The return to travel predictions show continuing upward momentum, with a positive outlook moving into the summer and throughout the year. While hotels are focusing on welcoming back guests, they are still struggling with staffing shortages and the best ways to move forward in the current environment. Although booking levels appear to be close to pre-Covid levels, even surpassing them in Canada and London, hotels are still facing staffing shortages and finished 2021 at only 77% of their 2019 employment levels.
It makes sense that in a recent study titled, 2022 Lodging Technology Study by Hospitality Technology, hotel operators ranked the top emerging technologies as: contactless payments, artificial intelligence with predictive intelligence, voice-enabled devices, interactive walls, robotics and chatbots – all of which can offset these continuing hiring issues. These technologies offload staff from repetitive tasks, provide quick and efficient responses to questions about the hotel, and provide high-quality experiences guests seek every time they visit the property.
We regularly connect to hotel customers and are seeing these trends with the adoption of our contactless products as well. While it may seem that optimizing staff engagement would also reduce that personalized touch known to hospitality, these new technologies are actually creating better experiences. Guests have already gone “contactless” at home and in other areas of travel, such as airports. It makes sense that guests would appreciate and start to expect them in hotels. This technology also gives associates more time to work on higher touch areas and more personal connections.
Specifically, we are hearing some fantastic feedback about Angie, our 24-hour digital guest room assistant purpose-built for hotels. Angie is a voice-commanded solution that increases guest satisfaction, streamlines operations and maximizes revenue.
What makes it different? Each hotel can customize 100% of the property-specific answers to questions and commands, unlike consumer smart speakers. For example, when a guest asks, “Hey, Angie. What’s the best happy hour spot in town?” Instead of doing an online search, Angie can be programmed to direct guests to the onsite bar and even offer a discount code.
Angie also offers digital signage on two of her models. Simply add in a couple of screens for upsell and advertising. Adding promotions about the hotel spa or restaurant encourages guests to spend more money at the property.
Here’s what some guests are actually saying about Angie: “It was a great addition to our experience!”, “So innovative.” and “The Angie unit was an integral part of our room. Aesthetically pleasing and very effective voice control. Easy to control without manually handling any device.”
Want to see (and hear) for yourself? Get in touch with a member of our team to book a demo with Angie.