The technology revolution had allowed the hospitality industry to evolve and transform completely from their traditional operation model into a personalized seamless customer-oriented experience, starting right when the customer journey begins. The epidemic has sped up the implementation process as well as the intervention of customers’ acceptance, opening a new chapter of the contactless era in hospitality.

Pre-check-in allows hotels to comply with strict COVID-19 regulations on distances and hygiene while making customers feel safe and secure.

How does pre-check-in actually work? Why isn’t pre-check-in frequently offered enough? Are you planning to introduce this technology to your property? Let’s cut the queue and dive down into what this technology is really made of.

The ultimate guide to hotel pre-check-in

Hotel Pre-check-in, what is it?

Pre-check-in allows the hotel guests to proceed with their check-in process on their mobile devices prior to their arrival. Hotels usually activate the pre-check-in functionality on their app 24 hours ahead.

Hotels can activate pre-check-in functionality on their app 24hrs ahead.

Pre-check-in is the latest feature developed for our CiHMS Guest App, a part of our CiHMS PMS. We specially designed this functionality to simplify the checking-in process for staff while offering guests the flexibility to handle the check-in in whichever way they indulge.

Guests have to fill in their contact details, their reservation information and provide personal identification documents. A full-face selfie can be mandatory for verification, it automatically syncs this data to the guest profile on the hotel’s database and enables guests’ facial recognition as soon as they arrive at the lobby.

Depending on the hotel’s preferences and policies, guests can also select the desired vacant hotel room, early check-in or late check-out request, luggage storage payment, other added-value hotel packages such as spas, meals, city tours, etc.

Once completing the check-in procedure, guests may receive their room’s number and digital room key right on their app’s confirmation screen, or choose to pick up their room key physical card at the front desks. Many hotels prefer not to offer guests room numbers until they physically make it to the lobby, in order to give flexibility to their rooms’ allotments.

What are the benefits of pre-check-in?

Your guests just love it

A Data-Driven Look at Hospitality’s Recovery in 2020 report had shown 71% of consumers are more likely to stay in a hotel offering self-service tech. Imagine after the long commute to your destination, the last thing you would want to do is get in line and do all the paperwork onsite. Not ideal for anyone in particular. Say goodbye to the long busy waiting queue at the front desk, get instant access to the hotel room upon arrival. It’s definitely convenient.

Online check-in gives guests the freedom and comfort of checking in at their own pace.

Hotel staff adores it

The pre-check-in reduces the administrative workload for the front desk staff tremendously, much faster with group pre-check-in. A pre-check-in functionality integrated into your hotel PMS, like CiHMS deliver reliable automation, smooth synchronization, and alleviate labor shortage issue with delightful traveler’s experiences. Guests are asked to provide their expected arrival time, which allows hotels to better plan and allocate hotel staff’s availability to welcome guests.

Improving customer relationship

As the pre-check-in has done the majority of the work, like collecting guests’ ID, contact details, booking information, etc., your staff can focus on connecting with the customers at a much higher level, taking time to actually understand their personal needs and expectations, overall, better cater to your guests with exceptional comfort.

A great way to upsell or cross-sell

Guests might be skeptical during the booking process where they often compare prices, features, hotel services before making the final decision. However, they are most inclined to purchase a room upgrade, spa treatments, city tours, pick-up service, set meals closer to their arrival date. The decision-making can proceed much faster at home rather than at the busy front desk.

Social distancing compliance boosts guest confidence

Pre-check-in is the perfect solution to keep your hotel in check with the social distancing regulations. It limits physical person-to-person interaction to a minimum, making guests feel safe and secure. Hotels might integrate contactless/cashless payment or facial recognition technology to take this up a notch. With a cloud-based hospitality management solution like CiHMS, this can easily be done.

With Pre-check-in, guests may proceed cashless payment with facial recognition technology integrated right on the hotel app.

Any disadvantages to putting into reconsideration

Less human contact and interaction

While the advantage of pre-check-in is allowing guests to feel safe and secure by avoiding physical contact with hotel staff altogether, it can’t help create the invisible untouchable personal bubble surrounding guests throughout their stays. For business travelers, things can be tough as they have been used to communicating and exchanging stories with hotel employees on their trips in the past. Many would prefer the traditional check-in process, as they truly enjoy human interaction.

Unstable internet connection

Similar to any hospitality contactless technology, it is required to have sufficient good quality internet coverage across your properties. Otherwise, the cloud computing hospitality management solution won’t be synchronized and unable to work properly. Making sure no internet disruption and an outage is significantly important in implementing pre-check-in technology.

New software investment and comprehensive training for the front desk

Your current hospitality management might not offer pre-check-in functionality, merely because they haven’t started with the development yet. Looking out for a new pre-check-in software installation might be messy, expensive, and simply insufficient for your current hotel operations at the moment. Leveraging whether this upgraded feature is worth the process.

Should you or should you not?

Pre-arrival is an essential touchpoint in the customers’ journey. It happens to be the first impression guests have of your hotel even before they get there. Offering guests, a pre-check-in service shows your efforts and intentions in delivering complete customer satisfaction and tapping in personalized customers’ experiences proactively.

Hospitality is known for its competitiveness, if you fail to keep up with the comparable competitors in the area offering the latest technology there is, most likely, your guests will choose them over you in a heartbeat. Being a highly customer-centric industry, adopting innovative technologies to deliver experiences that your customers are happy with, as their demands grow.

It might surprise you how easy it is to get started with pre-check-in. There is a wide range of hospitality management solutions offering this feature as an added feature in their system. Ask your hotel PMS providers for this option, or contact our team to book a demo to discover the possibilities of contactless pre-check-in for your hotels.

The novelty of technological innovations has become a necessity in hotel operations and shaping the new normal in hospitality. Incorporating advanced technology to strengthen customer confidence while safeguarding employees’ health and mitigating losses during this recovery stage. Smart hotel technology empowers hotel operations in navigating the uncertain turbulence of the year 2022 and beyond. Let’s look at a few possibilities in how smart technology adaptation matters:

Smart technology empowers hotel operations to advance.

Contactless experiences all the way

The post-pandemic effects have reshaped hospitality and heightened customer expectations to the extent that the “same old days” experience might not cut it for them. Especially post COVID-19 pandemic has multiplied the difficulties in the hotel sector, leaving the hospitality professionals with questions about how to upgrade their technology stacks while dealing with the current crisis.

