“Never before have guests been able to check-in, select their rooms from a digital floor plan, and customize their rooms to be ready for arrival. We are truly revolutionizing the industry, and this is just the tip of the iceberg for digital at Hilton Worldwide,” said Ms Calpin, global head of digital. In the next few months, Hilton plans to introduce this system across hotels in Asia, India, China, and Japan and by the end of the year 2015, the company expects to offer the digital service at all U.S. properties of four brands: Conrad Hotels & Resorts, Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts and Canopy by Hilton.
Ritz-Carlton Hotels and Resorts also try to keep up with the times and, besides mobile check-in, suggest services that customers are willing to have or even those they have not thought about yet. The brand has launched an app that provide a “luxury experience for its guests”.
With this tool guests can: order poolside or room service; make service requests (such as: replacing toothbrush, ordering extra washcloth or soaps, etc.), make mobile check-in and check-out. Moreover, “Shareable Experiences” feature allows guests to share experience and memories – “to modify and enhance travel photos with digital stamps, titles, and filters (specific to the particular property and geographic location) to create retro travel posters to share via social media or save as digital souvenirs”.
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*Ritz-Carlton’s New
Mobile App. Source:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/micahsolomon/2014/08/18/ritzapp/
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Despite all the advantages that technology can bring into check-in process, many hoteliers are still hesitating to introduce them. The reasons could be:
• cost of the new technology implementation
• security of a new system
• cellphone or mobile device problems (dead battery or loss of a device)
Hoteliers are also afraid that check-in process will not be a memorable experience anymore. However, some hotel managers have found an alternative solution to avoid long and tiring process.
Auberge Hotels and Resorts, chain of 5-star properties, and Andaz, new five star hotel brand from Hyatt Hotels, decided to redesign the process of check-in but keep personal contact to improve customer experience and satisfaction from the very beginning. To avoid boring standing in line, guests are greeted when they come in personally by the employees. They use a roving iPad to check people in and check them out. After this innovation was implemented, managers noticed changers in customer behavior: “We started to see people’s behaviors change immediately when we got rid of the front desk and replaced it with an employee with a tablet–an employee who actually stands side-by-side with the guest. The new arrangement immediately created more of a peer to peer relationship” said Sara Kearney, VP of International Operations for all of the Hyatt brands.
We will be able to see in the nearest future, how all these digital innovations will affect personal relationship between clients and service providers. Will “hospitality” industry still be oriented towards emotional experience or will it focus on technological development and innovations? In Japan, for instance, in 2017, the first hotel with robots will open its doors to the guests. It might be an interesting experience to visit and to spend a couple of days in a place, where all services are provided by robots who look like humans. On the other hand, maybe for someone it will be weird and scaring? Anyway, technological revolution in hospitality industry is obviously round the corner. So let us just wait for a little bit and we will see how hoteliers will adapt to the changing tourist’s needs and what direction they will choose.
Nadya Levitskaya and Leonarda Miglietta
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