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Real-time messaging isn’t just a buzz word or something that only applies to Gen Z travelers, but instead, it’s quickly become a critical piece of any hotel’s guest engagement strategy. In the minds of guests, the ability to digitally communicate with hotel staff without a delay has quickly gone from a nice-to-have to an absolutely-must-have. For years, the news, media and conversations have been available to be consumed instantly, right in the palm of your hand. Why should interacting with hotels be any different than interacting with the rest of the world? After all, if something about your stay isn’t to your liking, a TripAdvisor review is only a few clicks away. Shouldn’t we be able to fix hotel problems just as quickly and easily as we can post about them? 

Multi-tasking and digital communication are the new normal in 2020. Some may call it lazy or impersonal, but the majority call it convenient. Furthermore, the fact that guest expectations are higher than ever, along with concerns about social distancing and safety practices. The solution? Real-time messaging. Here are a few scenarios of how you can come out as the hero thanks to real-time messaging:

Scenario 1: The Impatient Guest

“You can never get anyone on the line anymore! I’ve been on hold FOREVER!”

If this sounds like a familiar complaint, you’re not alone – every hotel on the planet grapples with managing hold times and keeping up with call volume. While talking on the phone can sometimes be convenient, it’s not always the best solution, especially during times of high demand. With real-time messaging through a smartconcierge like Ivy, you can automate up to 50% of all guest inquiries, leaving your staff more time to have fruitful conversations on the phone. At one Vegas property, Ivy saved over 10k hours of labor, performing the equivalent hours of 7 full-time employees.

Scenario 2: The Guest Who Likes to Stay in Bed

“I am SO hungry…what’s good to eat around here? Don’t really feel like getting out of this bed!” 

In many parts of the country, hotels are beginning to book guests well before they can reopen their dining rooms. That doesn’t mean you need to suspend F&B service. Instead, with real-time communication, you talk directly with their guests to coordinate room service orders and other deliveries. This creates a safer experience for both guests and staff, while still delivering tasty meals right to your guests’ bellies.

Scenario 3: The Guest Who’s Upset at Closures

“I can’t believe I just walked all the way to the pool and it’s closed?!”

Reopening won’t occur all at once, as some hotel amenities will be allowed to open their doors before others. Using smart responses, Ivy can provide instant answers to guest’s questions, informing them in real-time about which services are currently available. This helps save time and frustration for both guests and staff.

Scenario 4: The Guest Who Needs Recommendations

“Yay! Husband is cool with staying another night. I wonder the best way we can spend this time.”

While some nearby restaurants and attractions may open their doors in the coming weeks, others will take several months before they’re back in operation. Guests will need to rely heavily on recommendations from hotel staff as they plan their days and visit nearby businesses, and they’re not going to want to wait around to get their questions answered. Be sure to use a smartconcierge, webchat or other real-time messaging solution to quickly and convenient convey this info to guests.

Scenario 5: The Guest Who’s Having a Bad Experience

“I am going to need to remember to let the staff know the TV doesn’t work and the closet light was broken when we head out.“

One of our smartconcierge’s most popular features is the mid-stay message, which simply asks guests how their stay has been on a scale of 1 to 5. This series of messages not only allows your team to understand why a guest is or isn’t happy, but it gives them that information while the guest is still on property. This is one of the major advantages of real-time messaging — you discover any potential issues while there is still plenty of time to resolve them, helping to create better, more memorable guest experiences. 

Scenario 6: The Guest Who Needs Express Checkout

“These kids are killing me! We gotta get home asap! I wonder if I can just leave the key in my room and not go down to the front desk.”

Many hotels have begun to offer express check-out in recent years, typically by allowing guests to complete the check-out process via their TV, a smartconcierge or a mobile app. No matter what solution you choose, real-time communication is key. Your guests will have questions that need prompt answers, and your team will need to know exactly when the room has been vacated. With real-time messaging, it’s easy to find these kinds of answers.

From check-in to check-out, there are dozens of cases where real-time messaging is not only helpful, but actually critical to a hotel’s operations. If you’re interested in learning more about real-time messaging and smartconcierges, be sure to reach out to us at info@gomoment.com.

The hospitality industry is known for constant innovation and evolution, and it has become increasingly important to stay up-to-date with the latest tech products and services. After all, the best technology not only attracts guests to your property, but it also ensures that each guest has a safe, enjoyable stay that leaves them excited to return and share their experience with others. This, in turn, can help you to maximize bookings and drive as much revenue as possible to your property.

