Hilton and Starwood Hotels are leading the way with providing loyalty apps for guests to improve their hotel stays. Loyalty apps enhance guest’s experiences in many ways. Guests can now bypass the reception desk and go straight to their room by checking in on their phones. No more need to have a 24 hour manned desk to ensure expedient service and checking-in. With a digital key solution guests can access their rooms at the appropriate times, and quickly get settled in saving them valuable time. Waiting in queues, filling out paperwork, and the hope you receive a decent room at check-in become notions of “traditional” service. By allowing guests to choose their exact room from a map there are no surprises, and thus providing a seamless check-in for guests and saved labor hours for staff.
Hilton and Starwood are forwarding the savings of increased efficiency to the guests by offering a 5% discount
‘rack rate’ if you book their rooms on the loyalty app. 5% off is a great way to save the guest money so that hotels can focus on customer retention instead of wasting money on customer initial engagement in a bidding war with Online Travel Agencies. The driving force behind the move is that currently hotels have to pay the Online Travel Agencies a commission of 10-30% for each booking they take. So by giving guests a 5% discount for the guest to make the booking on the loyalty app, its a win-win situation, a win for the guest and a win for the hotel by saving up to 25%.
Moreover, hotels wants to offer guests another reward for helping them out. They want to make it easy for you to get that late check-out, or to upgrade to a better room at a discount rate, so there are simply buttons in the app that you can press to make this happen - no fuss, no calling reception and begging them for a late check-out. With an all-inclusive app guests have an easy way for guests to enhance their own experience effortlessly.
At end, Guest Loyalty apps with digital keys are a win-win situation for guests and the hotel to move forward together into the future with a better experience for both sides.