In-Room Tablets

April 4, 2019 by INTELITY

Crafting a Smart Guest Experience with Hospitality Technology

It’s no secret that expectations surrounding the digital guest experience have changed. With more than 96 percent of modern hotel guests carrying smart devices, the obvious next step is ensuring that you provide your guests with a smart experience.

What Does a Smart Guest Experience Look Like?

A smart guest experience is one that anticipates and meets your guests’ needs by providing what they want when they want it. While this is partly achieved through excellent customer service, it also requires making the right technologies available—those that improve your guests’ experience and streamline your service delivery.

A “smart hotel” provides robust Wi-Fi, offers a mobile guest app that allows remote check-in and -out, mobile key, direct messaging, and the ability to control a guestroom’s environment and entertainment. Smart hotels also incorporate in-room tablets to increase guest engagement and back office solutions to track guest activity, send personalized offers, and connect staff more directly to guests.

How do You Create a Smart Guest Experience?

A smart guest experience should be crafted around a robust mobile strategy that extends beyond a mobile guest app. Your mobile strategy should include everything from a mobile version of your website to a strong social media presence, direct digital messaging, and in-app chat. These channels should all be available on a single, easy-to-use platform where travelers can choose how they want to communicate and are able to move seamlessly between secure digital solutions, so they feel comfortable sharing and accessing personal data.

Having a comprehensive mobile strategy is only a starting point. In order to create a truly smart guest experience, you will need to take your digital strategy up a notch. This means leveraging network-connected technologies such as data analytics and business intelligence, customer relationship management programs, AI, targeted guest marketing, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

Because these advanced technologies don’t work without a robust technology infrastructure, it’s critical to have that in order first. When creating a smart guest experience, you need to make sure all the software and technologies utilized at your property integrate seamlessly. Only then can you create the ultimate smart guest experience that improves your guests’ stays without feeling intrusive.

Implementing a Smart Guest Experience

It’s not enough to only have smart technologies in place. Your employees must be well-trained on how to best use those technologies to create a superior guest experience and streamline their daily tasks. Once your employees have been trained on how to effectively use the technology and software implemented at your property, you’ll be able to personalize, maximize, and monetize your guest experience.

Interested in learning more about how you can use technology to provide a smart guest experience at your property? Contact us today to learn more about the INTELITY platform and how it can help you increase guest engagement and streamline your daily operations.

March 15, 2019 by INTELITY

How to Use Technology in Hospitality to Engage Millennials and Generation Z

Technology has completely changed the way we travel. We now expect flexibility, freedom, and control over every aspect of our journey. When it comes to managing travel, a study by the GBTA Foundation shows that 78 percent of Americans prefer to use self-service technology. That number will inevitably grow as Millennials and Generation Z continue to enter the market.

So, how do hoteliers meet the expectations of these two highly connected generations? How can they ensure that their guests have a seamless experience at their hotel? The answer is simple – by embracing technology and incorporating it into their workflow. Effective use of hospitality technology can increase guest engagement, improve performance across operations teams, and give guests more control over their experience.

Here are four key features that can help you better cater to these travelers and generally modernize your hotel’s guest experience:

Mobile Check-In

We know that guests want flexibility, convenience, and control when it comes to travel. Incorporating mobile check-in at your property not only reduces friction at the front desk, but it also saves your guests time and effort. With an app customized to your hotel, you can enable mobile check-in and guests can make requests before arrival.

Mobile Key

Giving your guests the ability to access their rooms with their mobile phone gives you the ability to allow them to bypass the front desk completely. Following a remote mobile check-in, guests can activate their mobile key and head straight to their room. Mobile key solutions also give guests access to the gym and spa facilities, meeting rooms, and other gated areas of your property. This is exactly the type of seamless experience your guests are experiencing through other aspects of their travel journey, like with airlines and ride-sharing services.

Voice

Today’s tech-savvy travelers want immediate answers to their questions. They want to find and access information easily, just as they do at home. It’s imperative that you provide your guests with engagement tools that don’t require making a call to the front desk. Using voice technology, you can provide guests with information about your hotel and the surrounding area. You can also notify them of upcoming special events and let them manage the lights and temperature in their room, and allow them to make reservations and bookings. Giving your guests many touch-points for engagement puts the control right where they want it, in their hands.

In-Room Tablets

Once your guest is in their room, in-room tablets offer a plethora of information previously housed in the printed compendium. Not only does have a tablet in the guestroom add to your tech-ambiance, but it gives your guests digital access to dining menus and links to restaurant reservations and spa bookings. Your staff can update these menus and links in real-time while your guests never need to pick up the phone. Guests can also use their in-room tablets to manage their environment (HVAC, lights, curtains) and TV. In-room tablets can give you a direct connection to your captive audience and can be used to promote social events and experiences happening on-property as well as offers tailored to your guests’ preferences, which in turn can increase revenue and drive your bottom line.

Many guests are looking for accommodations that provide them with the seamless convenience they experience in their own homes. Incorporating technology that can deliver on those expectations and keep guests engaged has become a necessity in the hospitality industry.

INTELITY provides a complete suite of guest experience and staff management tools that can help you increase guest engagement and streamline your daily operations. The enterprise platform, the broadest in the industry, integrates with over 120 operational systems including PMS, POS, room controls and loyalty programs through INTELITY Connect.

To learn more about how the INTELITY platform can help you engage Millennials and Gen. Z travelers and provide them with the seamless connectivity they expect, schedule a demo with a member of our team.

