Today, travellers’ top holiday companions are mobile phones, according to a new study. It’s evident that technology is evolving at a relentless pace. So are the guests’ demands. It can be difficult for hotels and leisure providers to keep up with recent changes, let alone look to the future. But the fact of the matter is that technology is the only way out when it comes to enhanced customer experience. It allows continuous communication and streamlines the guest experience, from reservation to checkout.
HRAWI Magazine (Hotel and Restaurant Association of West India, Mumbai), met up with Vijay Choudhary, General Manager - Information Technology, HRH Group of Hotels and captured his views in their latest issue. According to Vijay, “Since IT is now considered one of the growth engine for hotels, in-room technology plays a vital role and gives competitive advantage with a measurable ROI.” For more from Vijay, please click here.
So, if we’re convinced that digitising the reservation functions does it all for us, think again! It’s time that hotels add power features to the basic functions to offer the ‘smart-hotel’ feel to the guest. Our guests are so used to technology that they want it all around them in the hotel to make themselves ‘at home’.
- Let's start with always on, free Wi-Fi web access. There is no excuse for any hotel to charge for broadband - even McDonalds restaurants and Costa coffee houses now provide free Wi-Fi.
- Research reveals that 73 percent of Asian holiday-makers chose to check-in online when travelling internationally. While it's nice to be able to chat to the front desk, sometimes guests want to just breeze past the front desk and head straight to their rooms. So, why not pop up a mobile page on the guest's phone using NFC or send the guest a remote check-in?
- Consider the up-sell opportunity from a tablet placed in-room showing the delights of the room service menu and tempting the guest with side orders and beverages. Or give him an option to pre-book dinner! And why not show reviews of each course, and better still show him any peer reviews as well. Fast forward three years and iPads in hotel rooms are almost ubiquitous these days. Well, in luxury and full-service hotels anyways.
- How about enabling the guest with many enhanced features such as the ability to set the room temperature, open the door, close the curtains and set mood lighting?
- Real-time offers and discounts can also be pushed to the guest without disturbing his privacy. Plus, guests can be educated about the hotel facts like the history, hotel map, recent media updates and much more in the most innovative and interactive way through e-brochures. Saves the hotel revenue too!
- Last and the most important, personalised experience that lasts long. Guests love it when their preferences are remembered for each visit, making the customer's life as easy as possible. What’s in it for us? A loyal customer who knows we care!
Food for thought, right? Well if these haven’t become staple diet yet!
Mobile is the way to go with swiftly increasing number of people (especially in the age bracket of 16-30) using their smartphones and tablets to browse websites. HRH Group of Hotels has been proactively preserving and presenting heritage to the world. Staying abreast with the times and innovative in all its services is hygiene for us. And it took us no time to launch our mobile website to reach out to our friends where they mostly are!
With the mobile site fully functional and loaded with offers and latest communication from us, we look forward to seeing you on your favourite platform. Now its much simpler and faster for you to reach us. Just hop onto http://m.hrhhotels.com/ from your mobile, tablet and bingo!
It's time for 'The Sixth Great Indian Travel Bazaar ’13' - an international tourism mart on April 14-16, 2013 at B.M. Birla Convention Centre, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India.
The objective of the event is to reinforce India as a world-class tourism destination, opportunity to interact with foreign buyers, registered Indian sellers, policy makers, investors, members of the media and make a business sense out of The Great Indian Travel Bazaar '13.
HRH Group of Hotels, is participating in one of the finest opportunities as a 'Diamond Sponsor' of the event
http://www.ficci-gitb.com/
http://www.ficci-gitb.com/sponsor.htm
It was an ambitious dream to get enlisted in ‘CIO-Asia’s top 100 index’ and it’s no more just a dream, it is real!
It is a moment of pride for all at HRH and specially team at the IT department. I must say that all team members have worked with utmost sincerity towards a single goal of achieving excellence through sustainable solutions in the field of IT.
I may not be able to name all however mentioning few of them is must who are just like solid pillars holding and supporting the IT department- Shailendra, Hemant, Nitin, Rajendra, Mukesh, Mihir, Sumit, Amit, Ritesh, Shekhar, Pranav, Mukesh & Avinash . Being a part of such a loyal and talented team always brings a sense of pride where few of them have worked with the organization for more than 12 years and most of them for 5years at least!
I remember, this journey towards the success had started with an understanding of the vision shared by respected CMD, Shriji Arvind Singh ji Mewar who has always guided us towards innovative and self sustainable IT solutions. These should not only be cost effective but also support business operations across all verticals.
With micro level knowledge of processes especially of hospitality industry and competent and tested-solutions, we wish to explore new avenues & provide I.T. services to the world because I.T is one of our (HRH) core competencies & ‘CIO-Asia’s top 100 index’ proves the same now!
Jai Mewar.
The I.T. projects of HRH Group of Hotels have been listed in top 100 Asian companies’ I.T. project index of 2013 and declared as ‘CIO 100 HONOUREE 2013’. It marked the presence in CIO-Asia's annual index of Asia's top performing enterprise users of IT. The index is maintained by ‘CIO-Asia’ magazine annually and published by ‘Fairfax Business Media, Singapore’.
This index highlights top 100 enterprises and organizations of Asia that have excelled through creative and innovative IT projects in the past year. Companies are listed as CIO 100 only if they have added extraordinary value to the stakeholders and customers through IT systems and innovative projects. This is the highest honour presented to any enterprise for IT implementation in the Asian region & panel of jury includes senior leaders of the industry and the University Professors of Information Technology from various Asian countries.
This year ‘Roll of Honors' of CIO-Asia-100 index recognized representatives from more than 12 Asian countries. Few of them are from India, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, Philippines, UAE, Macau etc...
Mr. T.C. Seow Editor of CIO Asia magazine, Fairfax Business Media presented this prestigious award to Mr. Vijay Choudhary, Head IT, HRH Group of Hotels in a grand ceremony at the Marina Mandarin Hotel, Singapore on March 13, 2013. In Mr. Seow words, the entries to this year's CIO 100 list has set an extremely high standard in terms of breadth and depth of implementation. Focus on enhanced customer experience acts as a guiding principle behind IT initiatives.
Mr. Choudhary had accepted the award in Singapore while acknowledging team work of IT department at HRH Group of Hotels.
It's another landmark in the journey of technological achievements for HRH Group of Hotels, EternalMewar, Udaipur.
