, retail environments, and hotels. Are you comfortable going? What would make you more comfortable? How would you ensure that customers return if you owned one of these spaces?

Take the quick, 3-minute quiz below and let us know what you would do to bring customers back to hospitality environments:

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