SPECIAL FEATURE: HITEC
SPECIAL FEATURE: HITEC Today’s Travel Journey – The Connected Guest and Mobility Josh Weiss - VP Guest Technology Innovation, Hilton Worldwide Josh Weiss Vice President – Guest Technology Innovation, Hilton Worldwide CONTACT Hilton Worldwide Phone: +1 703 883 1000 www.hiltonworldwide.com Over the past few years, the hospitality industry has experienced major disruption from technology and innovation. Mobile technology has transformed guests into connected guests. Connected guests use their mobile device at every stage of the travel journey – from the inspiration stage to their on-property stay – and we’ll continue to see more and more of this as our industry evolves. Travelers today gain inspiration for leisure and business travel from their mobile device, which has changed from a several years ago when they were instead generally perusing their desktops. With an ‘on-the-go’ mentality, travelers are dreaming about their next vacation whenever they have a free moment. Next comes the “shopping” stage. This brings opportunities to inspire guests on where to stay during their travels and encourage them to book directly with us. It is critical to be present on the channels that guests use most and make sure these channels are functional and informative, including digital channels like mobile. With 25 percent of our bookings coming through mobile, digital continues to be a major focus for our company. Equally important, however, is the time from when guests book to when they arrive on property. Here is where mobility is playing an increasingly important role, as we are creating connections with guests leading up to arrival. Guests can use our digital channels to personalize their stay prior to arrival, which gives them the choice and control they crave. For example, guests who have enrolled in our HHonors loyalty program can use our mobile app to customize their stay. Beginning the day before check-in, guests can access their reservation, check-in from their smartphone and select their room from a digital map – down to the exact room number. This feature is available globally at more than 4,100 properties. Hilton is the first and only hotel company to offer this level of choice and control to guests. To date, we’ve received great feedback from guests on digital check-in with room selection, as it gives them a chance to take control of the travel experience. Beginning the day before a stay, guests can access their reservation, check-in from their smartphone and select their room from a digital map – down to the exact room number. Later this year, our HHonors guests will be able to use their smartphones to safely and securely unlock their hotel room door. By the end of 2015, our mobile-enabled room key capabilities will be available at the US properties of four of our brands: Hilton Hotels & Resorts, Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts, Conrad Hotels & Resorts and Canopy by Hilton. Looking ahead to 2016, we plan to deploy the solution globally. 14 Hotel & Tourism SMARTreport / Worldwide Edition N°26 / June - August 2015
Brought to you by Keeping Up With The Pace of Technology Change Richard Wagner - Technical Consultant, Emerging Technologies at Marriott International One of the biggest issues today is the need to support consumer devices that are changing at a very fast pace. Guests will increasingly travel with devices such as Chromecast, Apple TV and Fire TV, and having to support these in a secure way and provide sufficient bandwidth is quite a challenge. While this is an opportunity to better connect and serve guest entertainment needs of the future, there are a few questions to consider. The guest is assuming that they can be provided with the same services they have at home within the hotel, and that’s a challenge. When it comes to such a device, firstly, how do you connect it to the TV? Secondly, how do you put it on a network that’s the same as the guest has at home and how do you authenticate the device on the network (as many of those devices don’t come with a browser)? And because the devices change so fast, and none of them are following any consistent method of interfacing – some require multiple bandwidth streams, some do a “redirect” and act as a client. We actually did a pilot in one of our hotels, and the take rate was quite high. Then there’s the question of cost structure – how do you price this, if indeed you price it? I participate in a team at HTNG* and put a question to the group as to what they thought the percentage of people looking for this kind of service is, and the answer was that it’s probably pretty low. But maybe it’s low because we are not advertising that you can do it. If you told the guest you could do it, would the numbers change? Would they want to do it? Some vendors who support our hotels have deployed something similar to this in the university setting. But that’s a different mindset because in a university the person is firstly more technically savvy and secondly they are there for a longer period of time, so they are willing to spend the effort to get the device connected. However in the case of a guestroom, personally, if I can’t get something connected within less than 30 seconds, I am not going to waste the time. So you have to make it easy – and that’s a challenge. Perhaps if some of the vendors that make these devices would be willing to implement Hotspot 2.0 on the device, that would make it a lot easier, because then the guest could register the device one time and be able to connect automatically from then on. * Hotel Technology Next Generation Richard Wagner Technical Consultant, Emerging Technologies, Marriott International CONTACT Marriott International www.marriott.com www.cleverhotel.org Hotel & Tourism SMARTreport / Worldwide Edition N°26 / June - August 2015 15
