Blackberry in Luxury Hospitality

In the hospitality industry, technological innovation such as the mobile technology could bring many opportunities to enhance the guest experience. Those smartphones devices that provide constant updates on information enable a faster communication…

In Paris, in 2002 the luxurious Plaza Athenée Palace was as always looking to provide the best service to his customers. By providing Blackberry Smartphones to the team, they enabled a faster communication between co-workers to get an excellence service.

Why did they adopt this tool? The Plaza Athenée is one of the most prestigious hotels in Paris which means customers are expecting nothing else but perfection. As explain by Marie Christine Vittet, IT Director at the Dorchester collection group “with more than 500 co-workers, our need in terms of communication is important” and the Blackberry solution provide a real time communication. The main question was which type of smartphones? We all agree to say that Iphone and Blackberry are mainly driving the market.

The choice was made also according to fact of getting through an interface between Blackberry and Micros Fidelio, a PMS that enable updates on information even when traveling about occupancy rate, revenues, Revpar…

“When I was visiting London, I was able to arrange the vacation of a large group using the BlackBerry smartphone to communicate with different departments of the hotel. The client was very impressed with our responsiveness and our efficiency, which of course is very important for our brand.” Julia Pelte, Guest relations Director.

The use of smartphone for the Top management team and other key positions had bring to many improvements; guest service experience is an example. Since this application of smartphones has been incorporated in the works, managers do not have to pass by the office to check if there are mails that will demande changes in operation. Palaces are 24/7 adapting the service to the customer and since this implementation manager are more confident in getting real updated informations. 

Keywords: smartphone – service excellence – information update – palace

(Plaza Athenee Hotel provide perfection thanks to Blackberry solution, 2002) http://uk.blackberry.com/newsroom/success/hotel_plaza_athenee_fr.pdf