The COVID-19 crisis has only further proven the need for rapid change in the hospitality industry, including a full-on embrace of innovative tech solutions. Hotels have been forced to reexamine everything from the way their guests book rooms to their housekeeping procedures to the check-out process.

The need for cutting edge technology in the hospitality industry is only growing, and nowhere is that more evident than when using tech to capture as many bookings as possible. With the help of some cutting edge software, hotels can now identify and communicate with potential guests while they’re still planning their upcoming journey, long before they’ve chosen the hotel, and explain to them why their property makes for the best choice.

While some travelers may pick their hotel on a whim, the majority of savvy customers spend a great deal of time selecting a property that best meets their needs. That’s a good thing for hotels: with the right mix of tech products, they can identify leads that their property is uniquely suited for. SEO (search engine optimization) tools like Moz and Google Trends can make it easy to optimize your marketing budget by targeting your top leads in a search engine, while analytics tools like Google Analytics and Google AdWords offer insights on your website visitors and the ability to follow up with them across the internet.

Speaking of a hotel’s website, it’s wise to consider adding an interactive tool, such as webchat, to your website in order to address frequently asked questions and encourage guests to book a room on your website, rather than through a third party OTA. As an added bonus, a smartconcierge, such as Ivy, can automatically answer many common questions, freeing up the hotel staff to spend their time creating memorable, personalized experiences for in-house guests.

Software like analytics tools and webchat can help you to identify the travelers who are most likely to consider your hotel a perfect fit, but their impact on the guest’s decision-making process is minimal compared to reading reviews. Technology can help here too, albeit indirectly, by wowing guests while they’re on property and encouraging them to leave positive reviews that influence other travelers. 

Technology that makes a guest’s visit hassle-free, or that’s simply interesting to try, is often the difference between a traveler choosing one hotel over its competitors.

Many guests, especially frequent travelers, seek out hotels with the latest innovations. Everything from state-of-the-art fitness equipment to champagne vending machines to virtual concierge can make their stay easier, safer, and more fun. It’s no surprise that over 77% of respondents to a 2019 Oracle survey wanted the ability to request room service and other deliveries through their mobile device  — much like WiFi, guests have begun to view the smartconcierge and other tech perks as a must-have, rather than a nice-to-have.

Everyone’s talking about hotel technology and the hotels of tomorrow. We hear about smart rooms, the Internet of Things (IoT), ambient intelligence, voice search and assistance, personalization, and artificial intelligence (AI). They may seem futuristic, but many of them are already realities. Take the AI-powered hotel smartconcierge, for example.

Like its human counterpart, the hotel smartconcierge exists to provide unparalleled guest service, a key hospitality objective. Unlike its human counterpart; however, the hotel smartconcierge can handle millions of guest interactions simultaneously and accurately. Managing this load is just one benefit a smartconcierge provides to both a hotel and its guests. There are plenty more.

Here’s a list of what you should look for… and what you should avoid when considering a hotel smartconcierge:

Considerations for Guests

• Ease of use: Technology tends to be adopted when it’s intuitive to use; in other words when it leverages common behavior people are already used to doing. The hotel smartconcierge relies on one of the most common activities people do today – text messaging – to deliver guest service.
• Natural language:
  Research has revealed that people prefer and respond to AI with human-like qualities. A hotel smartconcierge that sounds and acts human while providing accurate and appropriate responses quickly wins guests over. When guests are comfortable, they’ll be more likely to use the smartconcierge for future requests.
• Instant responses: We live in instant gratification times. In the hospitality industry, that heightens expectations even further. A good hotel smartconcierge responds in seconds, enabling guests to have more time to enjoy their vacation instead of waiting on hold or in line at a guest services desk.
• Ever-present: Even the top hotels with butler service cannot (and will not) be ever-present at a guest’s side, but a smartconcierge can be. Because it’s accessed by the guest’s smartphone, the hotel smartconcierge is likely to be conveniently located in a pocket, a bag, or on a nearby surface – waiting to address the guest’s whim or issue.
• Guest control: Not only is the hotel smartconcierge ever-present and conveniently available, but it can also be less interruptive. For instance, the guest can request something of the smartconcierge while in the middle of a meeting and check for the response only after the meeting has concluded. Alternatively, for guests who prefer do-it-yourself interactions to avoid dealing with a human being, they can complete tasks like virtual check-out through the smartconcierge.
• Seamless service experiences: When a smartconcierge cannot adequately solve a guest’s issue, the smartconcierge solution should escalate the matter to a human (hotel staff) counterpart. That hand-off should be communicated to the guest and executed seamlessly without requiring the guest to repeat their issue all over again. The right hotel smartconcierge can manage this process flawlessly.

