The hospitality industry hasn’t moved as fast as the rest of the world when it comes to digitalisation and technological advances. This creates a lot of challenges for the IT within the hotel. But there are ways to not only meet these challenges, but turn them into tools for success. Here’s how.
Turn your hotel’s IT challenges into a tool for success
It’s an understatement to say that the digital way of life has transformed both the guest journey and the hospitality industry. New demands and behaviours have forced hoteliers to rethink and reshape their operations and marketing strategies, and to keep up with the times they also need to update and overhaul their technology in order to attract, acquire, engage, service, and retain today’s tech-savvy and digitally-enabled guest across multiple digital touch points, channels and devices. In short – hotels need to get the right technology and a smart digital strategy to stay relevant and successful.
This can be a challenge for those responsible for the hotel’s IT. As an industry, the hospitality sphere hasn’t moved as fast as other industries when it comes to the digital transformation and exploring all its benefits. But there are ways to use these challenges to your advantage and as a way to increase the success of the hotel. Let’s look at how…
New IT challenges, and then some Digital technology is transforming the hospitality industry as we speak, and it’s making its way into every aspect of the operations of a hotel: booking, guest services, ancillary sales, communications and feedback, re-engagement, revenue management, marketing etc. This creates a lot of challenges for the IT-managers in the industry:
- Insufficient budget: While the need for new technology and digital solutions increases, the IT-budget usually stays the same. This makes it hard to maintain, update and scale the IT-infrastructure.
- Poor infrastructure and Wi-Fi: The networks in the hotels are not keeping up with the times or the guest demands. If the digital infrastructure isn’t up to standard it will result in unhappy guests and bad reviews.
- Too many suppliers and scattered networks: Too many different systems with no convergence will make IT hard to manage. It becomes time-consuming and frustrating to find out what’s wrong and who’s supposed to fix the problem. It’s difficult to get expert support or any resolution.
- Unstable systems: Take both time and money to fix and keep up and running. Any problems or downtime will create frustration both for the staff and the guests, and may cause unhappy guests to leave bad reviews and not return.
It can be quite a challenge to use new technology in everyday hotel operations to improve guest satisfaction, efficiency, productivity and revenue while struggling with all these problems. But there is a way to bridge that gap.
A stable solution for a successful digital guest experience
At InnSpire we want to help hotels meet these challenges by providing smart solutions that bring efficiency and satisfaction, but most of all a stable and reliable digital experience for both the guests and the hotel.
InnSpire is a modular solution that’s agile, secure, future-proof, and easy to setup and use. With tools like GuestMagic.AI, H-Commerce, Any-Screen Concept, analytics and real-time surveys the hotel can use the platform to create satisfaction and engagement, give a better and more personalised service, make the guests spend more, leave great reviews and return. But it is also a scalable, flexible, light-weight and self-sustaining solution for the hotel that will accommodate to your needs, infrastructure and budget. Let’s take a look at what it can offer.
- One modular solution with all the power. InnSpire is not just another system that adds to the confusion. It’s built to meet all the needs you and your guests have while getting along just fine with your existing infrastructure. We “talk” to all your back-end solutions (70 PMS/POS/ticketing etc. solutions and counting).
- Lightweight and reliable. InnSpire is server-light or even cloud-based. The hotel will get all the power and speed of the latest technology, but without servers or other hardware. Less equipment means less maintenance and trouble, and of course no need for big hardware investments. The solution is also watching itself thanks to self-diagnostics. If there’s any irregularities the system will alert both your local IT-staff and InnSpire’s support so any problem can be dealt with before the guests even notice. InnSpire’s hardware is also equipped with a tiny independent processor mounted on the main-board which “pings” the main solution constantly. If there’s no response, or if there’s any instability, the processor momentarily cuts the power and automatically reboots the device. We’ve never had any downtime with our solution, because we built it that way.
- InnConnect Wi-Fi. Strong, stable and easy accessible Wi-Fi is the foundation of the hotel’s digital experience, with the guest’s own device as the primary tool of interaction. InnConnect is a user friendly, device agnostic and branded solution. It’s fast, stable, modern, customisable, easy to manage and works on every type of device. Login and authentication is simple and immediate, including social network logins.
- Consultancy. The reason we were able to create a stable solution that meets all these new technological challenges is because we know the hospitality industry through and through. We understand what the guests want, the needs of the hotel and its IT-department, and how fast everything evolves, and we know what it takes for a hotel to function and thrive. With this insight and knowledge we’re not only able to offer future-proof solutions that deliver a consistent experience – we can also bring order to your IT-chaos, and guide you toward perpetual innovation and efficient scaling. As consultants we provide advice, insights and proactive support (by anticipating and resolving any issues proactively). We can help consolidate suppliers and create convergence. We can find exclusive and tailored solutions based on the understanding of your needs, integrating any and all services that you have in mind and making it simple to add services later on. All while considering your infrastructures, your IT-vision, and your budget. We know the right questions to ask, determining what your needs are, how to make the most of the network you are already using, and what the future may hold for you. That is why our consultancy services are second to none: we understand your needs and challenges, how quickly our world continues to evolve, and what it takes for a hotel to be successful.
In the hotel industry, we have found strategies that work. The InnSpire team have years of hospitality industry experience, and can devise products and services that will help you reach all your goals. If you would like to know more about how we can help you bridge the gap between challenges and success, please visit www.InnSpire.com
About InnSpire
InnSpire’s innovative Guest Media Streaming system allows hotels to generate more sales, offer more entertainment, and analyze and optimize results using a single platform that’s easy to update or change according to the hotel’s preferences. Having partnered with world-class hotels on every continent, Swedish-based InnSpire has become widely recognized for its ability to offer solutions that are comprehensive, cost effective, and remarkable easy to set up and maintain.
For more information, visit the website at www.InnSpire.com.