A decade ago, it was unthinkable you could secure a table at your favourite restaurant a week before the dine, with the push of a button.
Now that’s something intact in our routines.
So when you set out on your most awaited vacation, it was utterly legit to expect something similar, where before you walk into your hotel, you can communicate regarding the stay on your phone.
Well, the world is already here.
As young adults who have started up in the on-demand economy start to travel more, they expect hotel settings work in just the same way. So hotel services are also customised to match guest expectations.
Hence, with that intensity of advancement, it isn’t at all surprising that 25% of all hotel bookings are carried out on smartphones or tablets (Source), so if you don’t already own an app for your hotel, now is the opportunity to get one. Not only is it an efficient way to communicate with current and potential guests, but it can also be utilised to increase sales through sharing special promotions and hotel happenings.
Here is a snapshot of stats by country software usage in hotel management:
Using a native app gives hotels a variety of advantages. Through the course of this article, you’ll encounter exactly how an app will soar your hotel business, followed by some of the necessary features of the same. So, get ready for the ten most productive minutes of your day.
How Can An App Incentivise Your Hotel Business?
Automate keyless check-in/check-out
A pet peeve of numerous guests is a cumbersome check-in and check-out process. A survey by TripAdvisor observed that 34 percent of guests prefer mobile check-in.
Here is a snapshot of an app:
Enhance Personalisation
With hotels interacting with clients on so many different channels, it can be challenging to funnel all the data handled in each one into a whole guest profile. Through having customers communicate with the app, all that data (messages, preferences, demographics, stay history, etc.) gets accumulated in one place to help hotels zero in on their customer profile, enabling them to allow more targeted and personalised assistance.
Appealing Features
Apps are continually evolving, offering new and exciting features to continue providing guests fun perks. For example, an app can allow guests not only to interact with staff members but also to text other guests in the same hotel with the app, creating a private social messaging service inside the app.
Text Messaging
Using the text to communicate with guests has a lot of benefits. First, texts don’t require an Internet connection, so if a guest wants to reach you and doesn’t have the internet, he may yet be able to send and receive a text.
Second, documents are not limited to smartphones, most mobile phones are text-enabled, enabling you to include a broader range of guests in your communication services. You can use text for a variety of actions:
- Marketing-Â Text can be used to communicate offers to clients in your SMS loyalty club. Posting exclusive deals or letting them know about new hotel locations can help increase your bookings.
- Welcome and thank you-Â Sending a heartwarming text to the guest hotel with useful tips and advice like events happening during their stay or popular places can help guide a guest and make them feel comfortable. Sending a thank-you text for picking your hotel when the guest has checked out is an excellent way to end their stay by showing your appreciation for their business. Here is a flowchart:
- Surveys- The text is a useful poling platform. Texts have a 99% open rate, implying that if you want to find out how your guest’s stay was, the text is the way to go. It’s important for hotels to offer guests the opportunity to give feedback. If an experience were bad, you’d be the first to find out before they leave a lousy feedback on social media. It will offer you a chance to address your guests and keep them forever. Resolving a guest’s issue to their satisfaction can result in them telling 4 to 6 people about their positive experience.
Finally, a hotel app will help you know your guests better, presenting you with loads of useful info based on app usage. As a consequence, you will be able to establish a better and more personal hotel encounter for every one of your guests.
Features Of Your Hotel App
Analytics
Guest behaviour analytics, as well as app usage statistics — all displayed in an actionable form that guarantees that your decision is dependable.
Staff Statistics
Enable your guests to rate the staff on an absolute scale across some parameters, and receive feedback.
Heat Maps
Use locating tracking and iBeacons to spot locations which lure most of your guests. This can then be employed to know which areas you must focus on developing, or give you useful insights into your guests’ behaviour for future marketing purposes.
If you turn to custom app development for your hotel app, your vision is the only goal. For instance, you can add a chatbot — an AI-powered algorithm — to solve fundamental questions immediately in the app chat. At the same time, you can pick a Live chat, letting your customers send text questions to the hotel staff anytime and anywhere.
Moving ahead, you can add VR features to your app — for instance, a VR tour of your resort. VR and AR amusements can also be reached with the help of the app (although some fancy making a separate app for these technologies).
Speaking of AR, you can offer your guests with contextual encounters powered by the technology: they will designate their smartphone cameras at the gadgets and places located at your resort to learn more information about them right away.
