DS for Hotels to Communicate with their Customers

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By Samantha Slater
 
Communication is a key component of any prospering business, and the hotel and hospitality sector is no exception.
 
From individual properties to global chains, hotels need to communicate with their guests on a 24/7 basis. And, with hotels now offering a wider range of services than ever before, the need to communicate these offers in a clear, appealing and timely way has never been greater.
 
Obviating much of a hotel’s traditional need for paper, presenting information in an aesthetically appealing way, and with the ability to be completely tailored to an individual customer’s needs, digital signage is the modern way of communicating with hotel guests. The screens required by a digital signage network can be installed in practically any architectural environment without impacting on the prevailing interior-design aesthetic, and maintaining the flow of information to these screens need not require any technical knowledge.
 
Value and Usability
 
Properly designed and installed, today’s digital-signage systems ease wayfinding, enhance the guest experience and increase hotel revenue, according to Serge Konter, Marketing Director at SpinetiX, a Swiss-based manufacturer of digital-signage solutions.
 
“Our SpinetiX Hyper Media Player (HMP) devices attach discreetly to the rear of flat-panel displays, effectively turning each screen into an independent, customisable showcase of video and data content,” explains Konter. “The players are extremely light and compact – the size of two iPhones. Their power consumption is minimal so they are very cheap to run and, importantly, they are not computers – so you get none of the crashes and other quality-of-service issues associated with PC-based systems.”
 
The range of possible applications for a hotel digital-signage system is as wide as the number of locations at which the screens can be positioned. ‘Welcome’ screens at a lobby entrance or adjacent to a front desk can be used to publicise amenities such as bars, restaurants, spas and wellness centres. Way-finding screens can help guide customers around conference facilities, while screens outside the rooms themselves can display the daily program of events and list of customers for each space. Screens inside hospitality areas can promote individual offers such as the menu of the day or a ‘happy hour’ drinks promotion.
 
With a well-designed signage system, screens are not limited to showing only one content item at a time. In fact, many hotels or even entire hotel chains already split their screens into zones, allowing them to have areas dedicated to weather updates, news tickers, loyalty program, local event and tourist information and so on. These content streams can be ever-present on all screens if the hotel management desires, or only on those in certain locations.
 
The system is so smart that the content can be fed back to the local IP system so that hotel guests can view this information in privacy of their own rooms. This can provide an additional revenue stream that operators can take advantage of and explore.
 

 
Location, Location, Location
 
Because it deploys an open architecture that runs many standard online graphics technologies, the HMP platform can easily be tailored to the end customer’s needs. For larger estates and chains, this is often facilitated by a partnership between SpinetiX and a partner company such as GateMedia, whose ScreenGate CMS (content management system) allows different stakeholders to gain access to pre-allocated areas of a screen over a wireless 3G network. In the case of a hotel, this could allow a third-party travel agency or conference organiser, for example, to keep their content fresh without bothering hotel staff – who, at the same time, are secure in the knowledge that the rest of the content remains their domain.
 
Paul Carneiro, COO of GateMedia explained: “With our system, different groups of stakeholders and different users can access information on different locations on the screen without having rights on content to set up and configure the screen. It’s like a web application so is easy to understand and configure. This has unique functionality and benefits for the hospitality sector.”
 
Return on Investment
 
As well as making digital-signage screens more attractive and useful to guests, such an approach also has the potential to create new revenue streams for hotels through advertising and event promotion – again, without any impact on staff time or resources.
 
For larger hotel chains, there is also the possibility of having some areas of the screen controlled by a central communications department, while others are customizable locally by staff to promote their own property’s events and partnerships.
 
Better communication, an enhanced visitor experience and increased revenue without increased cost or maintenance – these are the benefits of digital signage for the hotels of today and tomorrow.