In recent years, many aspects of the hotel industry have changed and adapted to new advancements in technology. This change comes as vacationers are no longer happy with a sub-par hotel rooms limited to the most basic of features. However, with new technology coming into your establishment, you may find it quite overwhelming and not know what to do. With our help, we can ensure that everything runs smoothly, making life easier for your hotel staff. That is
1. Interactive TV System / PMS
When a guest enters their hotel room, they should not be disappointed by the lack of features presented to them. Therefore, we would suggest the introduction of an interactive TV system. On the surface, TV systems can be beautiful, informative and help you generate more revenue. But the server behind it is where the clever stuff happens.
You can integrate Hotel PMS (Property Management Systems) to enhance the benefits of having an Interactive TV system as well as optimising the efficiency of your hotel. PMS, when integrated with your TV system can customise the welcome screen on guests TVs to say, for example, ‘Welcome Mr. Smith’ as well as allowing you to message them from reception, this message will pop up on their screen as a notification while they are watching TV. The messaging option is much quicker and more efficient way of letting a guest know that they have had a call, their taxi has arrived or that there is someone in reception looking for them.
During the guest’s stay in the hotel, you can give them the option to make purchases off the hotel room TV. You can add whatever services or products you like, whether it may be a late checkout, spa treatments or a bottle of wine. All of this can easily be added to the Guests TVs for them to purchase at any time. Once they have purchased, a message gets sent to the hotel reception to inform you of the purchase and to add it to the room bill.
When the guest comes to the end of their stay, they can view their room bill on the TV screen as a result of the PMS integration. This will allow guest to overview their spend during the stay and give them an option for an express checkout, eliminating the human interaction at the reception making the whole process more efficient as it cuts down queues in the reception area and frees your staff up.
Once the guest has checked out of the hotel room, the PMS will let you know that the room is available for housekeeping to prepare. Furthermore, once the room has been prepared, housekeeping can notify reception via the TV System that the room is ready for a guest to be checked into.
2. Digital Signage Solutions
Digital Signage is becoming more and more popular in the hospitality industry. From digital menu boards, information boards and stunning video walls, digital signage offers hoteliers with a great opportunity to revolutionise the way they communicate with their guests. Although digital signage can be seen as a significant investment for a lot of hotels, it allows hoteliers to effectively interact with their guests, reduce costs and ultimately increase their revenue.
Previously, signage solutions may have been frustrating to update. With cloud-based signage solutions all the hassle is removed and this allows hoteliers to efficiently update content in real time from any location. As a result, queues at reception will not be occupied with people asking about local attractions, instead they can refer to the Signage board to get the information they require, therefor optimising the efficiency your reception area.
The most effective way of using digital signage for a conference room is to have a small screen on the outside of the room that allows passers-by to:
- know that the room is occupied
- book the meeting room for a specific time
- check up on the upcoming meetings
With some signage screens, you do not even need to go up to the room to tell that it is occupied, you can tell from a distance due to the halo lighting around the screen, green indicating that the room is free and red signifying that the room is currently occupied. This isn’t a critical factor but its till nice to have.
3. Voice Command
Voice command is one of the newest, up and coming technologies in the hospitality Industry with it being implemented into some USA hotels but is yet to really breach into the UK market. With devices such as Alexa, Google Home and Apple’s Siri, voice command is all around us and it’s only a matter of time until it is a common feature in our Hotels.
Hotels present a massive opportunity for the use of smart home features in their establishments. Guests would be able to walk into a hotel room and ask the voice command assistant to; turn the lights on, book a table for the on-site restaurant or maybe book a spa day. All of these features give your hotel that ‘wow’ factor being able to make bookings by talking to a device is much more time effective than having to ring down to reception and disturb one of your busy staff members, therefore optimising the way people interact with your hotel and freeing up time for some staff.
Voice command does not only have a place in the bedrooms. It can also effectively be implemented into your conference rooms. During a meeting/ presentation, if someone likes to talk for a bit too long you can always set a timer using a device like Amazon Echo or the Google Home mini, it keeps everyone on track and will not let the meeting run over schedule.
These devices are especially good for filling the time whilst you wait for the last person to turn up who will be there any minute. The Echo and Google Home Mini can tell you all the latest news headlines or even tell you a few (awful) jokes, if that is not your thing then you could always ask it to play you some music whilst you wait.