Contactless technology has firstly introduced a decade ago it’s nothing new, just staying low-key all this time. The emerging technology has recently gained momentum in both the public and private sectors and is widely accepted in hospitality and tourism. Transforming the hospitality standard into a complete contactless experience from check-in/to check-out, ordering food and room services on the guest app, facial recognition payment, etc. to execute all relevant tasks without physical contact with hotel employees, reducing the risk of exposure to undesirable infection in this “sensitive” era.

According to Skift’s report, 26% of customers extremely agreed and 45% favorably agreed that they preferred to stay at hotels providing self-service options to avoid direct physical contact with hotel staff. This opened up the customers’ acceptance of the technology adaption in the hotel sector.

Up to 80% would download the hotel app to proceed with check-in / check-out and receive the latest promotional information and notifications (based on the Criton Hospitality Survey). The majority of guests (62%) have been looking forward to using digital hotel room keys and communicating/ordering room services, and housekeeping through the hotel apps, while 30% would love to proceed with them on the hotel website, and 8% would carry these out the traditional way.

The above statistics have spoken for themselves on the important role of smart technology in today’s hotels’ operations. It gradually has become the business core value, essential criteria for guest accommodation choice. This might be the hotel management software to help optimize the hotel’s operations with ease. With CiHMS – the complete hospitality management solution, streamline hotel procedures from the front desk to housekeeping, monitor individual tasks right at your dashboard within your fingertip, and improve your guest’s experiences simultaneously at their very first stay.

Contactless experience throughout a typical guest journey at a hotel is now possible.

Better guest communication

Generating all guests’ data, including guest preferences, habits, purchased packages, etc., storing them on your system for further analysis. For instance, guest A always orders an extra pillow for his sleep comfort, guest B loves a king-size bed instead of a queen, etc. In their next stay, offer these adjustments ahead.

Personalizing guests’ experience shows that your hotel “do care” about your customer, you remember them perfectly, and always looking forward to welcoming them back. Giving them a sense of familiarity, hospitality, and empathy. It gives your employees the confidence to communicate with guests openly on a much more personal level.

Communication goes both ways. Two-way communication involves receiving feedback from your customers as well. According to Zingle, only 25% of customers would submit feedback only if their experiences have been affected negatively, only 42% would come back to give hotels the second chance to make up for their previous worst experience. How to get it done fairly comfortable for your guests to freely send out constructive feedback in time and retent your customer without losing them forever?

The digital world has come in as a rescuer for such circumstances. We all can easily find a deliberate version of ourselves online. Taking the advantage of social media messenger integration via Open API, communication to your guests through one of these tools can easily be applied, an open communication gateway for your guests to share their difficulties and unfortunate occurrence with you immediately. From there, quick actions and crisis resolution can help to put all your guests’ problems behind, exceed their expectations, and ensure to meet your guests’ satisfaction before they leave.  Add in a touch of VR (Virtual Reality) and AR (Augmented Reality) technology to differentiate your hotel marketing and improve guests’ experience during their stay.

VR and AR Technology in hospitality to heighten customers’ experience

Unlocking your employees’ full potential

Technology does not only close the gap between guests and hotels but is also a middle man bridging the void among hotel departments, making sure all procedures are in check and intact. The hospitality management solution allows hoteliers to monitor hotel operations easily, hotel room status is synchronized across the system. Instead of the traditional phone call to get the status updated, now can be seen directly on the CiHMS dashboard, helping to streamline and speed up all departments’ processes smoothly, and kick up hotel employees’ performance up a notch.

Also cutting down the excessive timeline in doing these manually. Taking the time in delivering exceptional customer service, and shift the focus on the guests – is an important factor in the hospitality industry.

The backbone hotel’s development platform

A direct booking portal via the hotel’s website or through OTAs distribution channels increases brands’ awareness, making your brand “discoverable” while approaching your target audiences naturally. These technological tools assist your hotel in better maximizing your hotel room occupancy and avoiding the under/over-booking common situation.

The detailed reports with real-time statistics allow hotel managers to make strategic decisions at the right time. AI technology also powers up precise allotment planning and forecast room plans to ensure revenue stabilizing throughout the low-peak periods. Keep hotels stay proactive instead of “inactively” reacting to the overload high peak season.

AI technology has developed rapidly in assisting hotels to forecast hotel room occupancy, allocate labor force efficiently, and build hotel big data to serve hotel operations.

Undeniably, the power of technology has catalyzed hotel operations to breakthroughs and advance along the side. Catching up with the current technology innovations might be challenging but blissful in return with all the benefits and conveniences it brings along. Utilizing technology in hotel operations with a decent hospitality management solution, like CiHMS is the key to starting their hotel recovery in this new normal post-COVID-19 pandemic at a much faster pace, gaining a competitive advantage against other competitors.

If we have briefly talked about AI technology in hospitality in the previous blog, in today’s blog we shall be digging a bit deeper into how AI application in the hospitality industry and its potential to manage hotel operations efficiently.

Robots in the move

The majority of robots in use today are performing human tasks precisely, especially after the pandemic outbreaks to reduce unnecessary physical contact to a minimum and ensure guests stay safe and secured while keeping the current labor force at bay. Vietnam has only applied robotic technology to the manufacturing industry and is skeptical of the service industry, plus the initial upfront investment in robotic technology ain’t nowhere near affordable. Hence, putting robots into your business daily practice eventually gains competitive advantages over your competitors. Guests shall be curious enough to find the need in visiting your hotels and try out your services, boosting your revenues and profits tremendously.

The applications of AI can be seen in hospitality easily through having robots serving in public areas, delivery services, etc.

In-room voice assistant

We all might have been familiar with voice recognition technology such as Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa – the virtual assistants developed by Amazon, which have been making life at home a lot more comfortable: from browsing the web, weather, checking the time, setting timers, turning on TVs, changing the light brightness level to just about anything you can imagine. Bringing voice assistance technology into the hotel room to enhance guest in-room experiences significantly.

According to a recent study from Juniper Research, it shows 8.4 billion mobile users shall be interacting with the virtual voice assistant in the year 2024. This technology plays an important role in connecting hotel employees with their guests. Simply input their requests via the in-room virtual assistant integrated equipment. Thanks to AI technology, these virtual assistants can communicate and confirm guests’ requests before filing them onto the system to get them to queue up.

