Like many other industries at present, hospitality implements innovative software to enhance their services, optimize the workflow and improve the entire industry development.
According to the PwC, over 70% of hospitality executives report they have already started developing the technology solutions like IoT and various mobile applications for booking, room, and service management because of their high potential and numerous benefits for the hotel’s better functioning.
Today, we will cover the basic information about the mobile concierge app, why they are so popular nowadays, and what features of the concierge app can be really beneficial for the hospitality industry.
Let’s get it started!
What Is a Mobile Concierge App?
A mobile concierge app is an innovative software solution for hotel room management that can radically improve the guest’s experience and ensure they're comfortable staying in a hotel.
That is a hotel application that allows clients to request various types of concierge services from their smartphone: from taxis, flights, and restaurant booking to the room service, transactions, and check-in and check-out formalities.
The core idea of the hotel digital concierge is to improve the comfort of the guests and optimize the hotel’s functioning: discover and manage the guests’ requests in one application.
The Potential and Benefits of a Mobile Concierge App
In fact, there are plenty of reasons for implementing the concierge service app for hotel business whether it’s one hotel or the entire chain. Let’s review the basic benefits you will get along with the mobile concierge software launching.
Communicate With Other Hotel Staff or Resolve Guests’ Requests
The mobile concierge app will help to find the hotel worker in one click instead of hours of seeking the hotel workers to ask them for the room cleaning. Any service option can be requested with one click.
Inform the Customers About the Important Updates
No more newsletters, papers, or boring dialogues at the reception desk! Find all the information you need in the hotel application. If you still have any questions left, contact the hotel manager via mobile and get professional answers on them.
Offer the Full List of the Hotel Services
Are your guests wondering about the additional services for their comfortable staying? All of them can be reviewed in the hotel concierge app, and you can purchase them in advance as well.
Enjoy the hotel gym, swimming pool, restaurant, or various options of room service with simple access on your smartphone.
Assist Your Customers With Different Problems or Requests
Offer your mobile concierge app as an online helper which knows the weather, can contact a hotel staff, unlock the door or simply order extra food and drinks right to your suite.
Providing Better Confidence for the Employees
The mobile concierge applications can provide the hotel staff with additional help for better and more efficient request processing, thus optimizing the entire hotel workflow.
As a result, they will be always updated on the guests’ requests status and what things are scheduled for the certain room at any time.
Gain Customer Insights
If you want to get feedback for your hotel, there never can be a better time to ask for completing a simple form via the hotel concierge application.
It goes without saying that people are more likely to answer the questions in a few taps instead of filling the paper form on the reception. Besides, digital surveys are much easier to process and analyze, which can be also used for hotel service improvement.
With these features available, plenty of hotel corporations and the most luxurious resorts have already included this software in their basic set of hotel services.
And, as time goes by, in the next few years we expect even more hotels to adopt this technology, as the remote services have already become an indispensable part of our present being.
Main Features of a Mobile Concierge App
Due to the recent report by PwC, 81% of travelers want greater digital customer service from hotel brands.
So, what features you should include in the mobile concierge service to cover all the needs of your guests and get the most for your hotel business? Here, we will cover the most critical of them, and some suggested by Deloitte Digital.
Transaction Payments
In the times when all the world is now implementing a contactless system of payments (or else called PayPass) to their systems, the hospitality industry can easily incorporate this feature into the mobile concierge system.
Thus, when a guest wants to pay for the additional services, complete the check-out procedure, or pay for the following few days to prolong the stay, the person no longer needs to go to the reception desk.
Besides, in such a way the hotel can also ensure the clients' and working staff’s safety, which is a critical feature during the pandemic.
Contextually Dynamic Updates
While considering implementing a digital hotel concierge, it’s a great idea to include the algorithm of updating the information page with personalized and relevant consumer content.
For example, if your guest is interested in the local events for the current week, or any other indoor event held by the hotel, then the mobile concierge can suggest various events and occasions that might fit the widest range of guest’s needs.
According to Evergage, 98% of marketers say personalization advances customer relationships. Thus, by making your application more customized and full of different suggestions for specific customer preferences and needs, it becomes much easier to turn a one-time visitor into a loyal client of your hotel.
Additional Hotel Services
The PwC report has also shown that over 70% of potential hotel residents are more likely to book a hotel with different tech improvements. But if they aren’t aware of the list of useful services while staying in a hotel, both sides are losing.
A customer will lack personal experience and is more likely to choose another hotel for the next vacation or business trip, whereas the hotel can lose the potential loyal customer and the revenue a person could bring to the hospitality unit.
However, with all the hotel services on the smartphone, the consumers can simply review the list of services offered via hotel digital concierge, and pick up the one which they need most.
Additionally, they are more likely to use these services with one-click ordering, since they no longer need to look for the hotel staff or call anywhere as the conversation with the managers is done via the mobile concierge.
Optimized for Different Devices
Needless to say, at present, most hotel bookings and service orders are done using a smartphone.
For instance, over 64% of hotel residents book their room on a smartphone, and up to 25% of them have checked in using a mobile device. And these digital trends are only expected to increase in the future.
That is why, make sure your hotel concierge app works across different devices, like smartphones, laptops, smartwatches, and others. This will help you to popularize your application and improve its user experience rate.
Automated Notifications and Room Management
In most modern hotel corporations, which have already implemented the digital hotel concierge, the mobile concierge is used as the digital assistant, whose task is to improve the personal experience of the guests and make their stay even more comfortable.
With some advanced features of the room service that include door opening with a mobile application, wake-up call, and getting the latest updates on the recent requests, the guests are more likely to stay there again.
Besides, these features have been already applied in FlyZoo Hotel in Hangzhou and can be easily completed via the FlyZoo mobile application.
Just like the concierge application, it allows having 24/7 communication with the hotel service staff and get all the requests done in one tap via the hotel app.
Challenges of Implementing the Hotel Concierge Technology
Along with the features that can greatly benefit your hotel business, it’s important to cover the challenges you will surely face while starting to develop the concierge application for the hotel.
Here we will review the most critical issues for the hotel concierge technology development:
- Reluctance to make investments in mobile concierge development. Just like any other new technology, developing a personal concierge app for hospitality requires smart investing, and because not everyone can realize the importance of this technology for the hotel service quality, the lack of investments is now one of the most common problems of app development.
- Being not ready to change other aspects of the hotel functioning for the application implementation. It often happens that the antiquated accounting data is stored in papers, without any digital copies, so if you want to automate your all services, then it’s time to consider the radical transformation of your hotel service system.
These are the main challenges of the mobile concierge implementation, which are common for nearly every hotel unit. But, we can assure you, as long as the optimization process is done, you will get a much higher ROI for your business.
Conclusion
As you can see, the concierge application is now one of the most popular technologies that every hotel tries to implement in their workflow.
By launching custom software development for travel and hospitality, hotels can get higher revenue, increase the number of loyal customers and enhance the quality of the services offered to their guests.
We, at Intellectsoft, cooperate with hospitality companies and their workforces by providing innovative solutions and approaches for improving their business performance. Do you and your organization need an efficient and effective concierge solution?
Talk to our experts today and start reaping the benefits of modern technology tomorrow!
