Invisible, yet indispensable: Connectivity as the cornerstone of the modern hotel
Guests expect a frictionless experience from when the booking is made, to the point of checking out, and throughout their stay
By Jonathan Santos, Director – Hospitality, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
The adage “the customer is always right” has taken on a new dimension in the digital age. Today’s hospitality guests are not just seeking comfort but seamless integration between technology and their travel experiences.
Looking beyond fancy hotel lobbies and keycards made from recyclable and sustainable materials, travellers now expect a frictionless experience from when the booking is made, to the point of checking out, and throughout their stay.
Key to this frictionless experience is reliable connectivity, which has become the invisible thread holding modern hospitality together.
Hotel guests today can use their smartphones for everything from reserving their room to unlocking their door, adjusting the room temperature, or even ordering room service for a quick midnight snack. All of this can be done without a key card, or by picking up the room phone. This isn’t science fiction, but the reality facilitated by a robust hotel wifi network and built-for-purpose apps, or web apps.
Read the new winter issue of AccomNews HERE
Driving these innovations is an increasingly impatient society that has become used to on-demand responses, with an expectation that simple interfaces must react at lightning speed. To understand this change in consumer behaviour, we must look at a couple of key trends that are bringing hospitality into the digital age.
Sustainability matters to hotel guests: Environmentally conscious travellers are increasingly seeking out hotels that make efforts to minimise their ecological footprint. Technology can play a crucial, if behind-the-scenes role here. IoT-enabled devices like smart thermostats and lighting lets guests easily adjust the room environment to suit their preferences, which might also be something that can be learned over time, and automatically replicated when the guests return for a future stay.
Cloud-based management systems reduce the need for on-premises hardware, while cloud services providers can typically be relied on to run their systems as efficiently as possible, reducing the hotel’s overall carbon footprint and saving on energy costs.
A great example of this is Canberra’s Little National Hotel, who needed to streamline its employee communication and operations, while modernising the in-room and guest experience.
This was done by consolidating printed collateral onto a tablet. With the tablet, guests can order additional amenities, room service, and make reservations. The tablet also integrates with the hotel property management system and provides telephony for guests to easily communicate with staff.
Embracing technology to streamline operations: Even as hotel occupancy across the Asia Pacific region is expected to rise steadily in 2024, the ongoing staffing challenge remains an issue[1]. In fact, data from the Australian Government shows that accommodation and food services was the number one industry sector suffering staffing shortages in 2023, with 45% of businesses stating they are in dire need of staff.
As such, embracing automation is not just about maximising staffing resources, but also providing staff with the right tools to help make their jobs easier.
This will go a long way towards improving the overall guest experience. Automation features can include contactless mobile check-in capabilities, and the ability to offer users the option to choose digital room keys so they can skip spending time at the check-in counter, as well as online ordering systems for hotel amenities and room service. Collaboration tools can also be deployed to enable more seamless integration between hotel sub-groups such as the food and beverage team and housekeeping, to better accommodate guests’ special requests.
Mobile apps have a key role here as well, whether for booking rooms, making restaurant reservations, or even to control room lighting and temperature. For restaurants, having excellent Wi-Fi and an app or QR code system on hand can let guests order and pay their bills when ready, letting the restaurant staff focus more on anticipating guests’ needs, offering personalised recommendations, and ensuring that the meal is a memorable one.
Elevating the guest experience: Technology like AI can elevate personalisation, whether that is offering individual room settings for regular hotel guests, or analysing past stays to generate customised recommendations that align with the traveller’s preferences and even the weather for the day. For example, a guest might be offered a suggested itinerary for indoor experiences such as nearby art museums for a rainy day.
AI chatbots can also be deployed to provide 24/7 customer service and support. This is not just for answering frequently asked questions or fulfilling requests for in-room amenities, but also in providing recommendations for guests, or even assisting in making reservations.
For some hotels catering to thousands of guests during peak seasons, the success of the guest experience can also boil down to something as simple as the quality of the Wi-Fi connection. As an example, the Okada Manila Resort Hotel is home to nearly 1000 rooms, 500 gaming tables and 3,000 slot machines, usually hosting up to 20,000 guests at any one time during peak hours. The need to ensure that machines could be moved around with minimal interruption, while ensuring every single guest has access to reliable Wi-Fi across gaming, retail, and hotel areas made it essential to have a resilient, reliable, and secure network infrastructure that is able to handle the volume of data and devices connecting at any given moment.
Technology: From amenity to necessity
The common denominator here is an expectation of connectivity woven throughout the total hospitality experience. AI-powered chatbots providing 24/7 support, mobile apps for personalised room control, and contactless technologies are no longer luxuries – they should be standard for guest satisfaction.
However, these innovations rely on solid digital infrastructure and a network that is highly secure and robust to facilitate everything that makes a great guest experience. Easy-to-access Wi-Fi for hotel guests and visitors, seamless integration of wired and wireless networks, and unified communication systems that connect guests and staff easily and from anywhere; you might consider this the hotel’s central nervous system.
The hotels that thrive in 2024 and beyond will be those that recognise connectivity as a core strategy, not an afterthought. The ability to thoughtfully empower guests with seamless digital control, fostering sustainability, and creating the kind of frictionless experiences that build loyalty in a competitive marketplace, will be key to success.
The hospitality industry has always been based on human connection. In the digital era, we can both elevate and amplify that connection with seamless digital age networks and technology. By embracing this reality, hotels unlock a future where comfort, convenience, and innovation go hand in hand.
[1] Hotel revenues in APAC are set to continue rising in 2024 despite economic pressures and volatility: JLL
AccomNews is not affiliated with any government agency, body or political party. We are an independently owned, family-operated magazine.