When the hotel smartconcierge works as it should, hotels can expect markedly improved guest experiences and guest satisfaction scores to increase by 10-30%. These benefits alone could be powerful enough, but hotels with the right smartconcierge solution can realize additional gains operationally.

Considerations for Hotels

• Ease of integration/startup:
  Even the impressive technology might be a nightmare to install, to transition to, and to train staff on. Hotels looking for the right smartconcierge should look for ease of integration, meaning less than a week to go live. Also, ensure the solution has a proven integration track record with their existing PMS.
• Hyper-personalized messaging to best serve hotel objectives and guest needs: A casino resort has different objectives than a luxury resort in the rugged outdoors. The right hotel smartconcierge can be customized to address the specific requests of each property, including special promotions that can help boost engagement in on-site activities, check reward programs standings, and upsell revenue opportunities, to name a few.
• Constant, automated learning: Through advanced machine learning programming, an AI-powered hotel smartconcierge automatically and continually learns how to respond better. The more seamless and accurate the responses, the more it reduces the load on their human counterparts. And since the smartconcierge manages mostly redundant, repetitive requests, it not only frees up employees for more high-value interactions, but also improves employee engagement, sentiment, and retention rates. Most guest services personnel would happily give up having to answer the same mundane questions over and over again.
• Issue closure: A true hotel smartconcierge will follow a guest issue through until it’s resolved, which means providing both the guest and hotel staff with follow-ups and alerts until the task is complete
• Communications transcripts: When issues do need to be elevated to a human guest services representative, it can’t be a seamless experience if the transcript of the guest conversation is not provided first. Such transcripts let the hotel staff immediately pick up where the smartconcierge left off and can also be reviewed and analyzed after the fact for trends and lingering issues the hotel needs to address.
• Simple staff portal: For human staff to serve guests and access communications transcripts, there needs to be a simple, easy-to-use dashboard which centralizes all the information in one place.
• Real-time analytics: Hotel operations leaders will want insights into how the smartconcierge-human counterpart tag-team effort resolves guest issues, leads to special offer redemptions and incremental revenue gains and improves satisfaction scores. Look for a solution that provides these data points in easy-to-absorb, real-time dashboards.

What to Avoid

A word or two of caution when venturing into the world of hotel smartconcierge or virtual concierge-like solutions: Look for a proven provider who has worked with properties like yours in the past, and further still, partner with one that specializes in the hotel and hospitality sector. The hospitality industry has unique needs and demands, and guest services isn’t an area you want to gamble and lose on. Also, avoid solutions that aren’t focused, try to do too much, or solve too many problems. You wouldn’t ask your Director of Housekeeping to also be your property’s Executive Chef, so don’t expect your technology to excel if it is positioned as a jack-of-all-trades either. Look for a smartconcierge provider that knows their lane and has laser-focus on it. Be a smart shopper of your smartconcierge selection.

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, hotels around the world must take a second look at their procedures and assess whether they’re still viable in a world of social distancing and reduced staffing. Updating outdated processes will be a challenge, but it’s also an opportunity to experiment with new ways of creating the best experience possible for guests.

Adopting express check-in (also known as mobile check-in or contactless check-in) is a natural starting place for hotels who want to encourage social distancing without sacrificing service. The goal of express check-in is simple: reduce lines at the front desk by encouraging guests to check-in from their mobile devices.

Express check-in boasts many benefits. For example, preventing crowds from forming at the front desk decreases the risk of spreading the virus, improving safety for both guests and staff. The guests who do need to stop by the front desk will appreciate not having to wait in line. Additionally, express check-in saves time and energy for the front desk staff, allowing them to focus on other tasks or connect more deeply with guests.

In short, express check-in makes life easier for both your guests and your staff. It’s a true win-win situation.

How to Inform Guests about Express Check-In

Numerous solutions exist for implementing express check-in at your property. Many chain properties and large hotel groups ask guests to download their mobile apps, but this isn’t always necessary for smaller, independent hotels — and even if it were, studies have shown that very few guests actually download and engage with hotel apps.

Pre-arrival messaging makes for a more effective option for express check-in. By using text messages or emails to communicate with the guest before they’ve even stepped foot on the property, hotels can easily guide guests through the express check-in process. What’s more, you’re connecting with guests via text message or email, platforms they already check several times a day, rather than asking to download something new. A smartconcierge platform like Ivy provides the most elegant solution for pre-arrival messaging, as it establishes a line of communication that’s open to guests throughout the entirety of their stay. Whether guests need help with express check-in, connecting to the WiFi, or ordering room service, all they have to do is send a quick text message.