Once successfully filing these requests, the virtual assistant shall be following through with a set of procedures given by the hospitality management solution, like CiHMS. The request then gets filtered and direct to the related department to be carried out promptly. It cuts down the human labors time in delegating tasks, communications, and more. You’ll be surprised how easily these tasks get sorted out.

Bringing virtual voice assistant experience into hospitality makes guests to settling in easier in a much more comfortable way.

Room occupancy maximization

Thanks to the support of AI technology, the room rate, and room management can easily be solved, such as Insufficient room inventories and unable to optimize room occupancy to an optimum rate due to an overhauled reservation system. With machine-learning ability, AI can help hotels to be in control of targeting the ideal audiences, arrange the room reservations adequately, limit the time gap between two bookings of the same room, and lower the risk of having an empty room stand-by. Mobile friendly allows housekeeping staff to attend to room service requests quickly as soon as the guests are checking out, and update the room status simultaneously across the system easily with the cloud-based hospitality management solution, like CiHMS.

Optimize room rate and room occupancy forecast

Marketing and Sales Departments can quickly get the promotional campaign, available discounts for membership, etc on the hotel management system. The hospitality management solution integrated with AI technology shall automatically detect the price pattern, and match it with current hotel operations and labor force to start “learning” the hotel inside and out to have a hotel room occupancy forecast ahead of time. It allows the system to come up with a strategic operations plan based on the data analyzed from the campaign, and suggest the optimum room rate for guests. The system can also recommend a proper advertising campaign on social networks, one of the surging and well-loved trends in hospitality, to target and convert potential leads into actual customers.

Reports regarding room rate management generated from the machine-learn process of the AI technology can easily be found in the complete hospitality management solution, such as CiHMS. For instance, once in a while, your guests are in need of postponing their reservation due to whatever personal reason it might be, either their flights are delayed or canceled from bad weather, as soon as you update this information onto the hotel PMS, the room status shall be synchronized across the system, as well as on OTA channels. AI technology lets the hotel run short promotion packages for these outstanding rooms on all booking platforms, search engines, social networks, etc. to get this room filled as soon as possible. Make sure no room is left vacant while maximizing hotel revenue at its best.

AI boosts hotel room occupancy rate and maximizes reservations across OTA channels.

Be in check with the room rate strategy from the competitors, monitor your hotel pricing plan, and catch up with the trends to optimize your room occupancy and rate effectively, all thanks to the artificial intelligence found in the powerful Room Rate Management System within our cloud-based hospitality management solution CiHMS.

Personalize guest experiences

Integrating the AI in the hotel management system shall enable customers’ data such as their spending preferences and behaviors during their stay to be stored and analyzed by a set of algorithms. It may recommend guests to take a questionnaire or survey, collecting an adequate amount of information to gather customer insights and use them to deliver an exceptional personalized guest experience in their next stay like: suggest appropriate room packages within their financial budget, favorite value-added services, meal plans and more. The customers feel appreciated and well taken care of, while hoteliers can maximize their profits by successful upsell and cross-sell without being oversold.

Applying AI technology in the hospitality industry now can be found in leading hospitality management solutions on the market, like CiHMS. Be up with the innovative technology on the market and customers’ expectations set your hotels apart from the others. A step up with a future trend, and a step closer to a smart hotel model.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) was first introduced at The Dartmouth Conference in 1956. Initially, its potential in business and operations was not fully recognized due to its developmental stage. Fast forward to today, AI has become a cornerstone in various industries, especially tourism and hospitality. This article explores how AI fits into hotel technology and whether it can completely replace human roles in the sector. Let’s dive into today’s blog and get this sort out with CiHMS.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

AI encompasses a broad range of computer science focused on creating smart machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. This includes learning, memory, and decision-making. Core elements of AI include machine learning and big data. Common examples of AI in daily life include virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot, email spam filters, and personalized recommendations on platforms like Netflix.

AI technology has been surrounding human beings for the last decades without us acknowledging it.

Why does AI matters?

The tourism and hospitality industry has faced numerous challenges in recent years, including labor shortages and the need for enhanced guest experiences. AI has emerged as a crucial solution to these challenges, helping to alleviate labor shortages and streamline operations.

Hotels were shutting down as the result of the social distancing curbs across the country, hardly meeting 20% occupancy compared to the previous period. As a matter of fact, even well-thought-out plans and scarcity marketing policy such as half-price room rate promotions, buy 1 get 1 extra night off for free, etc. didn’t seem to work out. Hoteliers had to come up with budget cuts and excessive laying off to survive through the pandemic. Consequently, the labor shortage has become a major issue for the industry alarmingly. AI technology has become the optimal solution amidst this chaos.

Contributing to relieving the labor shortage crisis, AI technology has helped hotel employees to executive tasks in a much shorter timeframe.

Thanks to AI, your front desk shall no longer have to be hesitated among welcoming a long-line of guest check-in, picking up the disturbing phone ringing, determining whether or not to answer the series of questions from the guests standing by, or your colleagues. All the phone calls shall be routed to the relevant departments based on the algorithm of past phone calls. Guests can proceed with online check-in right at the phone and skip the front desk. All housekeeping requests are synchronized across the system. Perspectively, with AI technology as a back-bone, hotels are getting very close to the smart hotel model – the ideal hotel model of the future.

Applications of AI in the hospitality

AI has revolutionized hotel operations by automating tasks and improving efficiency. For instance, AI can handle guest check-ins, route phone calls to appropriate departments, and synchronize housekeeping requests. This reduces the workload on staff and enhances the guest experience. AI-powered systems are also used to forecast room occupancy rates and optimize pricing strategies, maximizing revenue.

• Robots: Used for delivering room service, cleaning, and providing guest information, reducing physical contact and enhancing safety. For instance, Hilton Hotels introduced “Connie,” a robot concierge powered by IBM’s Watson AI. Connie assists guests with information about hotel amenities, local attractions, and dining options, providing a unique and interactive guest experience.
• Predictive Analytics: AI forecasts room occupancy and helps in strategic planning to maximize profits. AI algorithms analyze data from various hotel systems to predict when maintenance is needed, preventing equipment failures and reducing downtime.
• Personalization: AI analyzes guest data to offer personalized experiences, improving guest satisfaction.
• Real-Time Translation: Solutions like CiHMS offer real-time translation chat via QR Service Center, supporting more than 103 languages, enhancing communication with international guests.
• Analyze guests’ data to elevate their experience on future stays.
• And more can be found throughout hotel operations that CiHMS shall go into more details in the later blogs.

