In the news: This week we are focusing on hotels – Hilton Worldwide digital room selection, ICON Hotel partnership with Duetto, Mandarin Oriental’s Fan of MO, TAUZIA and RateGain
Hilton brings mobile room selection and online check-in to Southeast Asia
Select rooms and check in on the go with Hilton HHonors app. (Image credit: FlairImages/iStock)
Hilton Worldwide has made its digital check-in and room selection technology available at hotels in Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and some properties in Thailand, following the launch of this new technology in Australasia and India on 23 March 2015.
With the addition of hotels in Southeast Asia, this pioneering digital check-in and room selection technology is now live across more than 4,300 hotels spanning 12 brands worldwide.
In the next few months the innovation will roll out to the rest of Southeast Asia and subsequently in China, and Japan.
The technology allows member of Hilton HHonors, the hotel group’s loyalty programme, to check-in and select their exact room from digital floor plans on desktop, tablet and mobile devices.
Through their Hilton HHonors accounts guests will also be able to further customise their stays through these devices by requesting upgrades or making special requests for items to be delivered to their rooms, all through their personal accounts, with the simple click of a button.
Geraldine Calpin, global head of digital at Hilton Worldwide, said the digital check-in and room selection rewards its HHonors members for their loyalty, and put them in the driving seat with unprecedented choice and control across their entire stay.
This latest development forms part of a wider digital strategy for Hilton Worldwide to enrich the travel experiences for guests with a simple streamlined process:
- Room selection: At 6 a.m. the day before a booked stay Hilton HHonors members can sign into their accounts via their mobile devices, tablets or computers to check-in and choose their preferred rooms through floor plan maps or lists populated from the hotel’s available inventory. Photos of rooms are also available to help with selection. This function is updated in real-time, so guests no longer have to wait until they are physically in the hotel lobby to be assigned a room.
- Special requests: After choosing a room guests can further customise their stays at full-service hotels by purchasing upgrades, and requesting specific amenities to be delivered to their rooms before arrival.
- Room key: Once they arrive on property guests simply pick up their room keys from the front desk – a streamlined process since the guest’s payment information and other details are already verified through their Hilton HHonors account prior to arrival.
- Check-out: Guests can bypass the front desk upon departure as the bill will be automatically sent to their email address.
To experience the new digital check-in and room selection functionality guests simply need to download the Hilton HHonors app, and join the free Hilton HHonors guest loyalty programme.
Hong Kong’s Hotel ICON chooses Duetto’s technology for revenue optimisation
Hotel ICON partners with Duetto for revenue optimisation.
The 262-room Hotel ICON is the first in Hong Kong to implement the revenue strategy solutions of Duetto, bringing new insights on pricing and demand to the property.
Utilising new consumer-centric data and a sophisticated pricing engine, Duetto provides hotels and casinos the tools they need to better manage distribution complexity and drive guest loyalty and profits.
Richard Hatter, general manager of Hotel ICON, said: “The five-star hotel market in Asia is becoming increasingly competitive with a crowded field of international brands and pricing pressures from outside the industry. As an independent hotel we need to work twice as hard and at twice the speed to optimise our revenue and fully understand our evolving customer base.”
Operational in 2011, Hotel ICON is a teaching and research hotel owned by the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Its mission is to train and develop the next generation of elite hotel managers.
Duetto opened its Asia Pacific headquarters in Singapore in the fourth quarter of last year, and is rapidly expanding in key markets throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. Its revenue strategy solutions are deployed at hundreds of hotel and casino properties in 19 countries.
New social media platform for Mandarin Oriental
Fans of MO – Mandarin Oriental’s new social media platform.
Mandarin Oriental invites its guests to share their personal photos and favourite experiences of their stay in the group’s properties round the world on its new social media platform – Fans of MO.
The site features individual guest experiences through a collage of images and user-generated posts, which are hand-selected and continuously refreshed. For a personal touch, a signature monogrammed tile with the user’s initials accompanies each published post.
Visitors to Fans of MO can book a hotel stay directly from its guest-generated content, click on “reserve this experience” within certain posts, share posts via email or on social media sites, as well as search for experiences based on specific interests such as destination or food & wine
The platform also features special posts from Mandarin Oriental’s celebrity fans, which are seamlessly integrated into the dynamic content stream.
Users can share their Mandarin Oriental moments by creating a guest profile on mandarinoriental.com.
It’s RateGain for TAUZIA to improve rate intelligence
POP! Hotels is one of the brands under TAUZIA.
Indonesia based hotel, estate management and consulting company, TAUZIA Hotel Management, has chosen RateGain as a partner to improve rate intelligence for its brand hotels particularly in the Southeast Asia region.
TAUZIA’s largest source markets include Indonesia, China, Australia, Singapore, South Korea and Malaysia.
RateGain offers hospitality and travel technology solutions for revenue management, rate intelligence, electronic distribution and brand engagement to help customers around the world to streamline their operations and sales.
TAUZIA will utilise RateGain’s rate intelligence tool – PriceGain – to boost its group hotels’ rate intelligence capabilities with accurate and comprehensive data.
PriceGain is a hotel rate intelligence solution with a user interface that enables hoteliers to easily produce real time, on-demand rate shopping reports for their hotel with the highest reliability.
