Google Glass for Hotels?

The development of futuristic technology has provided hotels with more opportunities than ever to truly impress their guests with a unique experience.  Two hotels, Acme Hotel Chicago and the Stanford Court San Francisco, have found a way to use wearable technology to their advantage.  The highly sought after Google Glass is currently available as a beta program. Google has released the product to “Glass Explorers” who can get the product in hopes that they will reveal the many flaws in the advanced piece of technology.  To get Google Glass, one must sign up and pay a hefty fee of $1500 for what is essentially an unfinished product.  While Glass still has tons of cool and useful features, the polished product will undoubtedly be better.  This makes people reluctant to purchase it as new technology is often buggy.  The Acme Hotel Chicago and Stanford Court San Francisco have signed up to become “Glass Explorers” but the hotels themselves won’t be doing any exploring.

Guests have the option to rent Google Glass during their stay as to enjoy using the product while in an unfamiliar city.  Acme is offering the product on a complimentary basis in three hour blocks for guests to enjoy, while Stanford Court offers the “Google Glass Explorer Package” for just $199 a day.  The opportunity to “borrow” Google Glass for a day is a tourist attraction in itself.  Besides getting the opportunity to test one of the most advanced consumer technology devices on the market, the product has dozens of uses for a traveler in an unfamiliar city.

A few things guests are able to use Glass for when traveling:

• Weather information
• Travel information like maps, travel guides, nearby accommodations, restaurants and more.
• Ability to get live directions from your exact location

The use of this product could essentially eliminate the need of a concierge service in your hotel.  At the moment, it’s financially unrealistic to provide every guest with a pair of Google Glass, but in a few years as new products are unveiled the price will drop as technology always does.  There are several ways you could use Google Glass to increase efficiency at your property behind the scenes for your employees and in the front of the house by providing it to guests.  One hotel brand, Starwood Preferred Guest, has created an app for Glass which allows guests to check into their rooms, call the hotel, look up their reservations and even take virtual tours of individual hotel rooms.

Google Glass is still young and we can’t predict the impact it might have in the future.  But one thing’s for sure, people are anxious to give this product a try; they just don’t want to pay $1500 for it.  This can be a fun and innovative way to enhance your guest’s experience!

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Source:

http://www.hotelsmag.com/Industry/Blogs/Details/50807

5 Free Technology Tools for your Hotel

With thousands of apps, websites and programs all looking to solve your problems, nobody has the time to sort through which ones are worth using.  Fortunately, there are people who have done the hard part for you.  Here are 5 technology tools that can be used in hospitality for your benefit – for free!

1. Google Alerts.  This one I use personally and professionally.  Google allows you to set up “alerts” based on keywords of your choice.  It compiles a list of articles (news and blogs) relevant to any number of keywords you choose and sends you a daily, weekly or monthly email with all relevant news.  This can be great for salespeople and revenue managers to monitor their market and understand current economics in the industry.

I personally use it to monitor the industry and any trends/news that may be relevant to our clients.  It can also help you monitor things like competitors and management changes in your area.  The possibilities are endless with this tool.

2. Yesware.  This program is designed to track your email efforts.  Yesware will allow you to track who has opened (or not opened) your emails, where they opened it, the date and time they opened it and even how many times they opened it.  It may sound a little too invasive, but it’s effectiveness can’t be disputed.  This can help you develop your subject lines, sales pitch and display name to figure out what provides you with the highest number of opened emails.  Develop a template from the more successful emails and send it out to your sales team to use.

3. Boomerang.  This program helps you to track the chaos in your inbox.  It allows you to set up reminders to save you from several problems everyone suffers.  For example, you can set up an email to be sent again if a response is not received within a certain timeframe.  Want to remember something coming up such as a flight or an event?  You can schedule the email you’ve already received to be sent to your inbox again at the time of your event or flight.

4. SmartRecruiters.  SmartRecruiters is a complete hiring tool that is FREE for companies to use.  It allows you to post a job opening and it will post the position to several free job aggregate sites.  Want to expand your search scope?  It also provides a list of ALL job aggregate sites that you are able to post to for a fee.  This site allows you to post your job openings to almost every job aggregate site out there from a single platform.  It’s easy, quick and free.

