Title : Mobility Movement -The Impact on Hotel Services
Author : Ashok Kumar
Source : Hospitality Upgrade 2007
This article is about the personal mobile equipment and how it impacts to hotel service. Millions of portable devices were sold in 2006 and more than hundred millions of wireless subscribers are using them and it will reach up to 228 millions of subscribers by year 2010. More hotel guests bring their own portable devices and expect to use them during their staying. So hotels should operate a service to satisfy the guests’ expectation.
Radio and phone usage in hotel guest rooms is getting decreased and guests are prefer to use their own cell phone and portable music players like iPods. It is significant in younger generation and expected to increase of portable media players up to 40 million units by 2009. WiFi service is offered in more than half of the hotels and the numbers of hotels are getting increased to offer this service and expand the area of the wireless service. Lastly video contents delivery service was stared in commercial and major TV networks were also participated in mobile TV service. It will impact to pay-per-view TV in guest rooms just like cell phones and iPods instead of phones and radios in guest rooms. In-room video service is needed more than technology. Guests bring their own laptop and contents to wish to watch. They will download the video contents whatever they want and wherever they use and expect to watch via HDTV in their guest room. So hotels should negotiate with the video service provide in proper terms to allow guests to view personalized contents. One potential area to innovate in hotels is the electronic door systems. A guest can download a bar code for his/her guestroom after checking in by him/herself or in the front desk. And the bar code is used for entering the guestroom by the bar code reader.
The customer service is the most important than anything else among the hotel services. Hotel should keep concentrating on trends and guests’ needs to offer convenience and personalized service. It was very interested to me that using cell phone to enter the guest room by downloading bar code. I used use it in Korea to go to the theater. I usually made a reservation for movie tickets and downloaded a bar code for tickets. Then in the theater, I do not need to go to the reception desk or print out the ticket by the ticket machine just buy popcorn and coke and enter into the theater using the bar code pass. It is very convenience and do not need to stand in line to enter. I thought that when a guest make a reservation by Internet, the reservation system offers the downloading bar code service by cell phone to guests who completed reservation and they use it in front desk to check in. It will be very fast and convenience for both parties. And the reason why I chose the cell phone among varieties of portable device is that cell phones are the most spreadable portable devices which most people have.
I am not sure about video contents delivery but demands of mobile TV service could be increased. There is a DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) service which sends multimedia to mobile devices such as cell phones. In Korea, it started by cell phone via satellite then terrestrial transmission. People view multimedia with their cell phone or PMP (portable multimedia player) in anywhere and anytime. It is very attractive and will impact to in-room guest systems in any way.
