Ubiquitous high-speed Internet access is fast becoming a requirement in hospitality. Like a comfortable bed and a hot shower, guests are expecting reliable, fast, unlimited Internet. Preferably for free.
The costs of providing Wi-Fi have reduced over the past decade, however there is still a significant cost to providing a high-quality, high-speed, reliable Wi-Fi service with good coverage in all parts of the property.
One way of getting a return on investment for a ‘free’ guest service, is data harvesting. By combining data sourced from the PMS, the property’s Wi-Fi infrastructure, guest social media accounts (eg. Facebook) and directly from the HSIA platform, we can create a sophisticated picture of guest behaviour.
This data can be used to analyse both generic anonymised guest behaviour, as well as highly specific, identifiable guest metrics.
The generic data can be used for capacity planning, to determine which types of Internet traffic are on the rise (Netflix vs in-house Video), to determine guest movements through the property (which areas are busiest when).
The personalised data can be used to create guest profiles, and link actions to those profiles. We could determine (based on their Facebook likes and time spent in the hotel gym) that a guest likes to exercise and offer them some sort of incentive around that. Whereas a different guest might be categorised as a ‘foodie’ and as such would be targeted with a different incentive. These incentives could be offered while the guest is in-house, or at a future date to entice them to return (possibly tailored to coincide with a lower occupancy timeslot).
Ultimately the property profits in two ways:
• Minimise costs/timely upgrades to infrastructure targeted to areas with the greatest need.
• Effective targeted guest incentives to maximise dollars spent per guest and/or return visits.
Please contact McLaren Sales at sales@mclarenint.com if you’d like to talk about tailoring a solution for your property.
By Marc Jonkers
Director of Technology
McLaren Technologies