August 20th, 2010 §
I’ve talked to a lot of hotel managers and owners, and when it comes to new technology the biggest barrier is not actually price – it’s installation. Literally, you can offer your new gizmo for free, and they’ll turn you down; but when you tell them how easy installation is, they seem to perk right up. This is why software-as-a-service (SAAS) is so cool: all the hard parts have already been handled.
Take GuestSpan’s digital concierge, iRoom, for example. iRoom takes ten minutes to install at a property. And by ten minutes, I mean it takes ten minutes for GuestSpan to call your property’s wireless administrator, email them the web link, and confirm that it’s running correctly. Poof – iRoom is now bringing local information to all your hotel’s internet users, and you spent that time drinking coffee.
Do I need new equipment for iRoom?
If you’ve got wireless internet, you’ve got iRoom.
Does it use up any of my bandwidth?
Nope.
What if we want to add our own content, or make recommendations to our guests?
Great! Send us your content, and we’ll have it updated in about ten minutes.
How will you update new information?
We manage live data feeds that automatically update at every location.
What if iRoom is temporarily out of service for any reason?
Your internet is still running; your guests simply move on to their emails.
What about information security?
We have supermen protecting our stuff, and hackers can’t get to you through us anyway.
What about hardware security?
Our gear is stored in a secure location in the Western United States. You can have a tornado, and you’ll still have iRoom.
What about terrorists, aliens or apocalyptic fire storms?
See above about our supermen.
What about –
What about –
What about –
What about –
Relax, it’s handled. Now go to that mix-n’-mingle your admin scheduled for you.
September 7th, 2009 §
Creating a great guest experience is fundamental to building successful long-term guest relationships and brand loyalty. Hoteliers in the current environment are requiring a holistic view of their guests to understand who they are and what their needs are likely to be. This requires integrating business intelligence (BI) into virtually every facet of their properties’ guest touch-point activities.
Current hospitality industry market intelligence supports the trend that Hoteliers require more than just the traditional static, backward-looking reports: They require insight to support collaborative analysis, forecasting, and decision-making so that their analysis and planning can help drive more ineffective business decisions – and ultimately enterprise financial performance. This requires an integrated and feature rich solution that provides complete and accurate information that is easily accessible to management and workers throughout the company.
Key challenges facing hospitality industry executives include:
Hospitality organizations typically run different BI applications for different business and support activities throughout the company.
Dissimilar systems may be used at headquarters versus property level, due to franchise-owner models as well as to the industry’s high level of merger and acquisition activity.
A high proportion of legacy and proprietary applications are still being used, typically without appropriate application interfaces and advanced business intelligence functionality.
The benefits of successful business intelligence are as follows:
A solution that stores all guest interactions, which provides timely business intelligence to the property on demand. For example, hotels receive accurate and targeted guest usage patterns, spending behaviors, and service preferences data. Hoteliers and brand managers can utilize this intelligence to support the success of future marketing events and campaigns etc.
Business intelligence can be used to benefit the property in a great many ways. For example, a property or brand of hotels can strategically partner with service providers that draw the most attention. Providing the hotel and service provider the opportunity to create joint marketing relationship to enhance both brands and increase revenue.
The information can also be used in one-to-one marketing. The hotel can create marketing campaigns based on usage and spending habits.
June 28th, 2008 §
Three days at the show, miles of isles and great people. Plus tons of shwag for the kids. Not to mention the atmosphere of Austin, Texas and barbeque-o-plenty…
Where was I?
Impressions:
1. A $278 billion industry is bound to spawn a few parasitic companies and the hotel industry certainly has its share. Good to see people getting so excited about door locks,
2. Room of 2010 – Interesting ideas. Sign me up for a Wii in every room. I’ll play baseball against anyone in the hotel that wants to take a beating. The mattress-less bed looked intimidating, but must be comfortable. Else, why would they let it be part of the exhibit? And, Sony had a very small 11-inch organic LCD widescreen monitor that was absolutely gorgeous! If you have a HDLCD TV now, you’re going to chuck it out the window when you see the OLCD. (Yet another reason why I still have a TV from 1993. I’ll buy a new TV when the promise to stop inventing cool stuff.
3. The Brand is the Dream – Most of the small to mid-sized vendors in the room are living for that day when a brand says, “You’re now standard install.” We’re part of that group. The real magic is making sure that you have business to keep the doors open in the meantime. Hope is not a strategy. Selling lots of product is.
