From the check-in process to the
keyless system, from the “In Room”
Dining to the room’s entertainment,
the Hotel system is implementing new
technologies in different ways.
Innovations in this sense happen by
the minute, the swipe cards system will
soon be obsolete and replaced by an
app on your smartphone: Hilton hotel
is leading the way for keyless entry,
the company aims to install keyless
entry service in 2,500 hotels by the
end of the year.
In some service industries, the check-
in process has already become a real
travel experience. In Hong Kong, The
Upper House Hotel features a new
check-in system: the combination
of technology and service starts with
greeting the guest with an iPad and
escorting him to his room, thereby
conducting the guest check-in that
finishes with the room presentation.
Guest expectations are changing so
that means that hotels are changing
too, the industry is entering a golden
age of personalization in response to
evolving consumer expectations.
Most hoteliers know the different
guest profiles staying in their rooms,
and those profiles have specific needs.
By identifying before and during
check-in the general purpose of the
trip, hoteliers can anticipate guest’s
expectations.
An important aspect to best use the
Technology service to guest’s needs is
collecting personal data, all this data
can help hotel operators to deliver a
personal touch for every guest, with
means a significant shift from “full
Service” to “my Service”.
Think about knowing in advance guest
habits, dreams, needs, where you can
easily exceed expectations, leaving a
good impression, delivering the WOW
factor that generates the word of the
month referrals, good feedbacks and
creates repeat guests.
48 ILHA
Among all these actions immediately
visible to the guests, we cannot forget
the interaction between the Hotel’s
system and technology to facilitate
and optimize reservations and guest
interaction. At the end of November 2017 in Paris,
the first Food Hotel Tech Forum took
place, which focused on the three main
areas in food and beverage: targeting
and customer knowledge, sales and
margins, customer experience.
In 2016, during the last Hotel
Visionary Awards ceremony,
the Grand View Lodge (Nisswa,
Minnesota) won the prize “customer-
facing technology innovator”, for their
proprietary reservations platform
through which the Hotel had 3,435
activities booked online. Activities in
fact are the heart of that exclusive
Club and the reservation itself became
a personalized experience. Absolutely the Hotel industry is
revolutionizing itself, its services and
facilities.
Another area where technology is
affecting guest experience is with
In-Room entertainment and client’s
interaction.
HD television is no longer enough
to satisfy client’s needs, Marriott
has taken notice of that trend and
responded by integrating services like
NetFlix and Amazon Video across its
brands, providing a personalized guest
experience that’s in keeping with how
people nowadays watch television.
For sure, technology will become a
more dominant channel for service
delivery in the near future, yet
hoteliers should never forget the
meaning of service itself, work done
by a person that benefits another,
which is why it is still more valuable to
invest in an employee’s smile than in a
technology system.
There will always be times when
technology is not able to anticipate
and understand a client’s needs. It
can never completely replace human
touch or a warm welcome, and while
it represents the tools to provide good
service it can never be identified as the
service itself.
Signboards such as ‘Do not disturb’ are
replaced by infrared and heat sensing
scanners that will tell hotel staff when
a guest is in the room, thereby avoiding
potentially awkward situations.
Soon we will be able to pre-determine
the color of our rooms, the ambient
perfume, the light level, and our
preferred sounds.
Room service and on-site restaurants
also are vulnerable to technology
influences. Seamless.com and other
apps like it allow for easy food delivery
eliminating the need for room service,
especially in urban areas where a broad
variety of high-quality food choices is
available by room service.
A lot of new start-ups have analyzed
food system implementation in the
hotel industry to find a new approach
and solutions.
About the author
Alessandra Orlando is currently holding
the position of Guest Relation and Duty
Manager at Métropole Monte-Carlo.
In her hospitality career of over 10
years she has worked in the three main
operation departments: reception,
concierge and guest relations.
Active and passionate for the hospitality
industry she started traveling the world
at 22 onboard cruise ships, from the
Fjords to Dubai, from the Caribbean to
Russia. She learned how to deal with
customers also in challenging situations
and she met and dealt with Royals and
Celebrities.
Once, during an inspection to evaluate a
new port of call she almost lost the Ship,
but now that port is a quite common
port of call for cruise ships in the
Emirates: Kashab.