One of the most important components of any hospitality business is keeping guests satisfied and impressed. Get the guest experience right and you’ll not only be developing fantastic relationships with loyal customers, but you’ll also earn personal recommendations for new business—because word-of-mouth business is the best business.
Improving the guest experience is a human-to-human business, to be sure, but technology can also be a powerful tool to bring it all together. And it’s the hotel guest that is asking for it: According to PwC, 81% of travelers want to see greater digital customer service from hotel brands.
It is often the case that hospitality businesses that invest in technology to elevate the guest experience find that these technologies also boost productivity and staff morale, as well as create a better all-round working atmosphere. In this article, we’ll examine the ways that technology can be used to elevate guest experiences in the hospitality sector and do this by going through a range of possibilities for utilizing technological advances.
Contactless Check-In
Hotels are using technology all throughout the customer journey both to make the experience easier for the guest and to minimize the time used by staff—and this includes right at the beginning of the process. It is now becoming more common to see contactless check-in, where guests do not need to interact with hotel staff at all before they check into their room.
This means the installation of self-service kiosks, as well as the use of mobile apps to allow guests to simply check themselves in, get their room details and head on their way. This is often incorporated alongside non-traditional room keys (but more on that later).
It is easy to understand how this kind of technological step forward benefits customers. Hotels have often struggled from the perspective of managing check-in lines at busy times, such as when check-in opens. Using faster, self-service kiosks, as well as having the option to check in with staff, speeds up the process for everyone.
It can also free up more staff time to be able to offer additional services to guests, such as personalized welcome tours, or simply allow staff more time to help guests with other matters.
Contactless Payment
One of the major ways that technology has influenced the customer experience in hotels in recent years has come in the way that guests pay for services. In the past, hotels that have relied on cash services or were required to pay at the hotel desk have found themselves using up a significant amount of customers’ time waiting for them to pay.
Moving to contactless payment services, such as Apple Pay or SumUp card readers, can significantly increase the speed of transactions and make the whole process much simpler and more familiar to guests. As the world has become increasingly digitized, individuals have become used to being able to pay instantly for products or services. Finding themselves in a hotel and having to wait to pay can feel like a pain.
Mobile Keys
There also now exists the possibility of checking into a hotel without any interaction with hotel staff. This might leave some traditional hoteliers confused: How do guests get their room key without speaking to someone? It is becoming increasingly common to see guests gain access to their room using technology-based key solutions. These can include digital key systems, such as OpenKey, which allows guests to access their hotel room using their smartphone. This type of solution offers increased levels of convenience to guests, as well as better security. If you’re worried that few guests are ready for this kind of switch, there is data that says 74% of hotel guests would use mobile key technology if offered the opportunity.
In-Room Personalization
Some elements of technology improving the guest experience are less direct and more tangential. For example, having the opportunity to use internet connected IoT devices, such as smart thermostats, in-room lighting and voice assistants, can make the whole stay a little more luxurious and allow guests to customize in-room conditions around their specific preferences.
Sometimes it really is the small details that make a big difference to the stay, such as having the ability to set the room temperature when outside of it via an app. What’s better than walking into a nice cool room when it’s sweltering outside?
Dining Experiences
All elements of the hotel and hospitality experience can be transformed by technology. A good example of this is in hotel food and beverage. It can be the simple things, such as making sure the restaurant and bar menus are available digitally, that add the extra touch to a stay. But technology can have a far greater impact in this area, too. A hotel can invest in apps that allow guests to make reservations or even order directly from their table without waiting for staff to be free. This might feel like a small step, but eating and drinking is always key element in how guests feel about their experience during a stay—it means a lot.
Given that extended stays are becoming far more common, there is a greater need for hotels to be offering a service that is akin to the kind of lifestyle that guests would expect at home. This undoubtedly means putting a greater focus on the integration of technology in a way that is helpful and unobtrusive.
There are many ways that hotel guests can benefit from technological advances, but remember that this is also true for hotels. Technology can increase staff productivity or free them up to get on with tasks that elevate the total guest experience.
Happy guest, happy owner!
Story contributed by Lucy Cromwell, a UK-based property management specialist.Â