What about the room key?

Perhaps the most important part of checking in is receiving the room key. With express check-in, you’ll want to make sure this part of the process is as streamlined as possible. If your hotel uses key cards or physical keys, it’s wise to create a dedicated line at the front desk reserved exclusively for key pick-ups.

Alternatively, consider embracing a mobile key solution like OpenKey, which allows guests to access the property and unlock their rooms using only their mobile device. By combining pre-arrival messaging with a mobile key, it’s possible to entirely eliminate trips to the front desk during check-in. 

How soon can guests start the express check-in process?

Most hotels with express check-in open the service to guests either 24 hours prior or the morning of their arrival. This makes sure that the guest has plenty of time to complete the process without bothering them too far ahead of time. Be sure to communicate your regular check-in hours with guests, so they can plan their travels accordingly. Furthermore, if the guest’s room won’t be ready at the normal check-in time (things happen!), be sure to have a plan for breaking the bad news to guests and informing them of when the room is ready.

Is there anything else I should let guests know?

Remember to leave a phone number and contact info for guests, just in case something goes awry during the express check-in. Also, if guests will be required to download any apps ahead of time, such as a mobile key app or a hotel app, it’d be helpful to give them a heads up.

Like many new technologies, adopting express check-in can seem stressful at first. But when it’s done right, you’re not only creating a more convenient, safer experience for guests, but also saving the front desk team’s time and energy.

As travelers emerge from their homes and get back on the road, they’re likely to carry new expectations and concerns in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The unprecedented crisis not only encouraged people to practice social distancing, but has also decreased trust in many traditional institutions. The paradigm has shifted, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing — it just means that businesses need to adapt to thrive in a new world.

For hotels and the hospitality industry, one of the most post-COVID important tasks will be building trust with their guests. After spending months cooped up at home, guests will be excited to resume traveling yet hesitant to put themselves or their families at risk. Hotels can build trust and make guests feel more comfortable by keeping them informed on the status of COVID-19 in their communities and up-to-date on what measures the hotel is taking to prevent the spread of disease. Guests will expect changes to both hotel policies and local laws, and they’ll appreciate any guidance the hotel can provide.

Of course, the best hotels won’t just do their best to put their guests’ minds at ease once they’ve checked-in. Instead, they’ll be in regular communication with guests before they’ve even arrived. If your property offers express or contactless check-in, it’s wise to share check-in details prior to arrival. You may also wish to communicate the steps you’re taking to ensure cleanliness and proper social distancing, such as changes to F&B service, housekeeping schedules, and other on-site amenities. Finally, if lots of your guests choose to stay at your property due to its proximity to a nearby business, attraction or transportation hub, it would be helpful to inform guests about any changes to their operational procedures.

The easiest way to implement pre-arrival messaging is via an AI-enabled guest communication platform like Ivy. Working hand-in-hand with your PMS, Ivy can automatically send text messages to guests before, during and after their stay, while also connecting the guest directly with a staff member when they’re in need of further assistance. This two-pronged approach ensures that guests receive all the information they need prior to arrival, while also creating space to connect directly with the staff. By leveraging Ivy’s pre-arrival messaging feature, you’ll help guests to feel at ease before they’ve even left home.

Photo credit: Suhyeon Choi

As people throughout the world follow orders to shelter in place, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on air travel. Millions of passengers have canceled or rescheduled their flights, and airlines are scrambling to stay afloat during this difficult period.

To say the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted air travel would be the understatement of the century. Air travel isn’t likely to look the same again, even after society reopens. Prices will fluctuate due to changes in supply and demand, and airlines will institute new practices as they adapt to changing expectations. Here’s what we’re likely to see moving forward:

