What really happens when you install tech at the front desk

You can buy the fanciest PMS, the slickest self-check-in kiosk, or the most intelligent guest messaging system on the market. And still watch it collect dust because your team at the front desk doesn't use it.

That's the real story Jason Edwards digs into when he talks about what actually happens when new technology hits your reception area. The gap between what the tech can do and what your staff will actually do is where most hotel tech projects die quietly.

Edwards frames this as a change management problem, not a tech problem. The pitfalls are predictable: poor onboarding, resistance from staff who've done things one way for years, misalignment between what the vendor promised and what the operation actually needs. And when a hotel defflags from a brand, things get worse. You lose the support infrastructure, the playbooks, the training ecosystem that corporate used to provide. Suddenly you're building your own tech muscle from scratch, and that's when hotels realize they've been leaning on brand scaffolding they didn't fully understand.

The real opportunity here is seeing tech implementation as an operational redesign, not just a software installation. Hotels that get this right treat their team like decision-makers in the process, not victims of it.