Having come back from a trip to the US over Chinese New Year
there were a few things that I noted during my stay in (and around) a beachside
5-star chain hotel.
As a loyalty program member, these days I get free Wifi
internet access in most chain hotels which is much appreciated, and I did so in
this one. Unfortunately, finding that the connection quality was substandard to
outright pathetic certainly didn’t make me want to come back in a hurry. As
survey after survey measuring guest expectations confirms, hotel guests
consider free Wifi access close to mandatory. Restricting it to loyalty club
members is a start in the right direction towards the inevitable free-for-all
model that will eventually take root across the industry. But if you position
free Wifi as a value add to loyal customers you need to ensure you deliver a
quality product. If it is substandard, members will not feel that their loyalty
has been rewarded - on the contrary. My guess is that non-loyalty members will
appreciate free Wifi, even if the connection is slow, precisely because it’s
free. But to offer it as a service for premium customers and deliver a
substandard product is counterproductive.
And if hotels in holiday locations defend their weak
connections with the notion that their clientele is mainly concerned with
surfing the waves rather than the internet, think again. Aside from just about
everyone now having a connected device that demands to be, well, connected,
hotels in holiday destinations are increasingly popular for off-site business
meetings, conferences and the like, which attracts an even more connected type
of traveler with a very different agenda during their stay.
While we’re on the topic of loyalty club privileges, another
thing I found mindboggling during my stay was the so called VIP breakfast room
offering free breakfast for the two highest-tier members. It was little more
than a feeding station that offered cereal (fruit loops…) pound cake, boiled
eggs, cut up fruit, tea, coffee and juice. Cutlery and crockery was plastic
(!!) and it finished at a miserly 9.30am, an hour before the ‘regular’
chargeable breakfast, lest you get too comfy and eat too many boiled eggs. If
this was supposed to make me feel special and enhance loyalty, it utterly
failed.
Back on the technology front, and outside the hotel, I
noticed how iPads have now well and truly found their entrée into the
hospitality world. We went to two restaurants that used the iPad, one as a full
written menu replacement, the other for the wine list only. While it is a great
concept and looked very appealing and was fun to use, the two restaurants let
themselves down by poor execution and not utilizing the device’s real
possibilities. The restaurant that
tabletised the full menu let you dig down and view a photo of about half
of the dishes, which made a great difference to us and we ended up choosing one
dish that we wouldn’t have ordered if we hadn’t seen a photo of it. For the
other half though, there was nothing, not even an extended description, which
was doubly disappointing after having seen photos of the other dishes.
The wine list-only tablet was even more disappointing.
Instead of delivering in-depth information on the grapes, tasting notes,
producers and terroir, it provided nothing more than the info you would get on
a normal, printed menu. Handled like this, tablets in restaurants and hotels
are nothing more than gimmicks that have a very short-lived appeal. To really
make the most of the technology, the tablet-based menu needs to be a clear
improvement to the printed menu. More descriptive information on the produce
and preparation, photos, interactive maps, even videos of the chef at work, the
region where the wine comes from or an interview with the wine maker – the
possibilities are endless. And all of these value added services will not only
ensure that diners are well informed, but they can be a powerful marketing tool
that will entice your customers to come back again and again.
The tablet is first and foremost a visual device and users
expect exactly that, so hotels and restaurants offering this type of service
should do it properly or not at all. One of our recent hotel customers
understood this and made the wise choice not to add in-room dining as a
function for their iPad-enabled service until they had the appropriate visuals
to go with it and make the service appealing and useful. Smart choice.