Challenges and Considerations

Despite its advantages, AI is not without flaws. Complex algorithms and machine learning models can still make errors. Additionally, the financial investment required to implement AI can be significant, making it crucial for hotels to balance costs and benefits effectively.

Conclusion

AI is now an integral part of the hospitality industry, driving operational efficiency and enhancing guest experiences. Solutions like CiHMS have demonstrated significant improvements in hotel performance and revenue. As AI continues to evolve, its role in the hospitality sector is expected to grow even further.

Thanks to AI’s high reliability, safety, and security, CiHMS has delivered exceptional growth for hotels’ revenue and performances. Interested in our solution? Contact our consultants to dig a bit deeper into CiHMS.

Contactless technology has altered the hospitality daily operations landscape completely, while has become the main reason behind the resurgence of QR code technology during the epidemic. According to Bit.ly – a link management service, QR code downloads have soared 750% over the last 18 months. It has been contributing a great share in minimizing the inevitable ordering workload for the hospitality sector. Digitalize your restaurant, spa, and room services’ menus with a scannable QR code in just a few easy steps. Thanks to the new update of the POS – Food And Beverage system in the cloud-based hospitality management solutions – CiHMS: the QRMenu would allow you to turn the fancy above into reality. How does it work and how to get this technology implemented at your business today? We’ll get you all covered here in this blog.

QRMenu – a great updated feature of the POS – Food and Beverage system in the ultimate hospitality management solution – CiHMS.

What is QRMenu?

As its name might have given it all away, the QRMenu practically is a digital menu that you can access via a scannable QR code with your mobile phone. If you have not familiar with QR code or Quick Response code, it is the square matrix barcode, invented almost two decades now by a Japanese automobile company.
Starting to come back around hotels and restaurants ever since the COVID-19 pandemic crisis hit, the scannable QR code helps to prevent the risk of spreading infection and reassure customers’ hesitancy and doubts in the physical dine-in experience. The QR code could be printed right off the printers as you wish, then stuck on tables, front desk, or just anywhere hoteliers see fit. Customers can easily get directed to the hotels’ menu, make orders, pay, and submit feedback – a massive step-up from your standard paper menu version.

The bright sides of QRMenu

Plenty of benefits the QRMenu brings into the pictures that are hard to miss out on:

1. Quick modification and high versatility: By replacing with a digital menu, restaurants can add/remove a dish on the menu without re-printing the menu all over again. The perk of having a digital menu means you can do everything digitally: changing the price tag during the day, locking in a promotional price for a certain period, or having a varied menu for breakfast, lunch, dinner is also possible.
2. Unique and creative marketing tool: Allows hoteliers to be creative with their menu design layout and force them to test out which layout brings their best conversion rate. This sounds outrageous but is not. Play out different types of design on your menus, move sections up and down and see what best serves your business. Be bold with promotional campaigns and discounts on your menu with flashing titles, colors, and fonts.
3. Sustainable hotel technology: Yes, indeed! The QRMenu is, in fact, contactless technology and contributes its big share in promoting the hotels to stay in check with the sustainable hotel technology. Guests go through a complete contactless experience using QRMenu: from scanning the QR code to receiving their orders.
   

   QRMenu is a form of hospitality contactless technology, that helps stop the spread of infection transmission for guests and employees.

4. Being actively eco-friendly and cutting expenses: QRMenu eliminates the paper menu off your hotels’ system entirely. No more printing or re-printing a menu seasonally or per promotional campaign. Imagine how much paper and money a digital menu can save a hotel throughout the year.
5. Cutting down the ordering wait-time: Customers can take their time to decide what to order while waiting in line before the event gets seated, especially for a big group of customers. Hoteliers can enable guests to make orders upon access, streamline your hotels and restaurants’ operation from table to the kitchen, accelerate the speed of service, enhance guests’ experience and maximize employees’ performance, cutting out any recessive workflow.
6. Accumulative big data: Receiving an overwhelmed source of data daily as a reminder for hoteliers have to start taking advantage of them. Keep your data analyzed and “upgrade” your menu accordingly to meet your customers’ expectations. Just as Bo Peabody, co-founder and executive chairman of Seated, had shared: “If you run a restaurant that doesn’t take reservations, you don’t know who your guest is until they pay. What the QR code might allow you to do is learn who that guest is right when they’re sitting down.” The bottom line is QR code helps you to grasp your customers’ insights without the need to spend thousands of dollars on a market research project.
7. A solution to hospitality labor shortage: QRMenu lets hotels and restaurants operate at a much faster pace with fewer employees – Toast CEO Chris Comparato also agreed. No more taking-order tasks; leave these time-consuming tasks to your customers.

How to set up the QRMenu?

First thing first, you have to set up your hotels/restaurants’ menu beforehand. This part can be both fun and tricky. A Digital menu grants you the power to be creative while staying informative. Going with the classic design or bold typography, selective food dishes photography, or a full-on photographic menu featuring every dish there are on the menu? Should the hotel have different menus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Or should they only have an All-day menu? They are all up to you but remember the first impression matters. Test the water and see which one works best for your business. Embrace the beauty of a digital menu.
QRMenu is an upgraded feature recently in CiHMS – the POS – Food And Beverage system, enabling hotels and restaurants to actively generate a unique QR code for each table or room separately at the properties, giving their guests instant access to hotels/restaurants’ menu, from which they can easily make orders at their own pace.

To generate a QR code, hoteliers have to specify which table/room this QR code is for, in the respective fields, including its floor number, the area, and the table’s current status (active/inactive). Upon completion, a QR code can be printed out and stuck on the location where it was created. It is literally all it takes.

