Digital transformation has been a trending term in the hospitality industry. Although many are left with the impression that it simply involves employing digital technologies, the term refers to a much bigger picture.
The process certainly involves digitization but also fundamental cultural and operational change, ready to meet any expectation and set new trends and standards with innovative ideas.
Many hotel owners and managers face the difficulties of forming a digital transformation strategy for their business. Using property management systems is not enough anymore. Today’s blog post will focus on some hotel digital transformation ideas that you can implement in your transformation strategy, impress your customers and outdo your competitors.
Direct online booking solution for small meetings
Direct bookings do not refer only to booking a hotel room for the night but involve conference rooms, meeting venues and other facilities that planners might use for large or small business meetings. A direct online booking solution is one idea to include in your digital transformation process.
Pain points
Most of the time, hotels leave this booking to a third-party website, company or a booking system that typically has relatively high commission rates and earns the customer relation benefits.
Another pain point is that such events are usually held and organized by people with no expertise in the area looking for a fast and easy solution. In addition, one of the latest trends is that business meetings are becoming smaller and more focused, yet their cost remains unaffected.
The solution
Providing a simple online booking platform on your hotel website can save your potential customers time and money. It’s a fantastic way to shorten their time looking for availability, going through sales teams, and paying higher prices because of commission rates.
Some ideas to streamline the process include adding venue photos, a schedule for dates and times, meeting packages and a direct button to book the venue online.
Long-term benefits
Adding a direct booking system offers several long-term benefits to your digital transformation strategy and reaching your final goals.
Such a system can help you in:
- Developing a faster planning process
- Earning loyal customers
- Creating a complete booking ecosystem
- Increasing revenue
- Redirecting sales teams’ focus
- Developing an automated backend
Becoming mobile-friendly is a necessity.
Being mobile-friendly is not only a great idea, but it is a pillar and an absolute necessity in hotel digital transformation. Think about the last person you saw using an old phone.
Everybody owns a smartphone, and the devices’ functionalities expand each day. Travelers, business people, planners, and other people on the go use their phones for entertainment and as an essential tool to help get their work done.
Hotel owners and management should do everything to improve customer experience, including delivering a flawless mobile-friendly design.
Most of the time, the process involves:
- Optimizing your website
- Adding an opt-in
- Sending your subscribers new offers and marketing emails
- Creating hotel mobile apps for a seamless experience
Users need fast loading times, a user-friendly interface, simple navigation and the ability to see the property/venue without physically being there. Failing to provide one of these four requirements can cause frustration, loss of interest and loss of potential customers.
Hotel mobile apps
Hotel mobile apps can significantly decrease employee load and improve service times and hotel experience by providing guests with a personalized interface and functionality. With a branded mobile app, hotel guests can check in or check out, make quick payments, order F&B, control in-room amenities, open doors via mobile keys, etc.
Use VR, AR, and 3D tours
Digital images are a fantastic way to showcase your property’s highlights and amenities, but how do you surpass your competitors? Virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and three-dimensional (3D) tours have become more and more popular in the hotel industry because they provide a new way to immerse future guests into their experience and gain their trust.
Examples of VR, AR and 3D tour use in the hospitality industry
You can use VR, AR and 3D tours for various purposes. Typically, hotel owners use modern digital technologies to improve customer engagement and educate future guests about their property or surroundings.
You can create virtual travel experiences accessible from any mobile device and VR glasses. Help your customers immerse in their future experience by showing them their honeymoon, vacation, or business trip.
Walk them around through nearby attractions and sights such as museums or galleries. Showcase the best ski and snowboarding trails around, take them on a bike trip through forest paths or show them what it’s like to swim with turtles in the ocean.
You can more specifically create entire virtual hotel tours so your future guests can see hotel rooms and suites, choose the best one for them, see the view from the balcony and visit various amenities throughout the property. Highlight the most popular trends, for example, your luxurious SPA center or the 5-star restaurant interior.
