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For any global hospitality business, not just hotels, using digital technology to improve the guest experience is a top priority for ensuring their long-term success. Making it easy for guests to access services is extremely important.

Access includes everything: the physical equipment, computer programs, procedures, and how guests interact with it, and in turn represents considerable CapEx and OpEx. Within a total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis, traditionally this investment comes with expectations of redeeming 7-10 years of operational value.

 

Access as a defining element of the GX (Guest Experience) 🛏️

The costs and risks of entering the world of digital/mobile access may not be obvious right away. Beyond just the initial setup costs, there are risks of disruptions to the guest experience, which can also affect the frontline staff and make it harder to keep guests happy.

We should appreciate the pioneers in this field who invested a lot to test these ideas in the real world as early as 2010. If you search online, you'll find major brands taking risks when mobile technology was less reliable for this kind of guest experience.

Thanks to years of trial and error, these established chains have learned valuable lessons, and now the entire industry benefits from their innovations and solutions to common problems.

 

To each, their own 🏨

In the accommodation sector, a significant challenge is the STR short-term rental market. They are striving for the best guest experience, even though they have diverse operational requirements. It's just not practical to have staff across various locations who can respond to changing arrival and departure times.

One important thing the STR market is still working on is making sure guests are who they say they are. It's crucial to figure out when and how to give them access while keeping their entry and exit secure.

 

Known risks ⚡️

Resistance exists within certain groups of Guests for downloading a mobile app. There seems to be a value proposition consideration as to the value of downloading an app, and a general preference for less intrusive web apps.

Without a downloaded app, however, the requirement for internet in order to execute an access command can come with an array of risks. Think elevators. One of our truly pioneering Mews Clients, Rambla (Australia), seeking the best-in-class ecosystem to deliver a staff-less contact-less experience, discovered this only through a thorough virtual walkthrough.

 

Known benefits 🌈

Guests and staff both prefer a self-check-in system like the one used by airlines. Many of your guests are likely to opt for digital check-in and check-out, using their smartphones as keys.

Rewarding loyal guests with easy check-in is a great way to show appreciation. They shouldn't have to go through unnecessary steps in 2023.

 

Keys to the future 🔑

How does Digital Access look for the now and future of your Enterprise?

We would absolutely love to elicit any feedback on this ever-evolving space!  🚀

Hi Ben… 

Late to respond as we are only just onboarding with Mews, but we are heavily invested in this area and would be happy to discuss our experiences with you in detail.

We use a combination of our PMS, with Akia and Flexipass and have achieved quite a bit.

With our previous PMS we had achieved almost 100% fully automated registration and contactless check-in with delivery of individual mobile keys and terms & conditions sign off from every occupant.

And despite this completely SMS / mobile based approached we have maintained a luxurious and high-touch guest experience. But thanks to this set-up we are able to achieve that with a fraction of the staff of a traditional luxury property.

Guests are sent by SMS a series of links to web-based mini apps allowing them to register, agree to terms, purchase upsells, make requests for their stay, check-in, activate their mobile keys and add accompanying guests to their room (accompanying guests who are in turn sent mini-apps to register and receive a mobile key). All this with zero effort on our end. 

We are however running into significant problems transitioning to Mews on this front because of how you handle group / multi-room online bookings. Any contactless system (specifically the distribution of digital / mobile keys) relies heavily on having a direct line of communication to at least 1 primary occupant for every room, which from what we can tell Mews does not currently seem to be well suited to facilitate.

Hopefully we can work through this issue as we have worked through many in the past. But I do believe Mews will need to rethink how they structure their guest and registration profiles and interactions going forward if they plan to be able to truly support this type of approach.

Feel free to reach out if you’d like to discuss what we’ve learned implementing this over the last year.

THX

Helene


Dear Helene,

Mews has a lot of love for pioneers!

And Mews Community loves to learn more about the finer details and particularly edge cases when it comes to all that is required for Contactless Check-ins.

Akia is quite a popular choice with Mews Clients with the Unified Guest Communications and intuitive provisioning of Digital/Mobile Keys.

We can 100% confirm that we are listening to our Customers on the topic of how Mews can enhance our feature set to align our Guest Journey to Digital/Mobile access. I don’t think I’m overstating it by suggesting it is the most important trend of today.

We wonder if you would you be open to participate in our new Mews Community interview series, where we showcase Mews in its many unique iterations?

Fyi @MarketaOupi 

 

BR,

Ben H

Mews


Dear Helene,

Mews has a lot of love for pioneers!

And Mews Community loves to learn more about the finer details and particularly edge cases when it comes to all that is required for Contactless Check-ins.

Akia is quite a popular choice with Mews Clients with the Unified Guest Communications and intuitive provisioning of Digital/Mobile Keys.

We can 100% confirm that we are listening to our Customers on the topic of how Mews can enhance our feature set to align our Guest Journey to Digital/Mobile access. I don’t think I’m overstating it by suggesting it is the most important trend of today.

We wonder if you would you be open to participate in our new Mews Community interview series, where we showcase Mews in its many unique iterations?

Fyi @MarketaOupi 

 

BR,

Ben H

Mews

Hi Ben,

I’ve heard from Marketa about scheduling an interview. Look forward to speaking to her about the issues we’ve run into, and the possibilities of moving the platform towards better supporting these types of set-ups.

Thanks,

Helene


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