The flexibility of QRMenu is impressive. You can configure your guests’ access solely to one specific menu, or different menus depending on the time of the day with just only one QR code or create different QR codes for each menu (breakfast/ brunch/ lunch/ dinner), and allow your guests to fill in their table number themselves.
QRMenu for room service works on the same principles. However, to reduce the excessive work on printing a different QR code for each room, big chain hotels would uniform the same QR code throughout and have their guests declare their room number before proceeding onto the ordering section.
The downside of QRMenu

Poor connection services

Understanding the fundamentals of how QRMenu operates, you might have come to realize that this functionality won’t work without a stable Internet connection. If you are committed to getting this QRMenu installed, please be mindful of your properties’ network. Opt for better Internet infrastructure, which shall be beneficial in the long run, an investment you certainly wish to invest in sooner.

Having a stable internet connection in place brings long-term benefits to hotels.

The power of habits

The other cons QRMenu might face is the customers’ reluctance to change. Young consumers or millennials are willing to accept and adapt to new technology innovations. Generation Y has been slowly redefining the hospitality industry, despite the older generations – the baby boomers are skeptical toward recent trends and resist taking the acceptance.

“People have different levels of digital comfort. Some people will prefer and enjoy the QR code and using the phone, and others will rather have the traditional menu.”

– CEO of Dine Brands, John Peyton.

QR code has regained its popularity ‘til recently after being snoozed for almost a decade. The new normal has ushered the hospitality industry to proactively implement sustainable hospitality technology to step out from traditional operations to explore and discover the possibilities to bring customers back in. Apart from QRMenu, there is plenty of other sustainable hospitality technology for hotels to look at. This is nowhere near the perfect solution for all businesses, though it’s pretty close.

The contactless era has already arrived, don’t stay behind! Train your staff well, encourage your customers to engage, and recognize what they have been missing out on all along. Interested in QRMenu and would love to see a demo? Contact the CiHMS team for a detailed consultancy on the product.

The millennials are considered a typical generation in initiating trends and remarkable milestones. This demographic segment accounts for the major spending expenditure in the tourism industry, willing to pay the extra miles in exchange for the taste of memorable experiences instead of material things. Determine the millennial travel trends shall benefit your hotel operations in better tailoring to their needs and retaining these huge customers segments long-term. What are the travel trends of the millennial generation this 2022, then? Let’s discover them with CiHMS in today’s blog.

The millennials are one of the biggest customers segments worldwide, especially in the tourism and hospitality industry.

Who are the Millennials?

The Millennials (also known as Gen Y) are those born between 1981 to 1997. This demographic has fast become the major part of the world population recently, making up for 27% global population, approximately 2 billion people, and roughly 38% of the Vietnam national population, according to the population research done by Pew Research center. The World Economic Forum defines the millennials are those born between 1980 and 1994, about 1.8 billion millennials worldwide, roughly making up for 23% of the world population. This generation has been exposed to revolutionized digital devices, online resources, and ever-changing social networks. By 2020, 50% of the global workforce and purchasing consumers goods or services are the millennials (based on an analyst from Bernstein).
United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) believes the millennials are the emerging golden generation and the most potential demographic that the hospitality industry should pay close attention to. Passionate about travel, the Gen Y travelers shall reach nearly 300 million travelers annually, and take at least 35 days per year to travel. The high satisfaction of customers service is the important key factor to Gen Y’s loyalty.

They were born in the radical technological evolution, get in touch with technology at a very young age, generation Y doesn’t share the same customer characteristics with any of the rest.

Mobile devices and social network orientation

Being digital natives, millennials are tech-savvy at heart. Always on the hunt for new destinations, have their itineraries, ideal accommodations that they shall be visiting on their next trip. Up to 74% researched their trip, 87% of millennials used Facebook to inspire their booking, and over 50% used Twitter (reports generated from Condor Ferries). They search for it to believe it. 97% of millennials confess they share their travel experience on social media. 2 out of 3 would post about it at least once a day.
Understanding Gen Y surfing habits enables the hotel’s marketing department to easily identify and approach this particular target segmentation through the social networks’ platform, to convert leads and maximize their sales revenue. Providing exciting and unique experiences is the essential sales point to attract these demographics in purchasing your added-value products and services during their stays. Encourage them to share on their social media in exchange for vouchers and other free services also a win-win option for hotels to look at.

Millennials grow up with mobile devices. Being on social networks daily has become an irreplaceable habit. Making them feasible targeted segments for hotels.

Several hotels have been giving away complementary services, promotional products, group discounts, etc. to further upsell the millennials targeted group. Getting the exposure the hotels need to the target customers’ friend circle, at such a lower cost ongoing mainstream and broad social posting advertisement. Exceeding the customers’ expectations while optimizing hotels’ operational expenses.

Experiential travel

If Baby Boomers (the previous generation before the Millennials) strongly believe travel is outrageous to overspend for indulgence, it’s understandable as they entered their childhood amidst national economic decline; the millennials enjoy travel as a crucial and irreplaceable part of their daily life. Travel brings invaluable benefit to the soul and mind, and merely priceless. Millennials yearn for the true experience, the chance to rediscover themselves, to relieve stress after burying themselves in deadlines and projects, to rejuvenate their energies, set themselves back to balance, ready to come back to their normal life.
An Expedia survey has found, 74% of millennials are happy to spend on travel experiences rather than material things. 58% prioritizes hotels with full services, while 35% seeks luxurious stays at premium hotels and resorts. Only a minor prefers to stay at Airbnb accommodations are millennial travelers with kids. This reassures gen Y craves experiences over anything else. By providing immersive accommodations in various levels of personalized experiences: from adventurous to discovery, and finding your inner-self, hotels leverage their services to accustom to all the Gen Y customers.
The millennials focus on making a difference rather than receiving corporate and generalized hotel stays. They embrace local lifestyles, traditional dishes, music, and crafting experiences.

Enjoy the cultural, adventurous, and sentimental experiences rather than corporate and organized tour packages, millennials are keen on experimental travel.

