Digital contactless technology is a way to increase the guest experience, but it can also be a way for hotels to reduce costs.In a hyper-digital age, guests are increasingly demanding contactless experiences. This perspective leads hoteliers to view these landmarks in the customer journey as cost-saving centers, and not revenue management opportunities. This perception is not only outdated—it’s blocking both asset owners and hotel operators from taking advantage of untapped revenue potential with guests. Hotel management is a much more powerful context for the truth. There are cost savings to be had, but every step of the contactless journey offers a chance for a hotel manager to increase their net operating income and Net Promoter Scores.
By aligning and optimising each step of this digital journey hotel staff are able to free up valuable time and attention that can be invested back into what really increases guest spending, exceptional service. This improvement opens up new opportunities to engage guests more effectively, both in person and digitally. It is crucial that staff are able to take advantage of this kind of time saving and create opportunities, especially when our hotel industry continues to struggle with historically high labour costs and turnover rates. In the hotel industry, every second counts.
This article will show you why contactless is more than just an upgrade. It’s a launchpad to a better guest experience.
Digital Check-in – Your first impression of Hospitality Matters
Digital check-in goes beyond achieving operational efficiency in hotel management. It is also a great way to establish the expectations of guests from the very beginning. This powerful first impression sets the tone for your entire journey. It integrates seamlessly with your property-management system and other technologies to unify the customer experience.
Remember the last time that you traveled. How did you feel about the check-in procedure? The last thing guests want when they arrive at your hotel after a lengthy journey is to have to wait, or to experience more friction. A smooth, thoughtfully-implemented digital check-in removes friction and sends the powerful message that “We value you as a hotel guest and don’t waste your time”.
Digital check ins offer a unique opportunity to engage your guests before they even enter the lobby. Email marketing has become a thing of the past. Before they enter the lobby, you can customize greetings for each guest, and offer context-aware upgrades like room upgrade or ancillary offerings. Your digital check-in platform is directly integrated with your guest experience platform, allowing you to segment your offerings more effectively and at the right moment. Digital check-ins can transform your relationship with hotel guests, transforming it from transactional into transformational. This improves the overall service. It also encourages repeat business because guests will trust your ability to deliver a seamless experience.
Data shows that automation of hotel management can improve guest satisfaction and ultimately increase profitability. Amadeus discovered that 71% business travellers want to see hotels adopting online or self service check-in solutions in order to enhance customer experience. Oracle Hospitality’s latest survey of customers in 2023 revealed that 60% ranked mobile checkin as the top technology feature they expected from their hotel. According to the survey, properties that offer digitally smooth and seamless check-ins report a 25 percent higher score on guest satisfaction upon arrival.
Digital Key Provisioning: Turning Convenience Into Revenue Solutions
Hotel owners can immediately and easily measure the benefits of seamless key provisioning. The number of queues decreases, they break down more quickly during peak hours and the staff spends less time doing admin and more time presenting ancillary products to guests. These convenience gains help set the tone for a seamless stay, but the real opportunity to enhance the guest experience begins once the guest has unlocked their room—literally and digitally.
By integrating your property management system with wallet passes to web-provision keys, you won’t be forcing your guests to install an app to “skip” the line and enter their rooms. By allowing guests to engage with your brand in the way they choose, you can also set up a more natural and real-time interaction with guests.
Leaders in the hotel and tourism industry have already adopted this new way of thinking about keys to improve the guest experience. Shannon McCallum is the VP of Hotel Operations for Resorts World Las Vegas. She shared this in a recent Alliants announcement: “We are not only focused on technology as a convenience but also on how we can better connect with guests and elevate their experience at every touchpoint.” Our top priority is creating a seamless and unforgettable experience. Alliants’ latest integration of technology in our resort helps us accomplish this mission.
Secure Payment: Transforming Customer Transactions Into Confidence
Amadeus Hospitality conducted a study that found 32% travellers experienced billing problems which adversely affected their stay. This led to them losing brand loyalty, and the need to improve technology for managing payments. Securing payments may be considered administrative work by the staff and guest, but it is a trust issue that they have with your company.
If you use outdated systems or create uncertainty when securing the payment of a guest for their stay, you are creating points of failure, which can cost you money and damage your brand’s reputation. Hotels, for example, have a success rate between 30-40% in disputing chargebacks. As hospitality is an intangible, it’s difficult to prove whether the service met expectations. This can have a negative impact on the customer experience. You can reduce the risk of a chargeback by being as secure and seamless during the payment capture.
Accomplished correctly, transparent and secure payment processes do more than protect revenue—they create an overall customer experience of confidence and trust. It is this trust that gives guests peace of mind as they spend more money at your hotel. Would you continue to spend money at the hotel if there was a problem with their payment system while you were a customer?
