4 ways hotels are leveraging technology to meet guest & employee expectations

Over the last two years, the pandemic has forced hotels and other businesses in the hospitality industry to adapt and innovate. While the guest experience has always been—and continues to be—one of the top priorities for hospitality companies, guest expectations have changed, and hotels must adopt new strategies to meet those expectations. Not only do guests expect health and safety to be a primary concern for hotels, but they also expect a highly personalized experience everywhere they go. And if hotels can’t deliver on those expectations, they risk losing guests to competitors that can.

But meeting guest expectations is only half the battle. With today’s hot labor market and companies everywhere offering remote positions, hotels must invest in employee experience to retain workers. While some hospitality employees can work remotely, most workers are part of day-to-day property operations and therefore must be onsite for work. These employees need to know that their employer values them, prioritizes their safety, and is trying to create the best possible employee experience for them.

Balancing guest and employee expectations while focusing on revenue and other business goals can be extremely challenging. But many properties have overcome these challenges by investing in technology to improve guest and employee communications, streamline property management, and create a more personalized experience for everyone. Let’s dive into the top 4 ways that hotels are leveraging technology today, starting with driving revenue from events and amenities with digital signage.

1. Drive Revenue with Events and Amenities

Group travel is starting to show signs of recovery, and event planners are looking for safe, adaptable spaces to hold conferences, meetings, and other in-person events. They need spaces that not only make health and safety guidelines like social distancing and mask-wearing easy to enforce but also spaces that they can transform and customize to meet the needs of their clients. With the right digital signage platform, creating a safe, adaptable space for event planners is easy.

Poppulo Harmony allows you to update the content on your digital signage from a mobile device in real-time, ensuring that you can always display the latest health and safety info throughout your space. This on-the-fly content contribution capability also makes it easy to customize the venue for event planners when they come to scope your property, helping show how the property can be branded to meet the needs of their event. Plus, you can use digital signage to direct foot traffic to onsite amenities like restaurants and retail, driving more revenue from guests and visitors.

The overall guest experience plays a major role in how much money guests are willing to spend at your property, so it’s important to remember that the guest experience starts from the moment guests enter the lobby. Let’s look at some of the ways that technology can be used to improve the lobby experience, as well as other aspects of your property.

2. Enhance the Lobby Experience

To remain competitive, it’s critical to deliver a personalized, memorable, and immersive guest experience. Today, the best way to do that is through technology. Many hotels are implementing fully integrated solutions to create an immersive guest experience from start to finish. Leveraging technology to drive revenue and enhance the lobby experience sounds like a worthwhile investment. But it’s important to make sure your investments aren’t going to create more work for your team or slow down day-to-day operations. Digital signage not only solves the challenges discussed above—but it solves those challenges while streamlining operations and saving time for your employees.

3. Streamline Operations with a Virtual Concierge, Readerboards, and Conference Room Signs

In the digital age, guests expect information to be available instantaneously and at their fingertips. They immediately want to know where to go, what’s going on locally, and the status of any events they plan to attend—and they want those answers without having to wait in a long line. Many properties are investing in technology like virtual concierges, readerboards, and conference room signs to keep guests informed. And with the Poppulo Harmony platform, all of these solutions can be controlled from the same system, allowing you to give guests the information they need without creating more work for your employees.

We’ve talked about the technology and tools that can help drive revenue, enhance the guest experience, and streamline operations. But digital signage and communications technology can also play a huge role in the back-of-house experience—let’s talk about how.

4. Engage Employees by Improving Back of House Communications

Meeting guest expectations is only half the battle. To provide the best possible guest experience, it’s critical to have engaged and informed workers that are aligned with company goals. And the best way to keep your workforce engaged and informed is to develop a communications strategy that puts employees at the center of your plan. Many hospitality brands are turning to omnichannel communications to create targeted company-wide messaging via multiple channels, including digital signage, email, mobile devices, collaboration tools, and more. 

With the Poppulo Harmony platform, users can create content once, then personalize that content for different groups of employees and publish it across a mix of channels.

Every hotel is looking for ways to innovate and compete for market share while solving challenges related to health and safety, guest loyalty, employee engagement, and more.