Environmentally conscious

Generation Y seems to be the pioneer in leading the sustainable travel trend. Highly responsible for the surrounding environment, they prominently support businesses revolving around sustainable operation models. Especially in Tourism and Hospitality lately, these two industries have been called out to actively up their game in turning “greener” with the community.
This explains why the sustainable travel trend has made such remarkable impacts. In many countries around the world, as well as in Vietnam, the governments have put in their side of the efforts to promote the sustainable trend, making a positive influence to engage the tourism and hospitality industry take on the “greener” path. Thanks to modern technologies, seamless integrations, and functionalities aiming to make the smart hotels‘ transformation possible to existing hotels facilities without the hassles of remodeling. Up to 73% of millennials lean toward eco-friendly hotel models as their preferred accommodations for their next trips.
The millennials’ impacts have been brought into tourism in general and the hospitality industry specifically is undeniably compelling. It helps redefine and reshape the hospitality industry for the year 2022 and more to come, with the majority of customers being the millennial generation. Keeping up with the latest trend to adjust hotel services with a touch of technology, while being personalized to each individual shall help retain this most potential customers segments for the long-term.

2022 is here, and everyone might be having their own forecasting on the hotel tech trends for the year. This helps to project a better strategic plan for your hotels to adapt and transform. Let’s zoom in and detect the upcoming emerging hotel techs, the ones that hotels should be keeping up to for this year.

Here are our takes on the upcoming trends in hospitality technology for 2022.

Hotel apps

Mobile has been becoming an essential part of any travelers’ experiences. Having a dedicated hotel app for your guests to book and manage a room reservation, making payments, online check-in/check-out, digital key room access, contact the hotel front desk, and more are expected to initiate a total contactless hotel technology experience. Making hotel procedures less complicated, and allowing seamless guests communication.

AI technology

Artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced itself and strengthened itself to be reliable as well as beneficial. Slowly, AI is taking over all the human grunt works, leaving your employees to do what they are best at. Improving work performances and better human resources allocations.

AI technology can also analyze data, statistics to assist hoteliers in making better decisions, helps personalize guests’ experiences based on their previous stays. This collected information contributes to retaining current customers and attracting potential customers profiles.

AI technology makes such an impact on the hospitality industry, assisting human staff to bypass the grunt work and to focus on what they are better at.

Virtual & Augmented Realities

These technologies are to the simulation of the world, mimicking reality into the digital world. Many hotels have been working on their virtual reality (VR) hotel tours. It gives guests a sense of hotel space, environment, atmosphere, and the property’s facilities.

While VR might take the actual surrounding off the ground completely, and replace them with a digital one. Augmented Realities (AR) technology tends to enhance it in real-time. Hotels can easily apply AR technology with AR headphones, glasses. These enable customers to discover the hotels through the graphic lenses of AR glasses, a lively tour providing in multiple languages translations.

Many have been compared AR to VR without a thorough understanding of both technologies. In fact, they complement each other and cost quite a budget. In return, they provide exceptional guests experiences.

AR and VR technologies have been around for decades, finally taking their steps up in the hospitality industry, bringing visualization benefits for not only hoteliers but the customers as well.

Smart Technology so-called Sustainability Tech

With the current advanced smart technology, hoteliers can program to turn the lighting system on or off, dimmer or brighter in a certain area, adjust AC temperature, and activate the heating system accordingly to the hotel presets thanks to the integrated sensor built-in camera. Everything is automatically carried out by smart technology either in the lobby area or in guests’ private rooms. Such sustainable hospitality technology helps hoteliers to reduce energy waste as much as possible.

Facial Recognition Technology

It might sound futuristic a couple of years back, but absolutely very “in” at the moment. Even your mobile device is having such a feature, there is no reason why not put this technology to use onto the rest. In a few smart hotels around the world, guests grant access to the elevator, their reserved rooms, and other hotel facilities with face recognition devices: quick, paperless/keyless, and data recorded on the system.

Big Data

Hotels welcome guests on a daily basis, the information input received from the customers is massive. Have you ever wondered where those data would go? Data upon entering the system will be categorized and analyzed to interpret customers’ behaviors and later served for the decision-making process.

The above pretty much explains how big data works. A collection of customers data to generate insights helps to further personalize guests’ experiences for future stays.

The numerous data input daily from the hotel front desk cannot be put to waste. These are big data, which should be analyzed and interpreted for hotels to better serve their guests in future stays.

Cybersecurity

Due to the large data volume from guests including sensitive information such as guests’ identity info, along with their credit card, hackers never miss their chance to attack the hotel’s security. As the result of the recent pandemic, people are found working from hotels, and getting their business info exposed apparently is not on anyone’s agenda. Up your hotel security’s matter is not a question but is crucial to moving forward.

The SaaS

Most of the mentioned technologies are packaged in a SaaS product model. It is cost-effective, built on a cloud-based infrastructure, and grows along with your business. Cutting down a huge budget in hardware investment, complex maintenance/update management, and on-site IT support teams to monitor the system 24/7. The growing adoption of SaaS models has been shaping the hospitality industry in improving its traditional operations to scale up efficiently at a reasonable budget.

The SaaS product model has been around for a long, however recently received support from the hospitality industry due to its efficiency and effectiveness.

It meanwhile defines the future hospitality management solutions has to be cloud-based, flexible, integrate effortlessly with other technology. CiHMS certainly fits the puzzle here as being an all-in-one cloud-computing hospitality management solution your hotel would ever need. Thanks to Open API, integration with 3rd party software is straightforward and trouble-free.

Hospitality has always been such a competitive industry. Technology keeps on evolving and is wiggling its way to becoming stable in the future of hospitality. It allows hotels to deliver unrivaled accommodation to their customers while maximizing the current business resources, optimizing its operations, reducing the expenses, and staying afloat and relevant with the present. Helping hotels to be responsive, make data-driven decisions, improve their processes and eventually transform.

Just as Jeanne W. Ross, MIT Sloan’s Center for Information Systems Research did say:

“Clearly, the thing that’s transforming is not the technology — the technology is transforming you.”

Nobody knows what the future holds, knowing all the hotel technology trends in 2022 does not mean you have to implement them all. Pick a few relevant technologies that bring immediate benefits and are most valuable to your hotel to start out with, the remaining shall soon follow.

In the period of 2020 and 2021, 40.9% of Vietnam hospitality laborers have been recorded as having no income from their jobs at all, while 40.4% lost more than half of theirs, according to the recent survey from Hoteljob. The new normal has forced the hospitality industry worldwide to confront the workforce problem once again in order to resume their daily business operation. HR managers have been adjusting their strategic recruitment plan, fingers crossed to sufficiently attract the suitable candidates filling in for the vacancies. This process, indeed, takes time, and the magic does not happen overnight. Get the hotels up and running in time; we lean over to existing hotel tech for support. Understanding how technologies might never replace all human works is the unnecessary bottleneck by automating the processes and syncing performances report for faster decision-making. In today’s blog, we’ll let you know all the hotel tech your hotel ever needs to overcome the current manpower shortage.

