Transcription
Introduction
Hi. Welcome back to Matt Talks. I'll be talking through the digital guest journey. How do you design one and how do you put it in place to make sure that you have the best experience that fits your brand?
For us, it all started, and I've come out of hotels. So I the moment I turned sixteen, I started working restaurants and work my way up into hotels, and I loved it. I loved everything about hospitality and the way that we were creating these amazing guest experiences, but I hated technology that I encountered. I've always worked in hotels on DOS, and I'm not that old. But, you know, starting with a DOS system, this blue screen system that doesn't have even control of a mouse, it was really, really a step back that I was experiencing from the software that I was already using in my personal life.
And then about twelve years ago, I ran into Richard, the founder of Mews, and we became instant friends. But we also instantly understood that there's a real problem that we were trying to solve in the industry that didn't have a solution off the shelf, and somebody need to step in to that solution.
So we met about twelve years ago when he was the project manager for a hotel in Prague, the Emblem Hotel.
And then I joined him to become the sales director at the Emblem whilst we were also building our software business.
The first software that we built was a digital guest journey.
The idea around this hotel was the guest should be welcomed at the door. This they're coming into your home. You should be there at the door to welcome and greet them. They shouldn't be hiding behind a big lobby or a big desk where they're looking down on their screens and typing in data.
We should always be upfront with the guests. And then you sit them down on the sofa and you give them a cup of coffee or a glass of water because that's what you do when friends come to your house. And that was the concept. And you see that there's a host here with the tablets.
But in twenty twenty in twenty twelve, there were no systems that were enabled to run on a tablet.
And we really struggled because the we were already building an app, a concierge app that we would have on tablets in the in the rooms and guests could order room service. They could explore the history of the hotel and book services, but also explore the city. We'd make recommendations like a local of things that we think that guests would enjoy. But the moment we started thinking how do we plug our app into the core system where all the guest data sits, that's where everything broke.
Because those systems, the legacy PMS systems, just simply didn't wanna talk to us. And they didn't have a a system that works on a tablet. So that vision that we had was really hard to materialize. And that's really where we started Mews.
You know, at this point, we said, well, if it doesn't exist, this is a problem because it's already twenty twelve. We already had iPhones and we were iPhones and we're on those phones all day. So why are we not the ones to build that? And we basically started building the PMS.
Chapter
On the need for a modern PMS system
But it became, the PMS became the core system, but really because of the need for a digital guest journey. We wanted to digitize the guest journey because as a frequent traveler myself, I've struggled to stand in queues behind reception desk, getting bath servers, being asked for my credit card and fitting in registration card. I don't get inspired from that type of service. So that's why we started Mews, twelve years ago.
And we started at the core, which is building a, PMS system in the cloud. And today there is a number of cloud players that you can buy and and the great ones out there.
And one of the really key benefits of that type of system is the open API, the ability to have systems talk to it. So our data sits in the cloud and through an open API, which is basically developer documentation. So the developers can read that documentation and say, yes. I'd like to connect my system to that system.
And once we put that out there, we put our API on our website, our documentation. We started seeing a huge amount of great applications integrating with us, enabling choice. So hotels could now start to select different apps that they wanted to fit into their guest journey. But the one thing we also saw was that hotels weren't deliberate.
Chapter
What the ideal guest experience looks like
They weren't designing the guest journey from the ground up. But as a hotel brand and the word here is brand, you should be unique. Right? You should think about what makes my brand really unique to, what we want to achieve.
How do how does it become memorable? But also, how do we serve the guests in the best way according to what the brand expectation is? And I think that's where I see a lot of gaps. Today, it feels in our industry quite homogeneous.
There's a lot of brands out there, but they're all kind of the same. They all do rooms. They all do breakfast, and nothing really unique happens in those hotels.
And and and that's the problem. And I think with the modern technology that exists today, we can do a lot more. So let me talk you through some of the, the the pieces that we can piece together, towards creating this digital guest journey. And with us at the Emblem, that's where it started.
We just wrote down what we wanted the guest experience to be. And then we started looking whether anyone could supply that. And because of that time, technology was still very young. We ended up building it ourselves.
However, today is very different. Twenty twenty four, we're seeing an array of solutions out there. We have integrations with over a thousand partners. So you do actually have a selection, but you need to start with the vision.
And one of the things that we always recommend people doing is a whiteboard session. Or we use a tool called Miro where you have a digital tool where you can map out all of the the pieces of your brand. Why do you do what you do as a brand? And then what do you want your guest experience to be?
But in order to design a guest experience, you have to understand who your guest is and what they want from your brand and your experience.
So that's what I'll talk about in the next section.
