Technology Check-In: Does Your Hotel Pass These Three Mobility Challenges?

With IoT becoming the norm—room automation, IP security cameras, point of sale systems and virtual assistance devices—the growing pressure on networks to deliver uninterrupted quality of service to guests starts to become an issue.

It is not simply a case of adding a few more access points around the hotel—you need a solution in place to ensure simple and secure guest access and authentication. This simplified connectivity needs to ‘follow’ the guest around the premises, providing access to services where and when they need them.

Challenge 2: Follow that Device—Mobile Guest Services from Digital Reception to Check-Out

A guest that uses the spa, the restaurant and the gym leads to a better bottom line. The key to unlocking this is the guest’s personal device—from providing direct bookings and services before guests arrive, to saving time by checking-out straight from their smartphone. This type of personalised experience ultimately means better guest engagement.

This requires frictionless digital interaction between guest and hotel departments—be that the front desk, restaurant or other facilities. With today’s open APIs (application programming interfaces), it is becoming easier than ever to integrate voice and message capabilities directly into guest loyalty or eConcierge apps.

Beyond this, location-based services are quickly establishing themselves as a way to offer guest services.

Hotels are also using technology to ensure they are also getting the most out of each guest. For example, Accor Hotels is using a cloud-based system with a licensing model that allows them to only pay per occupied room per night, sharing the risk and reward with vendor and partners.

Behind the scenes, in hotels such as The Buddha Bar Hotel in Paris, enhanced mobility services are enabling staff to stay connected anywhere on-site, resulting in more attention made to guests’ demands. There are apps which enable employees to instantly report room availability via a code on their mobile device, or log and respond to maintenance issues on the move.

Challenge 3: Securing Networks and Containing Threats with Containers and Pans

Hotels are a growing target for hackers and data thieves because of their open, guest-facing nature. With so many mobile, wearable and IoT devices entering the hotel space, balancing guest access while keeping data, hotel functions and back-end services secure is vital.

One of the core principles behind building a secure network for hotels is containerisation technology—a method of creating virtual isolated environments on a single converged network. The idea is to group connected devices with a common function and the respective authorised users into a unique, virtual IoT ‘container’. As connectivity grows and with so many devices in guest rooms, you also need to consider what each guest can interact with—smart TVs, intelligent room assistants or climate control. The answer to this is the Personal Area Network (PAN)—a dedicated Wi-Fi network for every room, where guests can interact with room technology—but crucially only in their room.

To drive these benefits to their bottom line, hotels don’t just need to offer better mobility; they need to offer smarter mobility. Hoteliers need to add a personal touch to their technology offerings. That means enhancing guest experience with services that transform the Internet of Things into the Hospitality of Things and mobile engagement that offers timely and appropriate services to guests. But with digital criminals on the prowl and tech savvy guests highly aware of digital risks, securing hotel networks can no longer be an afterthought—secure connectivity needs to be at the center of design.