Explore Tech
What inspired us to create ExploreTECH?
2020, the Hospitality and Travel industry, among other business sadly affected, was delivered a knockout punch like no other in history.
Even industry giants who were previously considered untouchable felt the pain, and massive restructures were inevitable across the industry.
Technology adoption had been important for many years, but the global pandemic only accelerated the inevitable and pushed it to the forefront of business management. Suddenly, businesses were being forced to adapt new touchless technologies, add new revenue streams and monitoring systems. They had to acquire new tech hardware in their business to have a cleaner and safer environment not only for their customers and guests, but also their employees. Remote working and distributed teams used to be the exception, but is now almost business as usual for many.
When our team came together in early 2021, we knew the selection and sales process of technology had to be improved. We wanted to see technology adoption and digital transformation improve significantly in a region which until today has proven to be resilient to the impact of the pandemic. The development pipeline in the region is strong, and the Middle East and Africa region still has many years of strong growth ahead of it. Africa’s workforce is projected to grow to 1 billion and be the largest in the world by 2040.
Some key questions became apparent:
How do you embrace technology to accelerate revenue and create value?
How does your business manage more with less with the help of technology in an ever-changing marketplace?
The pain points in the industry make this challenging, as the market is very fragmented both from a buyer and vendor point of view. Resources on both sides are limited, and the expertise regarding technology investment is usually lower or lacking at both an independent, and national brand, level.
High turnover in the industry often means valuable experience of implementing appropriate tech solutions is easily eroded, and there are limited resources and time for discovering new ones. As a result, many business and their decision makers become stuck in a “comfort zone” of technology usage, tending to stick with older solutions that may no longer be fit for purpose, or are limiting their scope for growth in a highly competitive market.