Mobile Messengers
While addressing all your guest messaging via apps can be ideal for the hotel, it’s apparently not possible to satisfy all your guests need to download your app. Offering messaging services on other popular platforms such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and others allow businesses to provide the convenience of choice and preference to their customers.
Here is a snapshot of a messenger:
This communication strategy has reported increasing profits and efficiency in assistance as well as growing extras such as restaurant and spa treatment bookings.
Hotels who retain their guests through mobile communication can provide better services, improving loyalty and bookings. Using mobile portals such as text, native apps, and cellular messengers can help hotels offer better, more personalised services to their guests.
Every new device generation, every further platform enhancement provides an opportunity for better guest experiences. The pressures of technological advances have encouraged many hotel groups, large and small, to take advantage of tech-focused companies who specialise in the various device and platform upgrades and can help hotels adapt more quickly.
Here’s some advice before you proceed:
1. Make the download process smooth!
You need to make app downloads as friction-free as possible.
It can be hard to incentivise guests to download an app for each boutique property they visit.
You can leverage your loyalty program to revitalise guests to download your app, which then unlocks personalised leisure for users across their entire portfolio of properties.
There is a friction involved in downloading an app. You don’t want 30 different individual hotel apps on my phone, but by having that true relationship it gives you the platform to help members to download the app, and that becomes their one-stop-shop for everything they need.
2. Older generations will endorse you only if you are addressing their problems!
Presumably, the demographic most inclined to use the application would be younger generations. However, selection can depend mainly on the use case. At one partner property, you can allow guests to order directly to their pool and beach chairs. Here we see adoption across all age-groups due to the convenience – it’s much simpler to order a drink from your smartphone than to catch a server’s notice on a busy day.
3. The best technology gets your hotel stay feel just like home!
Connectivity through an app signifies quick access to local data as well as the replication of on-demand services the guests are accustomed to at home. But eliminating the language barrier is perhaps the most significant win regarding guest comfort. Languages feature that facilitates guest-to-staff and staff-to-staff language translation in real-time is terrific in this scenario.
4. Technology advances quickly. Outsourcing to technology startups keeps hotels nimble!
Every new device generation, every further platform enhancement provides an opportunity for better guest experiences. The pressures of technological advances have encouraged many hotel groups, large and small, to take advantage of tech-focused companies who specialise in the various device and platform upgrades and can help hotels adapt more quickly.
5. Only when you connect the staff-side with the guest-facing solution, do you see the actual value!
For hotels applying guest-facing technology to offer conveniences for guests, it can be hard to show ROI, at least in the short-term. It’s when these guest-facing solutions supply into an integrated back-end solution that the efficiencies from streamlining multiple systems into one associated platform show clear ROI.
6. In-room technology is much more about plugs, ports and charging stations. The fancy stuff can wait!
The acceleration of the smart-home, with its linked light bulbs, thermostats, and smoke alarms, has encouraged hotels to experiment with their smart in-room technology. Guest expectations of in-room technology are far more modest than hoteliers might imagine.
Source
What guests need most are the ports, plugs, and charging stations that authority their suite of personal gadgets. Upgrading rooms to match this growth in demand in a cross-compatible way might be a more significant challenge for hotels though than designing a friendly robot butler.
What’s required to let people connect their devices is some pretty complex technology, especially as you look globally, where standards do differ around the world. And as you view  Android, iOS and other platforms, it’s not always easy to find that cross-compatible solution to make that easy for the guest.
7. It’s not enough to provide WiFi for your guests; your associates need good wireless connectivity as well!
Hotels can be tough places to install WiFi networks. It’s tough enough to equip the guest spaces of resources built in the 1400s or as massive concrete structures with extensive outdoor areas, without having to think about the labyrinth of back-of-house spaces that have become de facto dead areas with regards to WiFi.
Here is a glimpse of the connectivity:
As hotels do the necessary WiFi configuring, it helps to have a solution robust enough to withstand occasional interruptions in connectivity.
After The Stay
Reach Out
Don’t forget to include the feature that reaches out to guests after their stay and holds the discussion. Your PMS or app can send emails to request for feedback on the stay and notify guests of upcoming deals and experiences that will inspire them to book again. Pop-up or text messages on guests’ phone can keep them engaged, and can hold your hotel front-of-mind for their next trip.
Most importantly, find out what technology is right for your hotel, and start taking advantage of it now. Your competitors most certainly are!
If you want to streamline the constant improvement of your hotel experience with impactful software, get in touch with some professional developers around you, and can begin your quest for best today!