ID Verification: Building Trust through Seamless Compliance Management
Although ID verification is an important formality, the way it’s done can reveal a lot about how a hotel values its guests and their privacy. Manual ID checks create bottlenecks and can negatively impact guest service. They also degrade the guest experience. Inspire by agencies such as the TSA that have reduced passenger verification time by up to 33 percent using digital identity tools. Forward-thinking hoteliers are now adopting similar solutions in order to streamline this crucial process.
In addition, new regulations make this change not only desirable but necessary for an effective management system and improved guest experiences. According to a PhocusWire article, governments are pushing for a structured, digitalised collection of guest identification for reasons such as compliance, safety and public health. This is forcing the hospitality industry, which has been relying on conventional wisdom, to reconsider its current practices. By embracing digital ID capture, hotels aren’t just saving time—they’re building guest trust, ensuring regulatory compliance, and laying the groundwork for that trust to turn into higher confidence for behaviours like increased ancillary spend.
How Improving Each Guest Milestone Increases Hotel Net Operating Income & Net Promoter Score
You know that if you are a hospitality professional with years of experience, improving every guest milestone can be a game changer for increasing net operating income. If you use technology, such as digital provisioning keys or contactless payments to streamline your hotel’s operations, this can reduce wait times. Do your hotel owners share your beliefs?
Rapid check-in is popular because guests can spend more time at their hotel and less time at the front desk. How does a dull technology stack which supports contactless experience enhance operational efficiency and lead to a higher level of customer satisfaction you can measure? Here are some statistics to support your discussions about the cost-savings potential of contactless technology.
Digital Hotel Check-in
- A digital check-in can save a hotel at least 6 minutes.
– A digital checkout can save the average hotel at least 4 minutes.
– Data from 127,000 digital check ins and checkouts using the Alliants’ Experience Platform
Digital Keys
- A hotel key contains about 5 grams of polymer, the same amount as a plastic grocery bag.
If 250 rooms were able to facilitate just 20% of their check-ins during a sold-out event, they would save
Source: Data from the Alliants Experience platform, which includes over 21,000 key components. This data shows that over 100kg plastic was saved and 600kg carbon emissions were reduced.
Payments
Alliants Payments was used by a global enterprise client to make over 158,000 contactless payment over a year.
Savings of more than $507,000 from suspected fraudulent payments
The labour saving of 3 minutes for each engagement in order to obtain payment authorisations amounted to 7,877 hours over the course of that year
Here are a few statistics that illustrate how a cost-savings centre mentality can be shifted around contactless technology based upon tens of thousand of surveys by travellers:
Oracle’s research shows that 76% hotel guests would return to a hotel with a contactless check-in (digital key, mobile payment, etc.). They would be more likely to come back.
Deloitte discovered that 80% would pay more for a hotel with seamless tech enabled experiences, such as digital keys and check-in.
– At Amadeus, they found that 73% of hotel guests say they are more likely to return to — and spend more money at — hotels that allow them to pay, manage invoices, and check out via mobile or contactless options.
The contactless guest experience is improving with every improvement. Offering better check-in and check-out options gives your revenue management teams new opportunities to increase ancillary revenue—more convenience equals more purchases! When guests experience personalised service, they are more likely to engage your brand and create more purchasing opportunities.
This engagement can also be automated throughout the guest experience, for example, a room upgrade after completing digital check-in. This will enhance guest experience profitability. Don’t forget about the environment; reducing emissions is an important factor for eco-conscious travelers. Remember that as the hospitality sector evolves, every step taken to improve the contactless guest experience could make a big difference to your bottom-line.
Contactless isn’t a technology endgame for hospitality, it’s just the beginning of the evolution.
Contactless solutions are not the endgame in an industry that is constantly evolving. These milestones are the beginning of a technological revolution that will help transform hotels’ operations, improve guest satisfaction, and ultimately increase their net operating income. Hotel chains can streamline check-in/check-out processes by implementing contactless software. This will allow them to better leverage the preferences of guests and increase spending. This software allows your team to transform standard hotel check-ins in memorable experiences that resonate well with guests.
Contactless milestones are not only a convenience, but also a way to improve customer engagement and build trust. Forward-thinking hospitality brands, from global hotel chains to boutique hotels, are harnessing the power of this technology to improve guest experience and enable staff to focus on what truly matters—creating engagements that elevate guest experiences.
Alliants
Alliants has assisted many of the world’s most respected brands to deliver exceptional experiences for their customers. Alliants was founded in 2009. Since then, it has developed industry-changing technologies, such as award winning chat and mobile applications, which have been used by millions of people around the world. Zendesk, Inc., the global software company for customer experience based in San Francisco, invested a small stake in Alliants. Alliants received recognition as a UK Best Workplace in Tech™ A certification based solely on employee feedback.
