HOTELS today must go beyond providing high-speed Internet access in the guestrooms and simple websites to meet the needs of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) travellers, advised a speaker at Hospitality Investment World Indonesia.
Chris Gribble, vice president and general manager of Asia-Pacific and Middle East hospitality solutions, Infor Hospitality, said: “Research shows that travellers now bring at least three devices and they expect to be able to use them all in the hotel.”
He opined that hotels have to embrace BYOD trends by not only providing excellent Internet access, but also optimising their websites for viewing across all platforms.
“Get your website strategy right. You need to develop web pages that will run on each device very easily. Understand that when you create your website, you want to run it on smartphones as well because the use of the three devices will depend on when and where we want to use them,” said Gribble.
For instance, a mobile app could allow guests to book a meal or last-minute service en route the hotel. “It would be nice to be able to go into the hotel’s website and book a meal while on the way from the airport on a late flight, and have it delivered to the room as soon as I check in.”
Quality Internet access is increasingly crucial even for economy properties although it remains an expensive investment, remarked Archipelago International vice president sales and marketing, Norbert Vas.
“It is the (free and quality) Wi-Fi access that is drawing customers to come back again and again to budget brands such as our Favehotel,” he noted.
