Convergence For Better Guest Services

The questions being asked by many an IT savvy traveler and guest are ’Do you have WiFi in the hotel?’, ’Are your Business Center facilities available 24 hours a day?’, ’Can your IP TV system plug-in my iPod?’ As a tech savvy traveler yourself, this is a far cry from ’yesteryear’ and the basic facilities hotels used to provide, right?!

The hospitality industry is becoming an increasingly challenging business environment, for luxury hotels, mid-scale, economy hotels and everything in between. With the growing use of on-line hotel booking portals, consumer and business travelers alike can select the lowest-cost option based on price and pre-established quality standards - regardless of consideration of brand. That said, exciting and delighting guests through superior personal experience can not only drive up demand and occupancy rates, but also create valued service opportunities.

Technology convergence and bundled technology services are key differentiators that enable the hospitality industry to further enhance the guest experience, improve operational effectiveness and lower overall IT total cost of ownership. While the latter two are extremely important for a profitable operation, leveraging IT convergence technology to further delight the guest is central to on-going top line growth. Marketed well, convergence and IT service offerings have intangible benefits as well: for example, product differentiation, creating a competitive edge, and brand awareness and loyalty all drive longer term top-line growth.

Excite & Delight the Guest

The ’credo’ for hospitality CIOs is ’enhancing guest experience through technology where hotels are places of relaxation, entertainment and business productivity’. The aim is to establish a ’home away from home’, whereby hotels provide similar technology ’modern conveniences’ that guests have in their own homes or offices.

Future direction and major trends in the hospitality industry look to leveraging convergence technology to excite and delight the guest in the following areas:

Firstly, providing broadband connectivity anytime, anywhere across the property is a strategic imperative across the industry. Today, business travelers aren’t willing to slow down because they are not in the office, while leisure guests expect to be able to share their experiences with loved ones. Already hotels have become a hot bed of hotspot deployment globally with over 36,000 locations according to JiWire. As wireless capabilities become more widely deployed across devices, business and leisure travelers will increasingly expect to be able to access information and resources wherever they are. Progressive entities such as Moevenpick Hotels & Resorts are moving to provide wireless connectivity across the entire property, including, for example, convention areas, golf courses, and spas.

Broadband connectivity also provides an infrastructure for hotel staff (e.g. event coordinators, maintenance and security personnel) to stay connected and thus be better able to respond to guest needs, emergency situations and day-to-day operational challenges. It is only common sense and good business that this be leveraged off the existing infrastructure and core technologies, for example, for WiFi phones for staff and guests, digital signage, and closed circuit TV solutions. Through process intuitive services such as ’one stop shop guest request tracking’, a call received at a central service center can be forwarded by a service representative to a ’runner’ (equipped with a WiFi device anywhere in the hotel complex), who can acknowledge and service the request within minutes. Before long, the networked devices will not just be limited to the hotel-based technology but also to the devices that the guests bring along with them - mobile phones, iPODs, PDAs, video cameras and more.

Secondly, leveraging IP Telephony to enable new phone-based services is an emerging technology that will be here to stay in the luxury hotel segment. With screen-based IP phones, there is now a more friendly approach to put hotel personnel and services and any web-based multimedia information at the fingertips of their guests. For example, special guest promotions could be offered (e.g. a discount to loyal guests on spa services during off-peak hours) and accepted via a touch-sensitive color screen of a phone. Payment could be made via USB-attached card swipe units. A further opportunity exists by linking IP phone applications with property management systems and the room environmental control system, including control of temperature, air circulation, lighting, and curtains. Delivering rich and easily accessible ’just in time’ service to its guests will set a hotel apart from the competition, while tapping into new revenue opportunities. These primary in-room communications vehicles become ’virtual concierges’ to enable enriched functionality like city maps and points of interest, weather facilities, internal and external advertising (as forms of direct and indirect revenue generating opportunities), checking restaurant offerings, menu ordering, SMS messaging capabilities and much more. These are complementary to IPTV for video-on-demand, music-on-demand and online games, just to name a few, providing a holistic approach to enhancing guest experience.

Thirdly, leveraging multimedia IP communications to enhance business meeting and convention services is in the proof-of-concept phase. One major shift to expect is that meetings planned for hotel properties will increasingly include those physically present, as well as others who will participate via multimedia communications - both in real-time and after the event. This is being enabled via “virtual” meeting technologies such as immersive video conferencing, leveraging high definition widescreen video and lower cost video editing and streaming. During the event, multimedia conferencing can be based on integrated delivery-to-video conferencing facilities at other properties. New revenue opportunities include post-meeting capabilities such as streamed video replay to desktops anywhere and audio and video podcasting of the event.

Conclusion

Technology convergence and the bundled technology services provide the hospitality industry with multiple levels of benefits: new opportunities for hotels to excite and delight guests, improve staff effectiveness and lower IT costs. Successful marketing of technology convergence services drive brand loyalty and product differentiation in an increasingly competitive global market. If you must travel, you’ll be the ultimate beneficiary! IT

Tony Rybczynski is Director of Strategic Enterprise Technologies in Nortel, and has over 35 years experience in the application of packet network technology. He writes a monthly ’Inside Networking’ column in Internet Telephony magazine. Roger McFarlaine is VP Technology Middle East & Asia for Moevenpick Hotels & Resorts with over 26 years of IT experience at a local and international level with around 40 hotel/projects openings.

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