When we used to travel, in the world before Covid-19, I would spend a lot of time away from home, for both business and pleasure. In common with most regular travellers I picked a favourite hotel brand and signed up for their loyalty programme.
My choice was Hilton, and for the last five years, I’ve been a Diamond Hilton Honours member, which means I spend around a month and a half of my year sleeping in a Hilton bed. In return, I get breakfast for free, receive preferential room rates, free upgrades and earn points which I can redeem for free stays.
Their customer service is second to none. Checking out of a property, I made a passing comment about my room being noisy as it was close to the lifts. The next time I checked in (at a different property) they made a point of telling me I was in a room well away from the lifts – their CRM system is working well!
Their website has improved massively in that time too. Today you can pay for your room with a combination of points and money moving a slider back and forth until you’re happy with the combination of the two. An elegant bit of UX and a great way of engaging customers who may not have enough points to pay for a room outright.
Their app has also seen several new functions added to it, you can check-in online 24 hours before your stay and choose your room, and more recently you can even open the door to your room in selected properties with a “digital key” on your phone.
Self-service check-in is a win-win for customers who don’t have to queue to check-in at busy hotels and for Hilton who can reduce the number of staff it needs on its front desks. It also feels like a more sophisticated proposition than some of the lower end hotel chains who have introduced check-in screens which dispense a key card.
It’s a significant investment to upgrade the locks on every room to facilitate digital keys, so what else could Hilton add to their app for customers who are using it in a property during their sale?
Digital check out
The obvious answer is to allow customers to check out on their phone too. This would involve adding a new section to the app where customers could monitor their spend during their stay and would allow them to click the “check out” button to charge their saved card and deactivate their digital key.
A push notification to the app on the last morning of their stay could include the offer of a late check out for an additional fee where capacity allows and as rooms empty housekeeping can use this real-time data to manage their workforce efficiently.
The app could also be used to request housekeeping extras, to make restaurant reservations or book treatments in the spa.
Digital room service
When I travel alone, I usually indulge myself and get breakfast delivered to my room. To do this, you choose what you would like to eat, pick a half-hour delivery window and hang your completed order on the door handle before bed.
Several times this card has been mislaid (or more likely removed by a drunken guest returning to their room). Allowing guests to place their order on the app would remove this risk, there would be no need to print tens of thousands of order cards and send someone around the hotel collecting them every night.
Of course, the same solution could work for ordering food and drink at any time of day with no danger of misunderstood orders and considerable potential for up-selling beverages, desserts and packages.
Are things quiet in the kitchen? Send a push notification to every guest currently in the hotel with a special offer. Plus, there’s no need to have printed menus in rooms, no cost involved in updating the menu every few months and the menu can update late at night when the kitchen is closed.
One feature I would personally love to see for breakfast service is a notification when your food is on its way. With most properties only offering the choice of a half-hour delivery window, it would ensure never getting caught half-dressed when there’s a knock at your door.
In all seriousness, though a Domino’s style delivery tracker would undoubtedly reduce the number of calls chasing up orders.
As Hilton already have the app infrastructure, they would only need to build a new interface into their billing system and utilise the existing integration into the local hotel systems they already use for digital keys.
In doing so they could unlock (sorry, couldn’t resist) an additional income stream, make their processes more efficient and less labour intensive and improve the guest experience in the process – a win for everyone.