EDITOR’S NOTE: South King Media Founder/Publisher Scott Schaefer serves on the Board of Directors for the Seattle Southside Chamber of Commerce.

On Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021, the Seattle Southside Chamber of Commerce held its 2021 PNW Hospitality & Retail Summit online.

The Zoom event provided insight into the status of our economy from experts, with a focus on economic recovery since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speakers included Anthony Anton from the Washington Hospitality Association, John Engber from the Washington Retail Association, and Mark Everton from the Seattle Southside Regional Tourism Authority.

One topic discussed was new technologies have been used in these sectors during the pandemic.

“I think you will absolutely see a permanence of some version of wherever QR codes go in their tech where we’re going to go beyond just bringing up the menu,” Anton said during the webinar. “Pretty soon you’ll be ordering right on your phone and you’ll put in your allergies, right in your phone, and it’ll remember what you ordered last time for a bottle of wine. I think we’re going to get to keeping hospitality rates steady to some degree via the evolution of QR codes, now that they’re widely accepted. I think checking in online and virtual concierges are probably permanent where you’re going to get to your room and you can text someone to ask what’s the best restaurant in town and to some degree a lot of these services might become contracted out.”

Learn more by watching the full video below (running time 1-hour, 17-minutes):