5. If This Than That (IFTTT).  “IFTT is a simple solution to a complex problem.”  It merges two separate networks and shares data when a trigger is released.  For example, it can be setup so that if a customer posts a photo of themselves on their Instagram and tags your hotel, that photo will automatically create a draft post on your blog.  This allows you to do two crucial things, engage your guests on a personal level and create digital content on your site.  Creating daily content can be challenging, this program syncs with several other tools such as Google+, Twitter, Gmail and more to allow you to be present at all times on your social media channels with live, guest generated content.  While this sounds complicated, it’s extremely simple to setup.

The best part about all these programs is that they’re free!  By not utilizing these tools you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to expand your digital presence and simplify your current practices.

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Source:

http://hotelnewsnow.com/Article/13215/5-free-tech-tools-for-hoteliers

Marriott Hotels Engages Customers for Innovative Ideas

How often do you wonder how you can improve your guests overall experience? There’s always room for improvement in hospitality, but finding it can sometimes be difficult; especially when you only get the inside perspective on hotel operations. Guests are not always willing to fill out satisfaction surveys and sometimes it can be hard to draw feedback out of them unless you’re able to get a moment of their time.  Marriott Hotels has found a new, innovative approach to finding out what makes guests experience a remarkable stay at their properties.

Travel Brilliantly is a new website developed by Marriott Hotels that invites travelers to share their ideas and innovations to help discover the next big thing in hospitality.  By inviting the traveling public to a single medium that allows them to discuss ideas and receive feedback helps to find the innovative ideas that will change the industry for the better.  Marriott has set up this system to have 4 judges who review hundreds of submissions and select winners to travel to the company’s headquarters to work alongside industry experts to pioneer their new idea.

Of course not all properties have a corporate headquarters with a research and development team so for many this may be an extreme example of this idea.  By setting up a simple blog and adding a little content you can quickly generate conversation among your guests and travelers to find out what you can do in your own hotel.  While this idea takes some work, consistent and engaging content can help you build an audience that trusts you and ultimately shares their ideas with you openly.

A less robust way of getting this feedback is through your existing social media pages like Facebook.  Guests are happy to provide responses to questions when they’re readily available.  A guest is more likely to answer questions like, “what could we do to improve your stay” through social media than answering the same question in a survey.  This practice also allows other guests to see what one another are saying and build on the ideas to come to a strong solution for multiple issues.

Marriott’s new website may not be the most innovative idea in the world, but it creates a simple solution to a huge problem in the industry; how to engage guests and get them to provide feedback on what can be improved upon during their stay.  A certain level of personal interaction and intimacy that is provided through blogs and social media makes a guest feel like someone is actually listening.

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Sources:

http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20140206-912396.html

http://travel-brilliantly.marriott.com/

3 Keys to Understanding Your Customers

There’s a simple formula to follow if you want to get a complete profile of your hotel guests.  A new white paper by Market Metrix details how you can grow your property by focusing on three key areas; direct guest feedback, competitive benchmarking and social media.  By combining data from all three areas, you can develop a thorough understanding of your customers/guests.  Market Metrix is the leading provider of customer and employee feedback solutions for hospitality companies around the globe.

1. Direct Guest Feedback.  This one is a bit obvious, but guest feedback is essential to understanding your customer’s wants and needs.  “Direct guest feedback, typically from guest surveys, helps you understand what’s happening operationally, take action and build your property’s reputation.”
2. Competitive Benchmarking.  It’s important to know how your competition is doing and what’s making them successful or unsuccessful as to improve your property.  This can help you discover emerging drivers and trends throughout the industry.
3. Social Media Monitoring.  Online presence and digital reputation is a cornerstone for a successful brand.  Monitoring your social media pages helps you manage your online reputation while being able to respond directly to inquiries and negative comments.

When you put these three key areas together you get a full picture of your guest, performance and market.  By clearly detailing what’s working and what’s not working it allows you to focus on more important areas of your operations to improve guest satisfaction.

To download the FREE white paper from Market Metrix, click here!

Sources:

http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4062247.html