Comfort is the cornerstone of every hotel and resort. As there is no such thing as too much comfort, the more of it, the better. Renovations, special offers, creative ideas — every respectable resort tries to improve their hotel experience with each stay, season, and year.
Apps for hotels unite tried-and-true features like push notifications and new technologies like Augmented reality under one dome, helping hotels ensure the comfort of their guests, connect with them better, and provide actionable insights into guest behavior to further improve the experience.
As apps for hotels and hotel software are one of our areas of expertise, Intellectsoft offers a guide to the main features of an impactful hotel app, supporting it with examples along the way.
Step 1 — Improve Communications With Your Guests
A hotel app convergences all communication with your guests in one place, becoming a mobile help desk that works all year round — before, during, and after the stay.
Apps for hotels allow you to reach out to your guest in a multitude of ways:
- Send push notifications with seasonal offers and updates; remind your guests about upcoming events they signed up for; surprise them with loyalty bonuses; inform them about any emergencies instantly.
- Send out geofenced messages when guests approach a location, informing them about events, new offers, discounts, or any other useful information. You can also customise the process. For example, you can set up notifications that are triggered when your guests approach their most frequently visited locations. Conversely, you can direct their attention to locations and services that guests have previously overlooked.
- Integrate social media. This option will allow for a much easier check-in and a multitude of new opportunities. You can inform your guests about the events in the nearby town based on the places they usually visit; or let them know that someone from their Facebook friend list is visiting the same resort.
- Include a news section to keep your guests informed about your hotel brand.
- For those who prefer verbal communication, you can also include the option of calling the front desk — in one tap, from anywhere.
- Present your guests with the possibility to rate services and locations. Many people (especially millennials) enjoy rating things and can provide you with instant feedback.
As a result, your guests will spend less time on informational inquiries, which will allow them to make the most of your resort.
Step 2 — Improve Overall Experience
With a hotel app, every service and leisure activity are a few taps away. More so, your guests will be able to customise them beforehand.
You can allow your guests to order anything in your hotel app:
- Concierge and housekeeping services, with options allowing your guests to set a time period during which they prefer not to be disturbed.
- Food delivery to the room, with comprehensive functionality, including options like adding and removing ingredients.
- Navigation and transportation. Include a descriptive map of your resort and allow your guests to quickly order a taxi in the app.
- Booking. Include in-app booking of rooms and restaurant tables, spas, or sports activities. Here you can present your guests with a variety of in-app options for any type of booking. For example, allow your guests to choose a sitting area in a restaurant, pre-order food several hours prior to their arrival, and allow them to send messages with personal requests.
- Rooms. Backed by technologies like fingerprint scanning on most modern smartphones, apps for hotels can also serve as reliable room keys. If you are managing a smart hotel that leverages the IoT, your hotel app can also serve as a room remote — allowing your guests to control lighting, TV, windows and other room elements with their mobile device.
A hotel app will streamline your resort’s services, allowing your guests to fit much more in each day of their stay, as well as minimising (or even completely removing) the common stress points.
Step 3 — Gain Valuable Insights
Finally, a hotel app will help you get to know your guests better, presenting you with heaps of useful data based on app usage. As a result, you will be able to build a better and more personalised hotel experience for each and every one of your guests.
Apps for hotels include the following tools:
- Guest behaviour analytics based on app usage, as well as app usage statistics — all presented in an actionable form that ensures your every decision is dependable.
- Staff statistics. Allow your guests to rate the staff on a certain scale across a number of parameters, and receive feedback.
- Polls and surveys. Ask your guests to rate newly implemented ideas, locations, and services to see how they responded, and gain a deeper understanding of your guests’ behaviour.
- Heat maps. Use location tracking and iBeacons to find locations which attract most of your guests. This can then be used to know which areas you should focus on improving, or give you valuable insights into your guests’ behavior for future marketing purposes.
Custom Features in Apps for Hotels
If you turn to custom app development for your hotel app, your imagination is the only limit.
For example, you can add an AI-driven chatbot to address basic queries and help your guests instantly without the involvement of the personnel or front desk. Concurrently, you can choose to go with a Live chat, allowing your guests to send text inquiries to the hotel staff anytime and anywhere.
Going forward, you can VR tour of your resort. VR amusements can be accessed in the hotel app as features, or in a separate VR mobile app.
Speaking of AR, you can present your guests with contextual experiences powered by the technology: guests will point their smartphone cameras at objects and places located at your resort to learn more information about them right away.
If you want to streamline the continuous improvement of your hotel experience with impactful software, get in touch with us, and we can get started with your project at short notice.