VR, AR, and 3D tours benefits
Studies show that implementation of these technologies during a hotel’s digital transformation benefits the process in multiple ways, including, but not limited to:
- Generates positive emotions for customers
- Creates a more attractive way of advertising
- Preview of destinations and sharing experiences
- It helps guests make more informed decisions
- Sparks interest in tourist destinations
Create immersive virtual experiences
Hybrid events combine in-person and virtual/digital communication elements. Event planners need to provide appropriate digital technology to execute such an event or use venues that are already equipped with the necessary tools. Why not provide them with a ready solution?
Digital technologies for hybrid events
But what is meant by appropriate digital technology for a hybrid event? You need to ensure fast connection, safety, and excellent visual and audio communication. Live and remote participants need to experience the event similarly, and everybody should be able to engage, interact and participate in the event.
While most event planners will bring their professional hardware and software, there is one thing hotel management should undoubtedly provide – a high-speed, secure Internet connection.
What to consider
Make sure your hotel offers high-speed WiFi that will not fail the event. Offering a backup internet connection is also an excellent idea. If a disaster happens, it will ensure that the event will continue.
Another essential thing to consider is to limit this Internet connection to the event members only. Other hotel guests should not be able to have free access to this WiFi which affects the bandwidth.
How to beat the competition?
To exceed expectations and beat the competition, you can contract with an Audio Visual Company (AV company) to provide hardware for your venue events, such as lighting, cameras and microphones and take care of the acoustics.
As mentioned above, most event planners have all of that already organized. However, it’s an excellent strategy to provide this option for planners who don’t.
Utilize safer meetings technology
With the rise of Covid-19 cases and the world pandemic, more people and businesses are starting to think of ways to communicate and meet safely.
Social distancing was one of the main concerns. Many implemented the hybrid event style, which is eco-friendly thanks to reduced travel emissions and reduces the number of people in one conference room, thus creating more space for social gatherings.
Another way to create safer meetings is to configure the event space consciously and with the precise help of technology. You can present the event venue, floor plans and available space to your customers via your web page.
A 3D representation with interactive elements can help event planners create a safe positioning pattern for event attendees, thus minimizing the risk of infections.
Furthermore, some events continue throughout the whole day, which means people will need food and beverage in the meantime. Most event planners will ask you to organize catering for the attendees, or they can order anything off the menu.
Instead of handing out traditional paper-printed menus, which are transferred between people’s hands, make sure to utilize scannable QR codes on the tables/desks, so attendees can quickly access your menu online and order contactless.
Include interactive elements on your website
In most cases, your hotel’s website is the first thing your customers see. You must provide them with a user-friendly interface, easy navigation and lots of visual and interactive elements, so they immerse into the guest experience and destination.
Imagine the customer journey for a second. What would you like to see and know about your guest room or event venue if you were a customer or an event planner?
Examples
For example, you might want to include a quick quiz with a few questions and a few possible answers to help navigate your customers. Ask them how many people will sleep in the hotel room or visit the event, the length of the stay, and some specific requirements.
Such requirements can be the type of room, the balcony view or provided technology for the conference room. Answering these questions navigates the customer towards a more specific, personalized suggestion for their individual needs.
For event venues/conference rooms
As suggested above, you can provide event planners with the opportunity to visualize the conference room and place the attendees in different available spots across the room. That will help them calculate the space, people and what space is left open. In addition, it will help them create safety for the attendees by utilizing social distancing.
For hotel guest rooms
A 3D or a VR tour throughout your hotel rooms and amenities is an excellent way for your customers to interact and make an informed decision. You can integrate a booking system inside the visual tours so your future guests can directly book a room after seeing it.
Be contactless
Turning to contactless digital solutions offers not only Covid-19 safety benefits but also a huge relief to hotel staff and more efficient and fast guest services. Since more and more hotels have turned contactless in the past few years, it has become something that guests expect from hotels.
Ways to turn contactless
There are hundreds of ways to turn your hotel processes into a powerful contactless machine, and only your imagination can stop you from doing so. Let’s dive into some examples of how hotels implement digital technologies to turn contactless and some other available possibilities.
