Like any
industry, travel has been profoundly changed by advancements in technology. How
people research, book and experience a trip is completely different than it was
just 20 years ago.
Yet moving the travel industry from the offline
world to online hasn’t been without its challenges - not least because travel
is inherently about a physical experience.
Travel is about seeing, doing, tasting,
touching, meeting.
It’s about human interaction.
And while the foundation of our coverage at
PhocusWire is focused on how online systems have transformed the travel
process, the offline component - the agencies, the technologies, the suppliers
that have a person-to-person element to their services - remains very much at
play.
In the accommodations sector, people-powered
customer service is still the norm, but many suppliers around the globe - from
large chains such as Marriott and Accor to small, independent properties - have
been ramping up the integration of technology inyo the guest experience.
It's a
process that began decades ago, with digital key cards replacing traditional
rooms keys, followed by the introduction of in-room Wi-Fi and smart tablets.
More recent developments include mobile apps and voice-controlled devices, such
as Amazon’s June announcement of Alexa for Hospitality, to manage everything
from ordering room service to finding local businesses.
For the final piece in this
series, we consider the topic of technology in the hotel environment. We look at one hotel already with a robot-only staff, as well as hear
from a property that's taking a cautious approach to the
digital experiences it offers to its guests as it aims to keep the focus on hospitality.
The extreme
A
hotel chain in Japan has opted to take technology to the extreme in its three
properties. The Henn na Hotels are billed as the world’s first hotels staffed by
robots.
The properties,
part of the H.I.S. Group, use multilingual robots - some that look like
humans, others that look like dinosaurs - to assist guests with check-in and
check-out. On its websites, the company invites guests to “feel free to enjoy
conversing with these warm and friendly robots as they efficiently go about
their work.”
In the lobby
cloakroom, a robotic arm picks up guests’ luggage for storage, and a robotic
concierge provides local information or can call a taxi.
Guests unlock
their room doors with facial recognition technology, and once inside they find a
voice-command device that can be used to turn off lights, set an alarm, adjust
the temperature and find out the weather.
While the
Henn na Hotels have made rather unconventional choices regarding technology,
there are many other properties around the world that are also incorporating
cutting-edge devices and capabilities in ways that replace the tasks
traditionally handled by staff.
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Earlier this
month, Fliggy and Shiji announced a partnership to enable facial recognition
for check-in and room card disbursements at 50 hotels in China, including properties
under the Marriott and IHG brands.
Also in September,
Hilton added location-based recommendations for food, nightlife, shopping and
activities to its Hilton Honors mobile app.
Dubbed
Explore, the tips come from Hilton employees that live in the area of the
participating hotels, and each tip includes photos and suggestions such as menu
items to try, best times to visit and specific things to see.
“In
listening to our guests, there is a real desire for more personalized travel
advice and access to local perspectives surrounding best restaurants,
attractions and neighborhoods to explore,” says Joshua Sloser, senior vice
president of digital at Hilton.
“No one
knows their city better than local team members, which is why we’re empowering
them, through Hilton Explore, to provide the latest local recommendations to
enhance our guests’ experiences.”
The flip side
That sounds
very much like the services traditionally offered by a hotel’s concierge.
And Gary
Sloper, director of rooms at the Forbes Five-Star Boston Harbor Hotel, prefers
to keep that type of advice coming from his staff in actual conversations with guests.
“I think
there’s something to be said for old-school hotel practice, and that’s just
being with your guests and not relying so much on technology,” he says.
We are in the hospitality business … not the hotel business. The staff and their personalities drive the hotel.
Gary Sloper - Boston Harbor Hotel
“We are in
the hospitality business … not the hotel business. The staff and their
personalities drive the hotel.”
The 232-room
hotel, open since 1987, has four concierges on staff and three are members of
the prestigious Les Clefs D’Or, an international association of more than 4,000
professional hotel concierges in 530 destinations around the world.
Boston
Harbor Hotel concierge Nathan Goff is a member, one of about 650 in the United
States, and he is convinced that now, more than ever, the personalized curation
service concierges provide is invaluable.
“There is so
much information out there now that the luxury is being able to go to an
individual who will give you exactly what you need to know and hear,” Goff
says.
From
securing reservations at restaurants that appear to be full on sites like
OpenTable, to helping a frequent guest order flowers even though he was not
staying at the hotel, Goff says the hotel takes pride in going out of its way to
help people.
“We want
them to feel like they are walking into a friend’s house,” he says. “I don’t
think you can get that same sense from artificial intelligence.”
Great expectations
Goff acknowledges
the level of personal service the Boston Harbor Hotel offers may be more difficult
to replicate at a large chain property, where multiple stakeholders and corporate
guidelines can inhibit customization.
In contrast,
at the Boston Harbor Hotel, customization is built into the property’s fundamental
customer relationship management strategy.
For example,
every day, one of the hotel’s reservation agents spends about four hours going through
the list of names of people who will be checking in the following day.
“That person
is going into every single reservation looking for data,” Sloper says.
“We have
volumes that we track on guests – everything that goes wrong, everything that
goes right. And then we project into the future for the arrivals coming in with
any issues they [repeat guests] have had in the past … to make them understand we
heard you, we get you, we want you to come back.”
In other
words, a request for a different type of pillow will only need to be made once.
And then
there is the hotel’s standards committee.
The
committee members - all of the hotel’s managers across every department, including guest
services, housekeeping, laundry, dining, human resources, sales, accounting
and more – spend time each week doing quality-control checks based on the hotel’s
nearly 700 standards.
“You might
have someone who is checking standards for arrivals and departures,” Sloper
says.
“The
standards are that you are greeted at the curb within 30 seconds, you are
escorted to the front desk within one minute. They will literally check
standards for 20 minutes to see if the standards are being hit.”
Then every
Thursday those managers convene to share their experiences in an hourlong,
face-to-face meeting.
“We
celebrate the positive, and we talk about the negative,” Sloper says.
“It’s
utterly transparent. It took us years to get to this point. It’s a living, breathing
thing, and it just improves and gets better and better.”
Thoughtful tech
Of course
the Boston Harbor Hotel does use some advanced guest-facing technology. For
example, tablets in each guest room are equipped with Intelity’s ICE Bedside
platform so guests can do things such as order room service or request more
towels with the touch of a button.
But the
integrations have been made very deliberately, rather than rushing to use every
app and gadget that comes to market.
For example,
Sloper says it has intentionality limited the functionality of the Intelity
system, so it adds efficiency to common tasks but is not used to replace staff
involvement for more personal services. The hotel also recently decided against
putting Amazon Echo devices in guest rooms.
“We are making
a really conscious effort to not hamper that interaction and to keep technology
relevant but with that human attachment to it,” Sloper says.