Digital Transformation For The Hotel Industry

Challenge

• The hotel chain wanted to expand its appeal to tech-savvy guests and become the hospitality tech hub in the region.
• They were utilizing a costly architecture, relying on accommodating, rigid and proprietary software that had failed to meet their operational needs.
• They were paying a steep price for third-party marketing and customer acquisition services that were cutting into their bottom line.
• Therefore, they wanted to 

Reduce manual labor

Decrease their operation and employee costs

Improve marketing opportunities and move away from third-party vendors.

Maintain a premium, tech-centered, and comfortable hotel experience. 

Solution

• Every Hotelier’s dream is to get to know their guests better. Our solution provides hotels with the ability to have ongoing communication with their guests and to do it in a scalable and cost-effective way.
• The cloud-native, scalable and cost-effective solution is a customized open architecture called Reindex).
• The solution gives the hotel full control over the architecture and the data, whereas, releasing the hotel from being controlled by proprietary software vendors. 
• Using Linnovate’s Reindex middleware technology as an abstract layer, the professional services team integrated customized open source technologies for their CRM, ERP, and other key systems at a fraction of the cost.
• This transition meant they kept their existing infrastructure but moved over to a more cost-effective, capable, and flexible solution stack.

The Personalization Framework

• Reindex creates a digital identity for each user.  The digital identity generates insights for the hotel that they can use to create a highly personalized experience throughout the guest’s stay.
• It also provides marketing materials and opportunities to the hotel, be it staying in touch with the guest from the time they booked until well after checking out or offering promotional materials in the future. 

• The hotel’s mobile application is integral to staying at this hotel. The generated insights and profile help the hotel offer a highly personalized experience using the mobile application. There is a contactless concierge service and guests access a wide range of hotel services via the mobile application.  
• Other services include

Self check-in/out, 

Room setting controls

Information services for suggesting dining and entertainment 

• This directly improves the overall experience of the tech-savvy traveler.
• The application enabled the hotel to also track guest events and engagement from the moment they booked their stay through check-out. The aggregated data was managed and made easily accessible through their zero-code engine and CMS microservice, keeping the ongoing information maintenance and marketing information management simple through a CMS. 
• As a result, content managers have easy and convenient access to generate information and marketing material, running various campaigns with highly personalized messages to the guests during their stay and after they check out.
• With this secret weapon, the hotel didn’t need any more third-party service providers, got rid of their expensive contracts, and don’t require any more intensive technical support. 
• With a greater sense of what their guests’ needs were, they were able to offer highly tailored promotions that spoke to their intended audience.  
• The solution continuously monitors all events and generates operational insights (insights that are translated into actions like sending personalized messages, email, call the maintenance team, room service, and so on).

Benefits of this digital transformation to the hotel

• With this new integration, lighter framework, and personalized service, the hotel decreased operation and employment costs while increasing revenue.
• The hotel underwent a digital transformation becoming a tech-centered hotel using the same operational software they were used to while taking full control over the data, insights, and software. 
• They opened new guest segments and have various upsell opportunities now due to higher customer satisfaction ratings. 
• New marketing campaign opportunities motivate guests to book future stays. 
• The hotel directly engages with its current and potential guests through highly personalized messaging.
• The hotel remained in contact with the guest throughout the entire stay, offering a higher level of personalization and customer service.
• The transformation made, meant the hotel went from a standard hotel management style to a highly equipped IT management team.
• The lightweight framework streamlined operational processes and cut ongoing operational costs for the hotel. 
• With a self-service and digital experience, more than half the service crew became obsolete.
• By using a cloud-native, open source, and scalable architecture, the hotel had the flexibility to run the software on-prem, on the cloud or a hybrid model without being locked into any vendors. 

Benefits of this digital transformation to the guests

• Guests stayed in a hotel that understood their needs.
• The hotel offers a tech centralized experience from the minute the room is booked all the way through checking out of the hotel.
• Guests have full control over their hotel experience, including check-in/check out, ordering room service, unlocking their rooms, and controlling in-room functions using the hotel app.