Does anyone doubt that in the very near future, the great majority of hotel guests will have the service option to choose rooms and check-in to their hotel via their smartphones? Said differently, after being trained on the advantages by Uber and much improved airline apps, I believe that hotel guests will demand service choice via their smart phones very soon if not already.
For those who believe this is for “tomorrow” or hotels are not ready for this…two things to consider…
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Most major brands (your competitors?) are in various stages of rolling out exactly this functionality to their guests…
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Think about how travelers are gaining convenience, more control over their experience and even cost savings from mobile enabled services…
So, what do you do if you don’t have access to a company funded world class custom software department to build these services for you? There are many quality providers that have mobile solutions that can deliver for you. Some are integrated with the hotel’s PMS making them relatively seamless. Some are stand-alone systems that need to be monitored by hotel staff, but have less overhead to implement.
The point? As smartphones continue to proliferate, more and more industries are proving that providing service choice via consumer mobile devices is a “must have”. Hotels guests are just coming to know what they’ve been missing…and it won’t be long before guests are basing purchase decisions partially upon whether the hotel offers service choice and convenience via their own mobile devices.
Have thoughts or opinions on the topic? Please post a comment and I’ll get right back to you!!
