How Integrated Hotel Apps Are Streamlining the Guest Experience
The COVID pandemic changed the way we take vacations, and the shift that had already begun before the pandemic is now a definite: people prefer a digital guest journey when it comes to getting the most out of their stay.
This is a win-win situation. Hotels are finding they can allocate their staff and resources more efficiently while focusing more on providing a seamless and stellar guest experience.
When more tedious tasks are automated, staff can focus on where they are likely to create the most value—the personal engagement, and ensuring a customized and rewarding experience for guests—removing many of the common issues. This includes pre-planning activities, excursions, dining and events.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how integrated hotel apps are streamlining the guest experience.
A Seamless Journey: How Tech Ties It All Together
Before the pandemic, a consistent and comprehensive digital guest journey was something of a novel concept that endeavored as far as booking rooms and selecting a few special features online. Booking a spa experience, planning your meals, ordering room service or adjusting the room temperature meant chatting with the hotel front desk, or manually figuring out how to do things in the room.
Now, integrated hotel apps are enabling leading hotel groups to create an interactive digital journey to streamline and enhance the guest experience.
What is an Integrated Hotel App?
An integrated hotel app is a platform that brings together multiple digital features—from checking in and getting your mobile key, choosing rooms to selecting meal choices, spa sessions, controlling the temperature, lights and even drapes in your rooms, controlling your TV and casting your favorite content from your media apps, and more. This multi-functional platform customizes the guest experience—before, during, and after their stay.
Integrated hotel apps can also help collect anonymous data to identify user trends and patterns to improve a hotel’s services and products. Monitor which services or meals are the most popular, which TV channels guests prefer and what extras they’re buying. This information can help to improve guest satisfaction by delivering seamless and attractive solutions while improving your revenue.
How is the Landscape Changing?
Guests want a streamlined integrated hotel experience via the convenience and comfort of their hotel app. They are also increasingly expecting to be satisfied across their hotel experience, with 67% of guests in a Deloitte surveysaying they want to be empowered to drive the experience the way they want to.
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Integrated hotel apps appeal to guests because they have access to all the hotel services they need to personalize their experience. Meanwhile, you can focus on planning your staff and allocating the right resources where necessary.
“Travelers are setting standards across the globe when it comes to leveraging the latest mobile services. Not only do travelers have the highest rates of smartphone adoption, but they’re also doing more with their devices like booking, payments, and check-ins,” said Clinton Anderson, SVP, Traveler Experience for Sabre Travel Network. “So their expectations for intelligent, personal experiences via mobile are high and continue to rise. Travelers are setting the bar for mobile services and will drive innovations in the travel industry and beyond” he adds.
With a few clicks, a mobile app tells your customers everything they need to know about their reservation and upcoming stay. Paperwork is minimized, if not eliminated, which helps the environment. Guests are not only demanding a more seamless experience, they are looking for a contactless one due to the pandemic—and digital innovation in the form of integrated hotel apps is paving the way.
Not All Tech is Equal: The Disadvantages of DIY Apps
Some hotels think they can be more effective by not buying others’ products and services and building the solutions themselves. However, offering a quality customer experience takes robust, tech-savvy integration to make it all work.
DIY apps take a lot of planning and money. You need to find a developer (or team of developers) you can trust and put in the hours with them to create it from the ground up. This can take upwards of a year—and the costs can soon add up because creating an integrated app is a highly complex process.
That’s before you even factor in maintenance costs like bug fixes and updates. In short, building your own app most often ends up proving to be a false economy.
Why Integrated Tech is Better
Everything in one place—what’s not to like? The more streamlined your operations, the happier your guests are and the easier your staff’s job is. But only if you choose the right app.
Key Features to Look For When Choosing an Integrated App
When choosing your integrated solutions provider, bear in mind which features are needed for your hotel now, and those that might be needed in a few years as travel picks up and you need to scale. Here are some features to consider:
1. In-Room Control Integration
Look for apps that let guests take full control over their hotel room environment—via integrations like Inncom’s energy management and guest room control system, personalized lighting (e.g. Lutron), Interel’s smart hotel room, and Creston solutions that allow guests to instantly change their room environment. There should also be seamless integration so the App can control the TV through a virtual remote because guests are less likely to want to use a physical remote.
2. Mobile Check-in
Guests are becoming more accustomed to mobile self-service technology. Mobile check-in saves time and is efficient. With mobile check-in, guests can:
- Streamline their check-in and avoid waiting lines
- Update their check-in and requests in real-time
- Improve upon a contactless check-in (health and safety)
Mobile check-in helps you meet your guests’ needs and enables them to manage their stay with minimal staff contact, allowing you to focus more on enhancing their experience.
3. Mobile Key
Mobile key technology is modernizing guest room access, using Bluetooth or near field communication (NFR) technology so guests can use their mobile phone as their room key. The guest experience is further enhanced because they can have a seamless mobile check-in and go to their room without having to get a physical key.
In general, this is how it works: When the booking confirmation is emailed to the guest it contains a link to download the mobile key app. Upon arrival and check-in, the guest is provided with a secure digital key to their mobile phone. With a tap of the phone screen, or holding the phone close to the door, it unlocks. Mobile keys can also be programmed to access other hotel facilities (e.g., gyms, spas, parking, etc.).
Mobile key and secure access management (e.g., Vingcard, Dormakaba, Salto) add to a seamless and secure check-in process.
4. Entertainment Integrations
Look for a wide variety of entertainment integrations for screens throughout your hotel. Make sure guests can access TV channels, streaming services and device casting through Chromecast, as well as hotel updates and information. read more