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems
Customer relationship management (CRM) systems can help to significantly reduce physical contact between employees and guests and improve communication by consulting customers before they even arrive at the hotel.
With a CRM system, guests can share their personal preferences during all stages of their stay and make requests without physical interaction. Hotel staff receives this information and can focus their efforts on meeting customers’ expectations.
You can easily track room occupancy and inventories and improve operation management by organizing employee tasks. Furthermore, you can automate your marketing campaigns and payments.
CRM systems can help hotels increase referrals, enhance sales productivity, get data to implement winning sales strategies, customize the customer experience and improve customer support.
QR codes, hotel mobile apps and mobile keys
QR codes, hotel mobile apps and mobile keys are also a fantastic way to turn contactless and improve service speed and employee productivity. With such technologies, hotel operators and direct employees focus on providing the actual service rather than spending time finding out what the guest needs.
With the help of a native or web-based mobile app, you can significantly improve check-in times, allowing your guests to check in or check out at any time from anywhere they want.
Mobile keys are another way to minimize unnecessary item transfers, increase safety and decrease front-desk waiting times. You can implement QR codes in various ways – from contactless F&B orders and room service to contactless surveys and getting feedback from departing guests.
AI concierges and chatbots
Another one of the many hotel digital transformation ideas available is utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) software in hotels. Typically, these involve the use of AI concierges and chatbots.
Chat functions are a common way to engage with customers so they can make their inquiries and express their concerns quickly and effortlessly. The downside is that such methods require employees to undergo special training and take too much time, which they could otherwise spend on more high-priority tasks.
The number of AI concierges and chatbots has increased significantly throughout the past years since people started recognizing their benefits. The software collects data and runs it through complicated algorithms to find patterns in customer inquiries.
Every time a customer uses the system, it becomes more adaptive with an enlarged database to withdraw information from. AI offers personalized responses and suggestions for hotel guests instantly.
Other possibilities and solutions
Other solutions might include contactless linen and laundry management systems, virtual fitness classes, online surveys and reviews and implementation of smart technology within guest rooms, which we will get in detail below.
Implement smart technology within guest rooms
Creating smart hotel rooms and providing in-room entertainment for your guests can play a crucial role in your hotel’s digital transformation strategy. According to surveys, hotel guests highly appreciate cutting-edge technologies that tailor their stay and help them control in-room amenities.
With the help of the Internet of Things (IoT), you can now allow your guests to control in-room temperature, lights, air-conditioning thermostats, blinds and curtains, smart TVs, and much more. Guests can stream their own content, order room service, and change music and TV channels via voice control technology, an in-room tablet or through the hotel’s mobile app.
Hotel brands worldwide have started to implement smart technologies within guest rooms to improve customer experience, tailor the guest stay, improve efficiency and meet the expectations in today’s digital world.
FAQs
What opportunities a hotel might get from a digital transformation?
Thanks to a well-planned and smoothly running digital transformation strategy, a hotel might get plenty of opportunities. The opportunities are endless, but they all depend on the initial goal of the plan. Hotels can use digital transformations to collect, analyze, and transmit data, streamline processes, improve employee performance and enhance customer experience.
What are the four main areas of digital transformation?
Digital transformation is applied not only in the travel and hospitality industry but also across all other industries.
Within all of them, there are four main areas you should consider and aim to excess in:
- process transformation
- business model transformation
- domain transformation
- cultural/organizational transformation
What is digitized hospitality?
Digital transformation is applied in the travel and hospitality industry and across all other sectors. There are four main areas you should consider and aim to excess in – process transformation, business model transformation, domain transformation, and cultural/organizational transformation.
What are some trends in hotel development?
Some trends in hotel development include :
- personalized digital marketing campaigns
- the digitalization of specific processes and experiences
- providing customers with more in-room control
- implementing of AR and VR experiences
- going contactless
- offering sustainable practices