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Mobility adds innovation to hospitality [ITP.net (United Arab Emirates)](ITP.net (United Arab Emirates) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) The rise of mobile devices and applications has had an impact in many business sectors, but one area where the consumerisation of IT and demand for mobile services are having the greatest impact is in hospitality. With guests now expecting hotels and resorts to offer the same always on connectivity that they get at home or the office, the hospitality sector is facing a dramatic increase in demand on its networks. At the same time, the possibilities of freeing up functions like check-in from fixed locations, and the ability to push services direct to a guest's mobile device are offering interesting opportunities for the sector. For the Atlantis The Palm, Dubai resort, mobility has become a major, game changing focus for the IT function. Joe Tesfai, senior vice president, Information Technology for the resort, explained: "What we have seen really changing over the past few years is the advent of tablets and smartphones. We have had to reinvent the way we provide services, whether it is in food and beverage, during the check in process or even when the guest goes online to make the registration." The resort, one of the major attractions in Dubai, opened in 2008, and in the six years of operations since, the company has seen an increasing number of guest devices, predominantly iOS devices, connecting to the guest network. Catering for guest WiFi has become a major task for IT departments in the hospitality industry, and Atlantis is no different. "Obviously WiFi is crucial, we are revamping our WiFi infrastructure now, because of the sheer number of devices that we see on a daily basis on the network. The resort was opened six years ago, so it is time we revamped and jump onto the newer technologies," he said. It is not just the guest side that is seeing an influx of mobile devices however, as the resort is increasingly looking to mobility applications to empower staff. One such application is being used to speed up the processes of managing the cleaning for the resorts 1500-plus guest rooms. The daily duty of room cleaning was previously managed on paper, a common process across the industry, but one that is not particularly efficient. Each member of the housekeeping staff would be given a printed sheet of the rooms they had to clean. However, when guests were checking out late or did not want to be disturbed, staff would then have to find the next room to be cleaned — usually resorting to supervisors making telephone calls back and forth to rearrange their schedules. "The scale of our operations, combined with the sheer volume of occupancy during the weekends and the peak season, meant that these delays accounted for a considerable amount of wasted man-hours," said Tesfai. Replacing the out-dated printed sheets, the new application is integrated with front of house systems, so that cleaning staff can be alerted as soon as a room is available for cleaning. For the mobile platform to host the application, Atlantis selected Apple's iPod touch device, because the application was available on iOS, and the devices are small enough to be easily portable and manageable, while still having enough screen real estate to show information like check lists clearly, Tesfai explained. Although the application would bring a great improvement in efficiency, the challenge was how to deploy to a large volume of devices in a secure and efficient manner. The resort needed some 150 iPods for the housekeeping application, and with plans for other mobility applications in future, it was clear that the hotel would require a mobile device management (MDM) solution. "With a lot more iPods on the network, we had to control them. How do we control them, how do we manage them? The same applies in all other areas where we are going to deploy more tablets." Tesfai said. After an assessment of the options on offer, Tesfai selected a solution from AirWatch, now owned by VMware, which would be deployed by local partner and system integrator EMW, who also had an existing relationship with the resort. "We went through a rigorous tendering process and proof of concept process with a lot of other vendors, we have done research, we looked at a lot of Gartner reports about MDM, and Airwatch has always been rated up there. We tested them out and this worked very well. It was more technical and driven by the feature in this MDM." The AirWatch solution was available at a good price point, Tesfai said, and with local support, deployment and training from EMW, the company would be able to quickly get the most from the solution. AirWatch is compatible with all of the mobile device OSs that Atlantis required, and also, as a cloud-based solution, would be both easy to deploy, and would enable administrators to manage the fleet of mobile devices from anywhere. Applications can be updated remotely, meaning there is no need for IT to have to physically manage devices, which is instead handled by the respective departments using the devices. One of the most important features of AirWatch to Atlantis was the ability to containerise content for specific sets of devices, enabling the hotel to easily deploy specific capabilities to large groups of staff. "We were most impressed by the system's content deployment capabilities. The ability to containerize the content and deploy it directly to the vast number of employee devices is something we now see as essential to administration. It helps us ensure that every device is up-to-date. In addition to aiding employee productivity, this also plays a key role in maintaining a high