The Changing Guest Experience

Imagine that a woman is booking her stay for a weekend with the girls, and she receives a personalized ad for a package deal at a hotel’s newly renovated spa. The purchase is easy, simple, and fast. On the day before she’s due to arrive, her phone prompts her to check in (confirming arrival and any requests for hotel staff), and then offers a discount if she’d like to book dinner at the restaurant that evening. She does. Upon arrival, the front desk pulls her guest profile open on a tablet, and has her favorite beverage waiting, per her request. All of these personal touchpoints that have been difficult to manage in the past are now simple to execute.

More and more, technology is enabling businesses to engage guests wherever they are, on whatever device they choose, and at any point in the guest journey: pre-arrival, during their stay, and following departure. From engaging guests in “micro-moments” that drive ancillary revenue with the push of a button, to the ability to offer guests personalized services, hotels today must think about how to leverage the benefits of mobile technology to give guests what they want, how they want, and to get more revenue in return.

Hospitality has lagged behind other major industries when it comes to taking advantage of all that mobile technology has to offer. A recent Google Study found that 69 percent of leisure travelers use their phones to browse and book travel in their spare time, like when standing in line or waiting for the subway, while 82 percent of smartphone users will consult their phone when standing in a store making a purchase decision. One in 10 of those consumers will buy a different product than originally intended, according to a March 2015 study, “Consumers in the Micro-Moment,” by Google/Ipsos. Given the opportunity to both get in front of potential guests and drive additional revenue, hoteliers should consider whether their technology is set up to support robust mobile engagement with guests.

There are countless “micro-moments” in every modern consumer’s day—a few seconds spent Googling how to do something, texting a friend, or checking the score. When consumers “want to do,” “want to go,” “want to see,” and “want to buy,” today they go to their phones first—and they expect a quick, easy experience.

Micro-moments require a user interaction that is tailored toward three things: brief, contextually relevant interactions; a single screen that provides all the information needed to make a decision; and one step to take action. The speed and ease of micro-moments are what make them so effective. Consumers already engage this way all day long. If a hotel’s technology enables mobile engagement, its brand and services will appear like just another thing guests can say yes to.

One way to enable mobile engagement and create micro-moments is with a web-based hotel management system that functions the same on a desktop, laptop, or phone. This will allow for enhanced mobility, through which hotel employees can access information whenever they need it, wherever they happen to be. Provided a hotel’s technology provider has also put thought into user interface optimization, a cloud-based operating system can streamline data collection, dissemination, and purchasing.

The rapid development of cloud-computing combined with mobile technology has made such micro-moments possible (perhaps inevitable), which is why more and more hotels are moving management tools from on-site to online. The more information and operational data that can be stored and monitored securely in the cloud, the more easily it can get to consumers, and vice versa. When hotels make the move toward mobile-optimized technology, the easier it becomes to talk to and learn about their customers, as well.

Theoretically, all a web-based PMS should need to run is a browser and access to the Internet. By mirroring the way consumers interact with technology, a hotel running on a web-based hotel management system can free staff to be mobile and have access to all the information they need to take advantage of each moment with a guest. They can suggest customized offers, check on a room service order when asked, or see whether a room has been cleaned yet. More and more, consumers are coming to expect this, while hotels are seeing the benefit of having better access to more information and the ability to use it effectively.

Skift’s 2014 report on global travel trends identified a new kind of customer, which hotels need to engage: the Silent Traveler. Today, travelers don’t actually need to interact with a person to book a stay, check-in, unlock their door, check-out or get their receipt. Because of this shift, there’s a real chance that a guest could stay at a hotel without ever interacting with a human being. Some customers would even prefer it that way. That means that digital engagement is becoming as important to hospitality as person-to-person interaction.

Technology must be an enabler for hotels to provide an optimal guest experience, without the human element. At the same time, once a guest is at a hotel, the property’s technology should be able to support a customized and immersive experience. The service as a software (SaaS) model that cloud-based solution providers use is now allowing hotels to do so.

Today, technology is ready to provide the tools a hotel needs to be available to guests where and how they want. Now, it’s just a matter of whether hoteliers are ready to use them.

About the Author
SkyTouch Technology is a provider of a cloud-based property management system (PMS) for hotels.