Hotel Tech Talk – Are you ahead of the curve?

Although it’s a while since I worked full time in the hotel industry and even longer since it dominated my career goals, I have nevertheless kept my proverbial toes in the waters of the hospitality industry here in Ireland in one capacity or another since 1997 which is when I returned to Ireland after a ten year absence. Indeed there have been occasions over the last ten years or so, when I worked full time, initially after the foot and mouth disease decimated the tourist industry and consequently my tourism research business and latterly as an addition to freelance work and/or periods of third level study.

Since 2003 I have been dipping my toes and quite often allot more, in my work for the Conrad Hilton Hotel, Dublin.  After a refurbishment of the hotel in 2004 and 2005 I noticed that for a hotel of that size and stature it was way behind the curve in the technology arena and about as far away from “Eco Friendly” as old mother Russia after the fall of communism.  Indeed the refurbishment of the public rooms in 2005 had probably managed to increase rather than decrease the electricity bill, going by the number of extra spot lights to be seen.
Back then I did my best to pack the suggestion box full of ideas to save on water and electricity bills even pointing out how other hotels in Dublin had saved thousands of Euro on similar measures. If you could invest thousands of Euro in a refurbishment project on the assumption that it would lead to increased sales, could you not so too invest thousands of Euro in technology knowing for certain, depending on best and worst case scenario’s for energy and water costs, that you’d get your money back over three to five years I asked? “Well, it depends on cash flow”, I was told, “…if you can come back to us with a proposal which has a payback period of one year we’ll take a serious look at it”! I wonder what a refurbishment of the hotel would look like if it required a payback period of one year?  But hey, maybe I’m missing something here after all I'm not much more than a casual observer and not immersed in the day to day management of the hotel.

I am pleased to say now though that I get the very real sense that the hotel has moved on from that view point and in 2006 after merging with the Hilton parent company, (don’t ask me to explain), everybody woke up from wherever they were and began to think ‘Eco’ and to realise that guests will actually hold you [the hotel] in good stead if you leave a note on the bed asking if you REALLY need your linens and towels changed EVERY morning?  Unfortunately this epiphany came too late to take any real advantage of the 'War Chest' that every good business had back in the roaring naughties and before we could say boo to a goose all those lovely tourists and business types stopped coming.  We [the Irish Tourist Industry] have recovered somewhat from the low ebb of 2008 / 2009 but the world is still in a precarious position and we must stay on our toes if we are to keep ahead of the curve.

Despite the budgetary constraints, however, the present general manager has a very pragmatic view on using technology to improve the competitive edge for the  [Conrad] hotel, introducing flat-screen televisions, by now an expectation in any five star hotel worth its salt, (no pun intended), energy saving and other technologies.  In the last two to three years the Dublin Conrad Hotel has had very high ‘SALT’ (Standards and Loyalty Test) scores among its guests, second only to, I believe, Conrad Maldives and is among the top five for guest satisfaction among Hilton brands in the UK and Ireland.

However despite my recent experiences I have always been a firm believer in using technology to gain competitive advantage and every refurbishment should be looking at ways to cut costs and not to increase them while accepting little or no compromise on creating a better impact, both visually and in making the guest’s stay more memorable.

And so it came to my attention that this week in Berlin, leading IT managers came together for the sixth European Hotel Technology Next Generation Conference. Among the topics that this organisation has been involved in is putting together a model for IT vendors for ‘Shared Services.  In an earlier report following a survey among senior IT managers among eighteen of the world’s top hotel companies it found that, “Hotels were least interested in sharing marketing and customer information applications. On the other hand, 80% or more were willing to share such applications as guest-room device management, concierge, point of sale, housekeeping, facilities management, and applications for six back-office and human resource functions”.  Earlier in June Adjunct Associate Professor at Hotel Icon, the world’s first teaching hotel based in Hong Kong, said, at the Hotel Technology Conference at the Marina Bay in Singapore that, “…the use of technology has not merely been solely for the use of guests, but that the hotel had made use of it to go paperless and help drive bookings”.  “We make extensive use of IT,” Hatter said, “From using things like cloud computing for printing, to having almost 40% of our bookings coming from the Internet.”

