Reimagining Hospitality – some considerations

From many conversations we've been having of late, it's clear that hoteliers well understand the impending need to get their non room operations available to their guests and visitors in a contactless digital way, for a multitude of valid reasons (impressing guests, increasing revenues, making immediate labour and other cost savings, for better operational efficiencies etc).

But, with leaner teams and a lack of available time, hotel management teams are struggling to work out the best way to get started in reimagining their non-room operations (digitally) to provide and reassure guests with effective self-service mobile ordering & engagement tools, together with effective e-commerce enabled messaging to guests who wish to be provided with a digital experience of the hotel or resort property.

In-house or Outsource

Should a property, or perhaps a small to middle sized property group or management group take this this in house? This approach will, no doubt, take up further IT labour and management resources and require significant time planning and fine tuning the various Guest User Experience elements.

Or does it make more sense to leverage off a proven technology, that’s ready to be deployed in market in very little time, once the curation, branding treatment, testing and training is completed?

McKinsey’s have placed this issue as one of 5 top priority areas to be addressed by businesses to enable a rapid business recovery from COVID-19.  To enable fast recovery, operations need to consider rebalancing their activities between those performed in-house and those that are outsourced, with future productivity in mind.

In hospitality technology generally, it is evident that hoteliers have been stepping up in  utilising 3rd party technology providers to assist their operations, rather than re-inventing he wheel themselves.  They are rearranging investment by outsourcing proven, robust solutions that can be implemented faster, perform better and be more cost effective. The continued growth in the cloud SaaS market, and further education of its benefits moving forward, is also helping to propel this, no doubt.

Our digital guest experience platforms, branded to our REVA Anywhere award winning technology, is just one of many strong offerings in the marketplace. We have been specialising in curating digital guest experience for hotels and resorts since before COVID. When this is your speciality, you get good at it! 

Like other technology providers, we know the pitfalls in what is quickly developing into a sophisticated area of hotel tech, and have a robust, proven technology offering with a very well-honed implementation process.  Hoteliers can tap into this already developed technology and launch their own branded platform for guest engagement, in about 2 weeks.  All we require is the assistance of an on-location Hotel Champion from the new hotel and resort partner. 

Finally, another important advantage of partnering with a specialist in digital guest experience, lies in the ongoing nature of the technical roadmap that they need to subscribe to, taking into account technological advancements, so that the latest version of our cloud enable software is very much at pace with new technological advancements.

Open API

Ensuring that your technology for digital guest experience is Open API based is another important consideration, from a future proofing perspective, as it means that the software has been developed to “play well” with other similarly developed guest facing technology offerings that you may already be subscribing to or maybe considering utilising in the future.  Rather than being “tied” into a particular ecosystem.

Independent guest experience technology, such as REVA Anywhere, which is REST based Open API based, can be integrated further to most POS systems for more seamless guest experience and seamless operational flows, for larger properties too.

Optimum set of features, not an overload

Effective digital guest experience needs to be enriched with the essential tools to empower the guest to enjoy their (digital) hotel experience on a self-service basis.  These typically include menu matching/pairing, upselling, dietary filters, discount codes, gift cards, a consumption loyalty program to drive more REVPAG, e-commerce-enabled messaging activity supported by via push notifications and text, the property’s new digital hotel compendium (with immediate cost savings area), and 2 way instant chat engagement with an AI-driven Hotel Knowledge base.

Given that a guest's typical length of stay is limited, we stress the importance of not overloading a platform with too many features, as this may have the adverse effect of inducing the guest’s “too hard” reaction. 

Take away the friction!
Ultimately, the key to enticing maximum guest engagement with your property’s digital guest experience offering lies in how frictionless it is to access and actively engage with guests. 

Whilst native downloadable apps have their advantages, there is no doubt that they generally fail in driving adequate guest traction as the request to download an app is a decided source of friction, unless there is an attractive “what’s in it for me” incentive to drive engagement. 

This is why there has been a marked transfer towards Progressive Web Apps (PWA’s) which only require an easy scan of a QR code or the click of a weblink (ie from a pre-arrival welcome note or from the Hotel WiFi page for the guest to gain immediate access and peruse menus and make their choices and pay “in app” contactlessly.  The huge rise in QR code knowledge and ease of usage through the pandemic period makes the PWA a logical choice of distribution. 

The provision of the platform in multilingual formats is also an important frictionless move, as is offering multiple contactless payment options (credit cards, e-wallets or even most frictionless payment option of all - Room Charge/Bill To Room), all delivered via an easy intuitive guest interface.

Digital guest experience – on brand

Finally, a vital consideration is your property’s brand look and feel, and this is one area where many technology providers score poorly. 

Maintaining your company's style guide and imagery and design also ensures consistency in tone, voice and formatting across the content on your digital guest experience platform – after all, this is a customer touchpoint just like your marketing and sales collateral.  Hoteliers need to appreciate that the digital guest experience curated with the chosen guest experience technology needs to be an accurate reflection, on smartphone, of the real experience. Unlike other developed technology offerings, we have refined our solution to offer hoteliers with near infinite bespoke flexibility with regard to design, to enable them to communicate the digital experience “on brand”.

The need for Top down embracing of the technology

One last area of possible friction that can adversely affect the success of a digital transformation of a property’s non room operations, lies within the management team itself. Without their input, and willingness to take the time to gain an understanding of the core benefits of the technology for their operations, effective communication to the team in general is set to fail. Teams need to be educated about the synergies that can be achieved from the technology, particularly from an operational efficiency perspective.

We see our particular technology blueprint for digital guest experience as an enabler and connecter between the guests needs and the property’s team members’ personal customer service. Communicating this fundamental purpose by senior management, in an effective way, to the team at large and achieving the necessary “buy in” will go a long way to ensuring a successful re-imagination of the hotel non-room operations.