Mobility trend in Hospitality

A recent TripAdvisor survey found that over 40% of travelers use their smart phones to plan a trip and over 46% use their smart phones to enhance their trip while traveling.

No longer is it just an idea or an aspiration for the hospitality industry to use innovative methods to engage with their guests, for example Marriott Hotels, just this year, announced the addition of mobile checkout to its industry-leading Marriott Mobile app for smartphones. Clearly mobile check-out is just the latest innovation from the brand as a new service designed for today's connected travelers.

Mobile/Social/Location

The basics are already well underway with mobile booking, check-in (and now check-out) common applications available through the Mobile Web or branded downloadable (native) apps. Mobile concierge type applications fit very naturally with the hospitality industry shifting the physical concierge costs to a location-sensitive personalized guide. This can be a guide to local services, venues, restaurants, attractions or whatever. Additional engagement capabilities such as marketing through upgrades, spa reservations, add-ons, and mobile coupons all help promote on property services, restaurants and local merchants, as well as increase the on property time and naturally spend of the guest. Ancillary services like mobile payment capabilities, cross promotions, loyalty incentives can all serve to deliver a greater service to the guest and consequently increase the customer satisfaction and likely revenue.

Very interestingly is how we as customers are acting these days. A recent report, by Venuelabs, indicates that customers are engaging with more than 14 different local/social channels.

This creates challenges as well as opportunities for the industry. It is thought that the average retailer for example is missing 88% of these channels -a very interesting and possibly worrying suggestion.

This industry is evolving and starting to rapidly embrace the mobile revolution and the opportunities presented by location based services. How long before we can use our hotel app to review the wine we had for dinner, link automatically to our wine lovers app, see recommendations from our friends,  discover new wines, read reviews, rate the wine ourselves, and even email wine labels so we won't forget that special bottle when we return home -perhaps even order some for delivery before we get home.

Cisco with our CMX solutions is providing a key enabling technology for indoor location services helping drive this evolution and enhance the value of the mobile revolution in the hospitality industry.

This is part of a series of how location services is a core part of the mobile evolution in various industries. In a previous post I looked at the growth of mobile  location, data and context based advertising, and there is no doubt from the evidence that this market space is already big, and predicted to grow exponentially over the next 4 or 5 years.

For more information on CMX visit: www.cisco.com/go/cmx.