Despite my relatively recent introduction to all things IT, I think I can say with some intuition if not authority that the Apple iPad, iPhone and other tablet and Smartphone equivalents will have a big impact on hotels, especially business hotels such as the Conrad Hotel, Dublin both for the guests and back of house. I was recently pondering on what sort of iPad / iPhone Apps might be introduced into the hotel and rather than producing an Application [App] to complete one task my inclination was, if I were the software vendor or IT manager requesting a bespoke App, to produce an App suitable for all guest needs rather than just check-in / check-out, in-room dining or mini-bar ordering. Another App with different access controls might be useful for back of house functions such as mini-bar stock control, room maintenance and housekeeping etc for employees. However in my recent research into the HTNG organisation I came across a software vendor from Orlando in Florida called Intelity who won the 2010 HTNG organisation’s 2010 award for “Most Innovative Hospitality Technology”. These award winners are a telling example of what’s in store for guests’ convenience and hotels’ competitive advantages in the future.  The following excerpt is quoted here:

“The winning technology, ICE (Interactive Customer Experience™) Touch on iPads, presents the hotel guest with the full array of hotel services (thirty or more depending on the hotel). An iPad is assigned to each guestroom where it is mounted on special stands or cases. With the touch of their finger, guests can order in-room dining, turn downs and wake-ups, request restaurant reservations, book transportation, make housekeeping requests and other services. In 2010, following the introduction of the iPad tablet, Intelity developed a guest interface that was deployed in September at the Royalton Hotel in New York City. Since then, it has been deployed at New York's Plaza Hotel. Others, including the Hilton Inn at Penn in Philadelphia, will be premiering soon. This is Intelity's second year on the award stand: last year, their ICE software product was runner-up”.

Check out the following:
Intelity's ICE Touch Premiers at The Plaza Hotel from Intelity on Vimeo.

Guests can use their own hardware device or request to borrow one from the ‘Desk’. The system is already in use with two of the American Conrad Hotels and Resorts and a few American Hilton properties.


“This year's first runner-up technology, from Corning MobileAccess, focuses on personalizing the guest experience by providing guests with high quality access to their mobile content and services such as streaming video and gaming. The MobileAccessVE architecture enhances hotels' cellular coverage by leveraging existing LAN cabling for cellular signal distribution while maintaining full Ethernet and wireless LAN capabilities. MobileAccessVE allows hotels to address 2G/3G as well as 4G services. With this technology, hotels have a cost effective, quickly deployable, non-disruptive path to migrate to premium LTE service, with smart MIMO antenna technology, and the ability to support migration to enterprise femtocell solutions as guest bandwidth demands increase.”

Another area which will become an expected norm in the future will be the ability to by-pass the check in desk with push notifications telling the guest that their room is ready and being able to access their room using their hardware device. Security would be an issue but one can only assume that this has been ironed out since the third place in this year’s awards went to, Allegro Online-Mobile-Kiosk Check-in/out Solution from Ariane Systems.

“Allegro's self-service technology allows guests to check in/out, pay, and manage their reservation from any web-enabled device, including cell phone, PC, laptop, PDA, iPad or even the lobby kiosk. Leveraging the power of a fully-featured "cloud-based" platform Allegro automatically detects the device used during check-in and sends notifications and instructions to the guest via "push mode." Through integration with OpenWays mobile key technology, it is possible to bypass the traditional "front desk" completely, as guests can use their mobile phone as a securely encrypted room key.”
 
In summary I think we can say with some certainty that the best chance for business hotels to get ahead of the curve is through sharing out IT costs on 'Cloud Systems' among numerous hotels for common hotel functions. The other major push should be in mobile devices to enhance the guest experience while simultaneously improving sales revenues, yield management and stock control.  Saving energy and water remain important investments however and should, in my opinion be given the same level of importance as investment in refurbishment, indeed the two should go hand in hand.

Finally, although a bit out dated one should download and read the following PDF from HTNG @: http://www.htng.org/white-papers, which reminds us that we need to think about how the current younger generation thinks and what their technological expectations will be in five to ten years from now. "

“ 'The Guest of the Future: In-Room Technology Preferences Today and Tomorrow'  represents an amazing view into the needs of tomorrow’s guests, and what it will take to satisfy them. Hotel rooms being built today will, over the course of their lifetime, be occupied mostly by people who are still under 30, or even 20. Their expectations will not be the same as today’s travelers, and if the hospitality industry is to succeed at meeting those expectations, it needs to understand how the expectations of younger generations differ from those of older ones – and how they are likely to continue to evolve over time." Alternatively I can highly recommend reading, 'Grown Up Digital' by Don Tapscot, see: http://www.grownupdigital.com/archive/.

And most importantly, PLEASE take a few minutes to join up and comment on my blog. Thankyou.

References: http://www.networksasia.net/content/hotels-and-cloud-match-made-stars?page=0%2C0

http://www.htng.org/images/stories/publications/htng_shared_services_position_paper_1.0.pdf

http://www.intelitycorp.com