4. How much can you really fit in a television? – We saw at least a dozen vendors that want to pipe information/content/communications/guestspeak/marketing/stuff through the television. Understandable. The TV is everywhere. All you need is a signal and you have access to the guest.
Of course, I’m glossing over so many hundreds of stories and people we met. There were a couple of competitive vendors in the crowd that visited with us for quite a while. I’ll let their identities remain a mystery, but you’ll know what I’m talking about if you were there.
And, the booth babe from Image Technology Systems was memorable. Holy Cow! What was that red thing she was wearing on Tuesday? I’m not sure what Image Technology does, but they will forever hold a special place in my heart. (I hope my wife isn’t reading this blog entry.)
June 24th, 2008 §
Chris and I attended the Hitec trade show in Austin, TX last week. It was a very interesting experience after being severely spammed for the previous two weeks by seemingly every technology vendor in the hospitality space. It seems that technology is trying to creep into every space in the hotel. Whether it be using your cell phone as your room key, video concierges in the lobby, new and improved room safes and mini-bars, or super control centers for the entire hotel room there are companies trying to automate every part of the hotel experience. And that doesn’t even begin to cover the number of backend operating, management and tracking systems we say at the show.
Attending this show one might be convinced that the modern day hotel was the bastion of technological advancement. However, reality is quite the opposite. For instance, the hotel we stayed at in Austin offered free internet and even had a digital city guide in the lobby, but that was about the extent of the technology offered. The room key was still a plastic card advertising Pizza Hut, the room safe was still fairly basic and that’s more than I can say about the TV service. All in all hotels are still slow in adopting new technologies. I think that is changing, but not as rapidly as I or my colleagues in the industry would like to see. Our role is going to have to be identifying “stepping stone” technologies that allow hotels to advance technologically without biting off more than they are ready for.
A good example of these technologies was services delivered through the television. Ten years ago this was an innovative approach to guest services. The problem now is that guests are more technologically advanced than their hotel rooms and TV is not where it’s at. With services such as Netflix downloadable movies on demand guests no longer need the TV in their room for entertainment. Not to mention the usage rates are very low. It is now time for the next step in the evolution of guest services technology. This may seem self aggrandizing, but that is exactly the mission of GuestSpan. We are offering a solution that is more on par with what guests are used to and something that hotels can implement and embrace without having culture shock.
It is going to be interesting to see the evolution of hospitality technology. GuestSpan will be there as a part of it for sure.
June 13th, 2008 §
Next week, the HITEC (Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference) kicks off in Austin.
We’ll be there.
This will be our first time.
It must be a huge show because hundreds of vendors have spammed me with email and snail mail to get me to visit their booths. With all the hoopla, cocktail party invites, marketing and such, this is going to be big.
But, one mail piece really made me think about marketing to the hotel world.
On the postcard, the following claims were made:
-Add incremental revenue streams
-Enhance your guests’ experience
-Increase operating efficiency and productivity
-Help reduce overall operating costs
These are almost the very same things that we have said about our product since we solidified the concept. Since these are the driving value propositions in the hotel industry, it’s not uncommon to hear them from multiple sources.
But, the part of this that troubles me is the fact that these statements were made by Brother, a company that sells label makers, printers and fax machines.
Holy Crap!
If every peanut butter maker, horseshoe-er, mail carrier and window washer is using these value propositions to try to sell to hotels, I’m going to guess that most hotel execs are almost tone deaf or snow blind to those words. In fact, when a vendor says that they provide incremental revenue streams, the hotel suits must go running for the hills.
I mean, they want incremental revenue, but if one more manufacturer or maid carts tells them that they will add incremental revenue streams, they’re going to start splattering on the pavement below their lovely corner office windows.
Just for the record, Brother makes fine products. I haven’t ever owned one, but they sell a bunch and some people like them.
But, to market to this group of hotel decision-makers, we’re going to have to show value rather than just talk about it. That’s the only way were going to make a splash.
And, thank goodness for the great people that have allowed us to connect, drive us to the right guys and advised us along the way.
That will end up being much more important than all of the hyperbole on trade show postcards.
(Ask us about our research about the connection between fax machines and enhancing guest experience. In brief, there isn’t one…)