1. Crossing international borders will require more paperwork…and more timeAs jokes go, riffs about the absurd wait times when passing through customs are already stale, but don’t expect to stop hearing them in the future. In response to coronavirus, you can expect the customs and immigration process to skyrocket.In the short term, many countries, including South Korea and Singapore, are not only checking passports, but they’ve also begun swab testing each and every traveler who steps off an international flight. This practice mitigates the risk of secondary infections, but it also creates longer waits.That said, on-the-spot swab testing isn’t a practical or sustainable long-term solution. Instead, countries are likely to begin asking for health and immunization records, in addition to your passport (technically you’re already supposed to bring your immunization records on international trips, but in our experience, this is rarely enforced). Not only will border protection officers need to double-check your identity, but they’ll also need to verify that your medical history won’t put their citizens at risk.
2. Automation and self-service as safety features, rather than a convenienceBetween check-in kiosks, self-tagged bags and mobile apps, airlines have already begun to embrace the growing role of automation and self-service in the travel experience. After COVID-19, however, consumers won’t view these features as luxuries, but instead as necessities. In addition to promoting good hygiene and health practices, a shift towards automation and self-service can also be a boon for airlines. Rather than having to use their limited manpower to perform the same repetitive (yet necessary) duties day in and day out, airlines can rely on technology to accomplish these tasks more efficiently and frugally, leaving staff free to connect with passengers and work on the kinds of problems that require a human touch.
3. Air filters, hand sanitizer, and thorough cleaning will be positioned as selling pointsSelecting the right flight is already a complicated dance — it can be tough to find a flight that fits your schedule, contributes to your travel rewards points, and offers the on-flight features you need to get through a long journey without losing your mind. And of course, you’ll need to meet all these requirements without breaking the bank.
   
   In the post-coronavirus era, you’ll have to add a new item to your list of things to consider when booking a flight: safety features. Airlines are likely to tout their state-of-the-art air filtration systems, unlimited hand sanitizer, and extremely thorough cleanings in an effort to persuade travelers that their planes are a safe environment.Airlines aren’t going to stop at onboard features, either. Expect to see a wave of changes to the boarding process designed to reduce contact and promote social distancing whenever possible. For example, Delta began experimenting with virtual queueing in their app earlier in 2020, and they’re likely to broaden the scope of this feature moving forward.

COVID-19 has already changed the face of the airline industry. As the world begins to travel again, passengers will hold a different set of expectations for air travel, and it’ll be up to the airlines to respond. It’ll be a shift, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing: through collaboration and listening to passengers, the airline industry can reshape itself to be safer, more efficient, and more sustainable than ever.

As the hospitality industry continues to adapt to challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, one phrase seems to come up over and over: contactless hospitality.

Developed to assist travelers and hotel staff with social distancing, contactless hospitality is a set of best practices that minimizes the risks of transmitting COVID-19 while still offering guests the high-quality service they deserve.

Contactless hospitality provides a safer alternative to many traditional hospitality practices. For example, rather than serving a breakfast buffet in the lobby, many hotels are preparing grab-n-go bags to eat back in the guest room. Other properties have begun to insist that guests utilize express or mobile check-out services, rather than dropping their room key off at the front desk. Some hotels have even reduced the frequency of housekeeping, opting to clean rooms twice a week instead of every day unless the guest asks otherwise.

A social distant — but still delicious — breakfast! Photo by: Toa Heftiba

The specifics of contactless hospitality may look different at each property, but the goal is always the same: creating the safest possible experience for both guests and staff while maintaining great service.

Here at Go Moment, we’ve been proud to see hotels throughout the world rely on Ivy to help them practice contactless hospitality. From pre-arrival messaging to room service to check-out, Ivy offers a convenient channel for guests and staff to communicate with each other while avoiding face-to-face contact.

Between Ivy’s AI-enabled smart responses and the hotel team’s expertise, guests can control the entire hotel experience from their mobile phone, eliminating any risk of exposure to COVID-19 and making it simple to contact the staff with any requests or inquiries.

Many of the changes spurred by contactless hospitality are likely to disappear once the COVID-19 pandemic passes. On-site amenities like pools, gyms, and spas will reopen, and restaurants will again welcome guests to their tables. Continental breakfast buffets will be a staple of American highway travel once more.

However, some aspects of contactless hospitality are likely to persist. In particular, guests will be more open to communicating with the staff remotely, and they’ll see less of a need to walk down to the front desk for every little request. In the last decade, we’ve already seen a shift towards self-service models in retail, banking, and food service — it’s likely that with contactless hospitality as a catalyst, we’ll see similar changes take hold in the hospitality industry.

The smartest hotels not only view contactless hospitality as an important step in their response to COVID-19, but they also anticipate a change in guest’s expectations of the hospitality industry. By leveraging technology and embracing self-service, hotels are well-poised to meet guest’s needs more efficiently and sustainably than ever before.

Interested in hearing more about contactless hospitality? We’d love to hear more about your property’s needs and how you’re evolving to thrive post-COVID. Please reach out to Jennifer Suski (jennifer@gomoment.com) to learn more!