level of security across the endpoints which could otherwise be contributors to data leakage." With the AirWatch solution in place, Atlantis is now putting more of its services onto tablet devices which are issued to staff. Tablets are also in use during check-in, to speed up the process and make it more flexible. "Tablets have proved to be a tremendous boon to guests during the check-in process. By making the details of their booking available to staff through tablet devices, we have managed to reduce the average check-in time of our regular guests by a notable factor," Tesfai said. The mobile strategy is also extending to BYOD. Previously the resort issued BlackBerry devices to senior staff that needed mobile access to applications, but it is now looking to allow more staff to use their own devices, where the AirWatch solution should allow this to be implemented securely. "We have also used Airwatch now for employees in terms of bringing their own device, we were mandating BlackBerry before, but there has been a big shift toward employees wanting to bring their own devices. We have only just started with Airwatch a few months ago, but employees have been coming up and pushing us to be able to bring their own devices for a couple of years." Tesfai said the that AirWatch is being tested for BYOD at executive level at present, and the company is revamping its SharePoint portal to integrate with devices, so key information can be pushed to users, with a focus on areas such as leave approvals and purchase acquisitions, where the company processes a large volume of requests every day, alongside financial information for specific groups. Being able to use the solution to improve guest services is a major driver for BYOD, Tesfai explained: "What really pushed us to consider it was application deployment, utilising it from a guest perspective. If it is guest-related we have a better business case in terms of getting it deployed."Guests services Mobile devices have great potential for the hospitality sector, Tesfai believes, particularly in being able to push services to the guest's own devices. Through the combination of mobile apps for the guest devices, coupled with advanced networking capabilities, a resort such as Atlantis should be able to deliver a much smoother, quicker service where many of the interactions between guest and staff are automated. "In today's world with consumerisation of technology, there is no reason that if you are travelling to Dubai, the moment you get off the plane, the hotel should know you have landed. From that point to the time you get to the hotel, you should be able to check in. "Hospitality needs to make that a lot easier, to the point where you don't even have to stop at the front desk — the hotel has already delivered your key electronically, through NFC, or RFID, and you can go straight to the room, use your mobile device to access the room. There's no need for you to stand inline. "Once you are in the room, if you want to order room service, you take out your device, order room service, order a wake-up call, order a car, you should be able to do all of that through your mobile device; and we use the infrastructure to capture all that information and provide you the service when you want it at the point you want it. The technology is there to do all this." Guest services can also be enhanced with location-based services, Tesfai said. With geo-location services based either on the WiFi infrastructure or BlueTooth low energy (BLE), guests could use an app to enable them to navigate their way around the resort. In turn, the resort would be able track the guest, and push things like special offers from the resort's restaurants to them. CRM integration One of the challenges that the hospitality sector faces is the diverse range of systems in use which hold data about guests, which means that putting all of the guest data into one place for more in-depth analytics becomes difficult. "Unlike other verticals where you have got a core system that manages everything that they do, one core banking system, or an O&G system plus one ERP system, that is all you have, two major systems — in hotels, you would have 30-40 different systems. That information about the guest is coming from everywhere," Tesfai said. "When you talk about integration, there is no nirvana in this industry, we try to get as close as possible to fully integrating everything, but there is no one group that does all of this." The diversity of systems means that there is still a long way to go before the hospitality sector will be able to fully leverage the information it has, through a big data analytics approach, that will allow the data to be used to enhance guest services, Tesfai said, although progress is being made. Atlantis has built its own in-house reservation system, which handles a lot of information about the guest. "If you look at the check-in system, that takes care of everything in relation to the guests, from the point when the reservation is made. It captures the profile of the guest, number and ages of people in the party, their passport information, the payment method, preferences in terms of whether they like a soft pillow, or do they like the chocolate on the bed, what sort of temperature do they like, what channels do they want on the television," Tesfai explained. "All that is captured within that system, so that system is what drives our entire CRM strategy in hotels. "We have got a good CRM team, we have got a good CRM strategy, we just need to leverage the technology from an infrastructure perspective and an analytics perspective to deliver exactly the vision that we are looking for." (c) 2014 ITP Business Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info). |