The labor shortage puts all hotel operations on hold

Self check-in overhauls front-desk workload

Cutting down the queue for guests, allow them to do pre-check-in prior to arrival, and complete the process upon arrival. This shall save your front-desk staff a lot of time, paperwork along the way, thanks to the contactless technologies. The check-in links can be sent out to guests a day before, accompanied with options for a room upgrade, meal packs, spa sessions, local tours, etc. Easily upsell your guests at their pace, and the end results sure will amaze you.

Online check-in is just one of the perks of contactless technology.

Otherwise, integrating OCR technology can also be an option to look at. The technology allows the front desk to instantly scan guests’ identification cards onto your system, which would cross-check with existing reservations and check-in your guests a few steps away.

Guest app for a complete contactless journey

Many hotels are offering a Guests app for guests on their mobile devices, in which they can check-in/out, order in-room dining, reserve a table at the restaurant, book spa sessions, and proceed with all payments through the click of the buttons. Strictly secured and totally contactless experience to ensure guests’ experiences are maximized.

Virtual room key is also available on the Guests App. Eliminate the physical room key card hassles completely. Keyless entry solutions let guests enter the elevator, lobby, common areas, restricted lounge, top-up balance/credit to pay for drinks/meals/services conveniently.

Hotel staff app

Once guests filed the requests for services, these requests would show up on the staffs’ app. Managers simply allocate these requests to the existing staff members. No longer leaving requests unfulfilled, no guests unserved. Staff performances are shown in statistics and reports, updated in real-time. Job-status is streamlined on the system.

Guests app allows hoteliers to go completely contactless while actively interact with the customers.

Manage OTA in real-time on one single DCM platform

Instead of having your sales executive update each OTA channel manually, save your staff time and effort by getting a Distribution Channel Manager (DCM). With a DCM installed, your hotel room rate will get synced across all OTAs channels automatically, avoiding human data-entry mistakes. Reports are generated as your desire. With data-driven facts, making pricing strategy plan for hoteliers much faster and extremely effective.

Monitor your OTA channels on one platform with an efficient hospitality distribution channel manager (DCM).

All-in-one cloud-based hospitality management solutions

Having robust cloud-computing hotel management software in place to manage all the above-mentioned hotel tech software is a must. The hotel PMS shall help hoteliers to be in control of the daily business operation, getting real-time reports and your guests’ preferences to further personalize their current and future stays. It can also integrate seamlessly with numerous other 3rd party software such as CRM, revenue management systems, email marketing automation tools, POS systems, etc. CiHMS proudly provides the ultimate hospitality management solution for all hotel models, big or small. It’s an excellent way to digitally transform your hotels effortlessly, bringing more revenue, filling in your labor shortage at a reasonable budget.

The hospitality labor shortage might remain chaotic years down the road. The rise in hotel tech automation is reshaping the recruitment process and giving hotels a quick fix on how to optimize the existing manpower while looking to fill the vacancies in a long run. Technology is the reliable companion hoteliers should lean on, perhaps this bold move might seem daunting at first, it is worth a shot and incredibly exciting, and rewarding in a long run.

The new normal has been shaking up everyone’s daily life routines in one way or another. It also altered our perceptions, habits, and behaviors toward direct human interaction distinctively. On the brink of recovery post-pandemic, contactless technology appears to be favorable by both hoteliers and guests as a vigorous effort in reducing the underlying risk of germs exposures while delivering highly personalized guests experiences.

With the innovative contactless technology, hotel guests are capable of going full-on “contactless mode” throughout their customer’s journeys. Hoteliers can eliminate the excessive sanitizing protocols aligning to COVID-19 compliance standards, and avoid invading their guests’ safety zone unintentionally. It creates a truly seamless digital experience throughout the entire guests’ journey. Does that sound familiar? Did it ring any bell? You might have guessed it right. All of those depict the smart hotel model in action, which we had briefly touched on in our previous blog here. In today’s blog, we would like to go under the technology and reveal to you the actual things that make all the contactless experiences possible.

The innovative contactless technology forays into hospitality can enhance guest experiences up a notch.

The Kiosk chaos

To prevent human contact upon arrival, many hotels had introduced self-check-in kiosks available at the front desk, without knowing how much it would add up. The kiosk itself is gradually turning into a constant cleaning station for the hoteliers to take care of, becomes the main concern for guests as soon as they arrive, such as who was using the kiosk before them, the time interval in between two cleaning sessions, did they come right before the cleaning session started or ended. Before you know it, the long check-in queue starts to jeopardize your lobby’s operations.

Self-check-in kiosks might have been a breakthrough technology a decade ago, but are no longer a surprise in today’s practice. We can easily find all types of self-help, self-booking, self-payment kiosks in airports, hospitals, museums, amusement parks, zoos, malls, and so on. These kiosks can be a pain for maintenance and require quite a decent budget to invest.

Check-in Digitally – Room Card goes Keyless

The majority of hotel guests are actively on their smartphones, why don’t hotels take advantage of this? That means building a mobile app for your guests to not only book directly with your hotels but can also check-in through it. Better yet, have their room key digitalized and send it to their phone right after they completed the check-in process.

Hotel check-in counter might no longer be necessary. Guests can proceed with their check-in through the mobile app, and get the access key right automatically.

Hmm, hold on! What if your hotel was built before such technology even existed? The reconstruction is not ideal at the moment but going keyless is still your goal? Check out OpenKey. It’s as easy as plug-and-play. Without replacing your lock, OpenKey supports different types of locking systems. If your locks aren’t listed, just contact their support team for further modifications. OpenKey is quick and extremely affordable. It’s the best option to go keyless fast and easy.

CiHMS Hospitality Guest App for the rescue

We have your back, our CiHMS clients! Once your guests complete the check-in process which can be done right on their phone, a digital key shall be sent via the Guest App and easily accessible 24/7 anywhere they go at their fingertip. No more plastic room keys to carry around and less trouble worrying about losing it.