February 19, 2019 by INTELITY

How to Use Personalization to Increase Guest Loyalty

Today’s travelers want hotels to provide them with personalized experiences tailored to their preferences. This fact is extensively covered within the industry, but why should hoteliers care? Studies show that hotels that take the time to create unique experiences customized to their guests’ preferences generate increased revenue per guest and strengthen brand loyalty.

So, how do you give your guests the service and experience they expect? Use technology to engage with them before, during, and after their stay and use the data generated by these interactions to build stronger relationships with your guests.

Create a Seamless Connection

How do you ensure your guests want to come back again and again and encourage their friends to do the same? Start by giving them a way to connect seamlessly with your staff. Research shows that hotel guests who are engaged during their stay are 40 percent more likely to return and will spend up to 46 percent more per year than disengaged guests.

In-room technology like mobile guest apps and in-room tablets allow you to create this connection without being invasive and give guests control over when they interact with your staff. Give your guests the opportunity to submit service requests, order room service, or request additional housekeeping items through these digital solutions. Mobile apps and in-room tablets can also be used to promote specials at your spa, bar, or restaurant to the right audience at the right time.

At the end of a guest’s stay, invite them back, ask them for feedback on their experience, and request they review or rate your property online. Shortly after their stay, follow-up with a personalized offer or promotion that keeps your property top of mind and encourages guests to return.

Understand One Size Does Not Fit All

Just like no two hotels are the same, no two guests are the same. It is important to remember this and create experiences that are truly personal and tailored. This can be as simple as displaying a welcome message on an in-room tablet or ensuring that a guest is offered their favorite corner room.

Guests have a wide variety of options when it comes to choosing accommodations, so making personalized experiences a rule rather than an exception will set you apart from your competitors. In an industry where consumers have more choices than ever before, it is important for you to understand your guests, what they want, and how to deliver on those wants.

At INTELITY, we’ve created a complete guest engagement and staff management platform that allows you to build better relationships with your guests, gain deeper insight into what your guests want, and develop increased brand loyalty. To learn more about our platform, schedule a demo today.

February 7, 2019 by INTELITY

How Mobile Ordering Can Increase In-Room Dining Orders

Over the past few years, hotels across the world have experienced a decrease in in-room dining orders. In response to the steady decrease in in-room dining orders, several hotels have started to discontinue offering room service, but a recent study shows that 43 percent of guests still view room service as “very important” and 28 percent of guests say not offering room service is a deal breaker.

These results show that in-room dining is still a crucial part of the in-room experience for many guests. So how do hotels make sure they’re satisfying their guest demands without operating at a loss? Enter in-room technology and mobile ordering. By implementing technology like in-room tablets and mobile guest apps, hotels can provide guests with more services and access to mobile ordering.

Use Mobile Ordering to Increase In-Room Dining Orders

Digital menus and mobile ordering provide an effective solution to the decrease in in-room dining because it allows the customer to peruse the menu at their leisure without feeling rushed to place their order to a busy staff member over the phone, creates a more responsive atmosphere, and reduces the chance of error in in-room dining orders.

Offering a mobile ordering solution creates a smoother, more successful relationship with the customer because it streamlines the process and places the control in the hands of the consumer. Mobile ordering allows the hotel to keep its guests updated on the status of their orders and give them an estimated food arrival time. Not only does mobile ordering provide a more efficient, streamlined in-room dining process for the guest, it also improves the guests’ overall experience at the property. A 2016 study by Zebra Technologies found that 70 percent of guests want to use technology to decrease their wait times and improve their overall experience.

Aside from improving the overall guest experience, offering a mobile ordering option for in-room dining can also help hotels increase their bottom line by providing upselling opportunities throughout the ordering process. Studies have also shown that consumers are more likely to place larger orders when making a mobile order, especially when the menu features images of the food offered. Not only does including imagery of menu items lead to larger orders, but it can also dictate what the guest orders. In a study conducted by Iowa State, researchers tested displaying an image of a salad to kids at a YMCA camp. Campers who saw the salad photo were 70 percent more likely to order a salad for lunch than those who didn’t see the salad photo.

Conrad Indianapolis Experiences Success with Mobile Ordering

Conrad Indianapolis recently experienced the effectiveness of using mobile ordering for in-room dining. Just three months after launching INTELITY’s in-room tablets, the hotel saw digital dining orders increase by 444 percent and an average in-room dining check increase of almost 15 percent.

Mobile ordering is clearly an effective solution for the decline in in-room dining orders, especially when associated with an integrated back-end solution that automatically tracks the entire transaction. INTELITY has created a fully integrated, enterprise platform that allows hotels to improve their operational efficiencies and enhance their guest experience. Our cutting edge platform offers hotels the ability to seamlessly connect service industry workforces to their guests and enable hotels to improve their operational efficiencies and revenue.

Are you ready to incorporate advanced technology into your daily operations and work towards increasing your in-room dining orders? Contact us today to schedule a demo.

A Blog by INTELITY

At Your Service

In-Room Tablets

What Does a Smart Guest Experience Look Like?

How do You Create a Smart Guest Experience?

Implementing a Smart Guest Experience

Create a Seamless Connection

Understand One Size Does Not Fit All

Use Mobile Ordering to Increase In-Room Dining Orders

Conrad Indianapolis Experiences Success with Mobile Ordering

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