Whistle NAMED Best of Guest Experience Tech 2021

Why leveraging tech creates a more seamless, elevated & memorable experience for guests 

con­tent pro­vid­ed by

Best of Guest Experience

Due to the pan­dem­ic, hotels have giv­en guests more of what they want: self-ser­vice, cross-device com­mu­ni­ca­tions and direct mes­sag­ing with staff. As peo­ple become even more used to doing every­thing with their dig­i­tal devices, the guest pref­er­ence for dig­i­tal-first and real-time inter­ac­tions only increased.

Fluid Communication Channels So Guests Don’t Feel Inconvenienced by Less Staff

Guest mes­sag­ing plat­forms. There’s a lot of uncer­tain­ty when it comes to book­ing trav­el today. The guest mes­sag­ing plat­form can build automa­tion some­where close that auto­mat­i­cal­ly keeps guests appraised of the lat­est trav­el updates. Then, when they’re on prop­er­ty, guests have a direct line to make requests and man­age their expe­ri­ence. With a self-ser­vice com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nel in their hands, guests don’t feel incon­ve­nienced by less staff. They pre­fer it: Added ben­e­fit for hotels: these plat­forms become ancil­lary rev­enue gen­er­a­tors by facil­i­tat­ing room ser­vice and oth­er add-ons.

Leveraging New Interfaces and Automation to Reduce Staff Workloads

AI-based chat­bots han­dle many of the most fre­quent guest requests. To com­mu­ni­cate with guests with­out face-to-face con­tact, the chat­bot can han­dle guest requests and route them to a team mem­ber if need­ed. This type of guest expe­ri­ence automa­tion is going to become more com­mon­place, as hotels elim­i­nate repet­i­tive tasks and focus human resources on the high­est impact guest inter­ac­tions. Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, when guests may be more inclined to stay in their room, chat bots also helped short-staffed kitchens man­age incom­ing order flow. By not hav­ing to ded­i­cate a team mem­ber to the phone, hotels can main­tain ser­vice stan­dards despite constraints. 

Contactless is no longer a nice-to-have

Many hotels are reluc­tant to enable a con­tact­less guest expe­ri­ence, as there was a fear of los­ing the human touch. The pan­dem­ic flipped that on its head: the fear of human touch drove hotels to adopt con­tact­less as a stan­dard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure. That shift­ed every­thing: guests have more con­trol over their expe­ri­ence, allow­ing them to self-serve when appro­pri­ate and to sig­nal for help when need­ed. Con­tact­less gives guests con­trol — and also makes oper­a­tions more effi­cient. And it’s not just at check-in and check­out. Con­tact­less res­onates across the oper­a­tion: For instance, when restau­rant guests can split the bill between patrons on their smart­phone, it’s eas­i­er on staff, who don’t have to process sev­er­al cards at a POS station.

Bring the best hotel tech to your hotel today

Book free demo

Tell us about your­self and your hotel.

Or start now

Sign up on your own and see if Whis­tle works for you.

Get start­ed »

“The 2021 Hotel­TechIn­dex Mar­ket Lead­ers Report is cre­at­ed by HotelTechReport.com based on insights col­lect­ed from 10,227 hote­liers glob­al­ly dur­ing the annu­al sur­vey peri­od. No com­pa­ny has paid for inclu­sion in this report and every ven­dor fea­tured is includ­ed based on data from ver­i­fied hote­lier prod­uct reviews. Whis­tle has a 12-month non-trans­fer­able license to lever­age this con­tent for the pur­pos­es of mar­ket­ing and lead gen­er­a­tion. You may find the orig­i­nal copy of this guide at https://www.research.hoteltechreport.com/2021-mar­ket-lead­ers-report/.”