Digital keys can allow guests to enter the common lobby, lounge, elevator, spa, and more. Hoteliers receive reports on their guests’ experience, acknowledge their preferences better, understand their behaviors, and get to serve them better in their future stays. It cuts down on the paperwork, documentation, and efforts of your staff. Your hotels can skip the front desk if you want to. Afraid your lobby might end up looking empty? It’s a great location for juice bars, shops, florists, or any retail that fits your hotel’s concept.

Beyond the digital experience

Meanwhile, hoteliers get to enjoy more perks with CiHMS Guest App and the CiHMS hotel PMS than just that. Housekeeping, room services, and laundry requests from your guests can be filed directly on the app and sync in real-time. Engaging with your guests through the app to receive feedback and ensure your hotels provide their requests in a timely manner.

A robust PMS would help hotels to transform their operations

Instead of dining in the restaurant down in the lobby, guests are now ordering fancy in-room dining through the app. The food shall be delivered to your room by robots with a ping on your phone when they arrive at the door or simply set out in the hall if guests are not willing to be in contact directly with the hotel staff.

Many have thought the contactless experience in a hotel would never make it here to stay, then hey, here came the pandemic. We realize hotels will never be the same again, at least before the pandemic. The recent COVID-19 outbreak has been the catalyst in boosting the hospitality digital transformation at full speed. It makes us – the hospitality geeks – appreciate the change and be aware of our customers’ constant shift in behavior. At CiHMS, we unravel the complication for our clients with the powerful cloud computing hospitality management solution integrated with numerous hospitality modules and guest apps to meet your hotel needs while making your customers happy. If you haven’t checked out CiHMS yet, contact our team and get your demo today. The contactless era is here, and are you ready yet? Indeed, we are.

Tourism brings in jobs, economic opportunities, and wealth to the country. It contributes a significant amount to GDP earnings and is the main source of income for the entire nation. While delivering such advantages, the tourism sector can be harmful to the local environment due to the excessive tourist demands resulting in a large number of plastics & food wastes, overuse of water and energy supplies, and the social life of the local communities. The permanent carbon footprints unintentionally ruin many natural travel destinations for good. Others are struggling to maintain and protect their national heritage while accommodating tourists regularly by issuing laws, and tourist taxes to preserve the destinations’ beauty and the local lifestyle. The shift over to sustainable tourism was not an overnight event, but a progress of the increasing consumer sentiment and corporate social responsibilities.

“Green” tourism is vital to a country’s economic to avoid over-tourism or ruining the attraction forever.

The fast-paced technology development has eased hospitality in making strides to becoming eco-friendly without leveraging the heavy financial burden. In order to transform into a green industry, hospitality has been gradually tapping into certain tactics to keep up with the sustainable bandwagon:

Smart energy and water-saving management.

With the integration of a motion and temperature camera detector, the central AC system automatically adjusts the hotel’s overall temperature to maintain at a certain level instead of manually setting your AC temperature to a specific degree permanently. The sensor also helps turn on/off, brighter or dimmer the lighting systems in the common areas, lobbies, hallways when guests arrive or leave the room depending on the time of day.

Hotels can take this up a notch by the installment of LED lights, which consume up to 80% less energy and last 25 times longer compared to traditional light bulbs. Imagine the electricity bill cut for your hotels by the end of the year, this saving alone would allow your hotel to invest in other modern facilities, going out of the way to spoil your guests.

Replacing all lightbulbs to LED lights save tremendous amount of hotel energies realistically. Integrated technology allows hotels to set time limit on showers and other amenities without influence guests’ experiences.

Smart shower time limitation with integrated LED lights flashing once the time is almost up triggered guests to consciously save water of their own will without impacting or sacrificing guests’ comfort.

Forgoing daily cleaning

In-room housekeeping is an added value complimentary service that guests enjoy. However, the laundry workloads behind daily cleaning would be traumatizing for any guests at the scenes. The detergent and bleach solvents water waste are unnecessary. Acknowledging your guest in opting out of the daily cleaning properly by rewarding incentive loyalty points or discount vouchers to other hotel facilities would lead to massive cost savings and environmental benefits. Many hotels have made these choices available via hotel mobile devices or mobile apps, enabling their guests to comfortably select the options at their own pace.

Leaving the daily cleaning option on hospitality applications for guest to decide enables guests be preserved toward the environment.

Digitize the use of paper

Eliminating all menus, reservations, program flyers, and other hotels in-room compendiums and replacing them with a digital guest room tablet or a large touch screen interactive monitor at lobby area would dramatically reduce the number of paper, cardboard, and plastic waste in hotels operations. Offering room upgrades with promotions, spa services, and dine-in experiences encourage your guests to spend more while keeping in touch and communicating with your guests through the conveniences of technology.

Effective food waste management

Hospitality’s food waste has become a major concern worldwide and is often called out by the press to be actively responsible to lower food waste at the minimum. The recent technology helps the kitchen come up with an ultimate menu that achieves wasting food supply by tracking records on kitchen waste on a daily basis. Furthermore, tracking guests’ food preferences and eating schedules in their guest profiles to personalize their food journey upon their arrival to minimize food waste aggressively.

Moving forward in sustainability tourism requires the hotel to up its technology game. Such can be found in the smart hotel model. It successfully achieves eco-friendly services publicly, and cost-effectively internally. The advantages of smart hotels did not end there, a dedicated blog on this topic was done to justify its power here. Converting to another hotel model might be a strategic move and needs careful consideration and thorough planning, then investing in an adequate hospitality management solution to precisely operate your hotels from housekeeping to your Food & Beverage in one single platform is a much easier step for hoteliers to consider.

Choosing a powerful hospitality management solution to fit your hotels operations and stay sustainable to the environment can be tricky. CiHMS is here for the rescue.

Receiving centralized reports to keep you in check for multiple properties in real-time, accessible from anywhere anytime, and trouble-free integration with other hospitality software via Open API are the benefits of a cloud-based hospitality management solution. It brings you as close to a smart hotel model as you can get. We are the proud developer of the all-in-one cloud computing hotel management software – CiHMS. The ultimate hospitality management solution that grows with your hotels, keeps being innovative to utilize cutting edge technology in turning the hospitality sector green.

Apart from the above tactics, what other initiatives can the hospitality industry possibly take to meet the sustainable tourism goals? Share with us in the comment section down below! Together, let’s save the earth, one thing at a time!