There are so many choices these days in choosing effective hotel technologies to assist your operations in navigating forward, into this next chapter of hospitality.

Aside from the well documented reasons for adopting Digital Guest Experience technology for its safe contactless benefits (for guests and staff alike), we see our particular blueprint of curated digital guest experience as a “must have” technology, ahead of other options for 3 important reasons, that have a very significant ROI effect on your overall operations:

1. Increased Revenue
2. Better operational efficiencies
3. Cost Savings.

REVENUE BENEFITS

With the right guest experience technology in place, you can factor in significantly increased existing and new revenue streams across your ancillary hotel offerings.  We know this because we see the consistently higher results being enjoyed by our hotel and resort partners, both pre-Covid and post Covid. 

A joint Oracle/skift research study further drives home the importance for hoteliers of focusing on driving ancillary non-room revenues and engagements, given ongoing stagnating room revenues, by curating an effective digital guest experience.

Our curated complete digital guest experience platforms, branded to the hotel property, can be very effectively used before, during and after the guest’s stay to increase hotel revenues whilst empowering guests to appreciate and engage with, through self-service style ordering and contactless payment, all the hotel or resort’s offerings, (including any partnered restaurants and outlets too), available for purchase. 

They can also be configured for very effective ecommerce enabled messaging, planned or impromptu, in the form of push notifications and text to guests, from the moment they engage with the platform to even after their stay.

With effective re-imagination, you can sell a wide range of hotel offerings across F&B (including Room Service), Hotel Activities and Experiences, Hotel Services and Amenities and anything else that your team can conjure!

Revenue generation before the guest gets to you

Pre the guest’s arrival, it’s also possible to derive early revenues from owned or partnering Airport Transfers/Taxis, Arrival Meals & beverages, the evening candlelit dinner or the next day’s island tour by alerting incumbent guests to the existence of your digital hotel experience via web-links or QR codes on booking confirmation correspondence or on the pre-arrival welcome note.

Specialist technology providers should also be capable of working with your team to strategise the best ways to drive maximum guest engagement with your branded platform, to increase success with revenue uplifts across your ancillary offerings. 

At REVA, we formulate  a suggested “Guest Hook” strategy, which comprises a collection of best fit individualised branded QR codes and web-links, placed at different points along the guest’s journey.  These “hooks” might typically appear at check in, on your hotel WiFi landing page, at selected points within he hotel lobby, lifts etc, within the rooms, or outside at poolside areas etc

Revenues can be developed further, within the intuitive order process with placement of effective and helpful meal pairing  or suggested selling that have been pre-configured by your team in the solution’s back-end across your F&B and other offerings.  Examples might be a suggested glass of red wine with the steak, or a house made pepper sauce with the steak etc.

Such upselling techniques can be employed on a 24/7 basis, and the platform will never forget to prompt the upsell.

And tweaked to their own language, and with the payment option that they would use at home, the digital experience that is curated needs to be a frictionless one, thus making it relatively easy for the guests to stay and enjoy their consumption on site via their smartphone.

3rd party partnerships 

A well configured guest experience platform should also support he accommodation of any partnering 3rd party restaurants or outlets that you have developed, so that their offerings can be effectively digitalised within your branded platform.  This should assist hotels located, for example, in proximity to a well-known restaurant strip to cement mutually beneficial arrangements with selected restaurants, and make these visible to guests within the platform.  It’s also a great way to set up a wider range of local activities and experiences digitally which will impress guests, whilst also reducing those paper leaflets typically placed in lobby areas.

In turn, 3rd party partners are provided with easy access to their operation within the platform’s backend, where they can amend offerings/prices and access their relevant sales information. With some imagination, this can help to provide a wider guest digital experience, and also drive further revenues in the process. 

Rewarding Consumption Loyalty

Further, support for a consumption loyalty program can be leveraged with comprehensive digital guest experience technology offerings to assist in not only lifting revenues from in-stay guests but also as an effective way to prevent leakage of guests’ potential REVPAG (revenue per available guest) to neighbouring restaurants and outlets.  Such loyalty program features can also be effectively extended by pivoting, for example, to neighbouring office workers popping in for their daily shot of caffeine.

Data driven revenue uplifts

A solid guest experience offering will also be well grounded in analysis data provision to enable smarter, data-driven decisions for the hotel’s operations.  This will naturally extend to more effective in-stay and post-stay direct marketing promotions based on guest preferences as shown previously through their purchases via the platform. 

In taking this to an even more personalised level of direct marketing, for hotel groups in particular, first party data generated through the guest experience platform can be channelled through to a Customer Data Platform, for even more personal and scalable digital marketing purposes, with increased revenues in mind. 

A truly transformative platform will also be able to support more agile non-room operations no matter what direction the hotel operations take moving into this new normal now upon us.  With it, you can pivot with local menus through the week, as an example,  utilising a specific QR codes for local menus advertised locally, or via web-links placed on Facebook etc) to attract local custom, perhaps via kerbside pick-up on the drive home from work, the platform should be easily configured to make this relatively easy.

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCIES

With the right digital guest experience tools in place, better operational efficiencies are particularly attractive to hoteliers, given the reality that they are tending to possess leaner teams that simply need to achieve more.

Less drain on the front desk attendant’s time in answering those regular “WiFi address” or “checkout time” regular questions, is one area where a well configured hotel AI-driven hotel knowledge base can, very effectively handle those regular guest queries, thus freeing the existing front desk members to attend more personally to guest’s needs.  This is also particularly useful for after hours front desk operations.

Less errors in communicating orders (ie from phone call room service ordering as an example) which results in fewer instances of food/beverage wastage, as the mobile ordering will be invariably more accurate.

Further, with larger properties who choose to integrate their digital guest experience platform to their Hotel POS, there are more seamless efficiencies as orders go “straight to the kitchen” saving staff administration time.

The platform can also be a very efficient way for hoteliers to gauge guest’s sentiment on their in-stay transactions with provision for feedback enabled. Thus providing them with the opportunity to “right” any” wrongs” and prevent adverse social media feedback instances.

COST SAVINGS

Labour, as aforementioned, is the major cost saving associated these days with digital guest experience solutions, and this in itself, justifies the establishment of a comprehensive digital guest experience platform on your property. 

Fewer attendant service staff are required as orders are increasingly made self0service style via the guest or visitor’s phone.  There’s less drain the front desk’s time, as aforementioned, so fewer front desk staff may be required.. 

Also, less administration requirements are necessary when the platform is integrated to the hotel POS in larger properties so that orders flow directly through to the kitchen or bar.

Another significant immediate cost savings is that a strong guest experience offering should accommodate your property’s new digital compendium, for incumbent and in-stay guest usage from anywhere on earth.  So there’s no further need for those paper-based hotel compendiums in the rooms, and this will save your operations expense across paper, ink, and labour costs too.