Chapter
Market research and brand differentiation
One of the things we spend a lot of time on at Mews was really understanding the markets. There are hundreds of thousands of hotels out there, and we wanted to make sure that we we really understand what makes different brands different and how do they want to serve their guests so that we can build these digital guest journeys on top of this. So we did a a huge piece of research, and not everyone fits perfectly in a four box, but we wanted to make sure that we captured the majority of the market that we can segment so that we can build answers for those types of hotels.
So the four categories that we end up with is low cost, efficiency, frictionless, and personalization. And the way we split it up is on the one side, we're looking at, okay, what level of services does this hotel offer? Is this a limited service? They do they just have bedrooms and potentially breakfast room and maybe a bar, but that's about it. So a very limited focus service. Or do they fall into the more fuller spectrum? So full service hotels with multiple restaurants, potentially spa, different leisure facilities, but also meeting facilities.
So so a full service, hotel would have a lot more facilities. So that's what the real estate is like. And then we compare it also to who are the guests that are booking these hotels. So, you could have purely leisure hotels or majority leisure hotels that are catering like a like a resort hotel or potentially could be a city center hotel that is great for city trips that people come to, but that's not a a particular business destination.
So you've got purely your hotels, and then you've got these hotels that are a mix. So that have a mix of leisure, but then also have business. And that's when it gets complex because that's when you start blending multiple guest journeys, and that's where the digital guest journey gets much, much more complex. So I'll talk through these four categories in the next upcoming videos to just try and explain what what makes that segment and then what are the solutions that we recommend in terms of the digital gas journey.
Chapter
Understanding the low-cost segment
The low cost segment is a segment that serves leisure guests in a limited services hotel. Meaning, mostly you'll find customers that are traveling to this hotel for leisure purposes.
And then the hotel will have some facilities, but they're quite basic. So it's mostly about filling guest rooms, and driving occupants to make sure that they fill these rooms at the the the highest volume possible.
We find a lot of these hotels would be, for example, bed and breakfasts. You get a number of those types of hotels in specific tourist destinations, or outside of the cities.
And because they are limited service, you've got also a limited set of staff in the hotel.
And therefore, efficiency is really key because these hotels are often budget hotels, so the average rates will be lower. So, one, you need to make sure that this hotel is seeing really high occupancy.
And, two, if you're running lower revenue, lower average rates, that means that you need to keep your cost low as well. So they're looking for a huge amount of automation and efficiency to run this hotel.
Guests will book this hotel because, they're going to visit an area, a town. They're going to do ex activities. They're not booking this hotel for the facilities.
So they're coming to you because of your location, and because that's enabled them to go and see things in the in the facility. And that's what your digital guest journey should jump into. So on the one side, this hotel is looking for high efficiency. So I'd I would imagine they would embrace a online check-in. They would fully embrace a kiosk check-in because these customers don't have a huge expectation of the service that they're going to, receive.
And you wanna make sure that most of your guests can check themselves in completely digitally to get them in the rooms, and then you have personnel walking around to help those guests that need support. So that's really about the the arrival experience and the departure experience. You wanna automate as much as possible.
On the other side, what is the guest experience that you're trying to build? Because this is really about driving efficiency.
On the other side, when you look at the guest experience, they're coming to your hotel because they're looking to explore the neighborhood. So you wanna start that journey at the website. So as you look at your website, on the one side, obviously, they they wanna be able to book your hotel because everything there is to drive booking your hotel. But they are looking for what they should do when they're there. So you should come in with recommendations and you should work with partners, local partners that can help drive it because your hotel doesn't have the facilities to cater to, advance leisure experiences.
So you need to work with partners that can do that for you. So you got tours and tickets partners that you can integrate with. You can work with local restaurant that they can book tables for. You can do bicycle rental or canoe rental or whatever facilities that you have that local partners could integrate. And that journey starts at the website.
And then as guests, check-in or create bookings, make sure that at every point of the journey, you offer those types of services because that's where you can make some additional revenue for the guests. But at the same time, you're helping shape their experience. You know your local partners much better than they will if they go on the Internet. And because you work with a solid partner, they will know how to operate your guests and have the best experience.
And I'd say lean really into that piece of the digital guest journey. Make sure that your guests who are coming to you have a great local experience and have no bad experiences. And the only way to do that is if you if you narrate that journey for them from the moment they come into the website to checking in online. And then once they get to the hotel that you have everything prepared for them.
These guests, because they're coming for leisure, they might have lots of questions. And I would imagine that you want to, integrate a really great guest messaging app that with AI can help answer a lot of the questions that they might have because they are looking to spend significant time in and around the hotel. So, a guest messaging AI app is is definitely one of the ways, I would say, to go.
Chapter
Efficiency in limited service hotels
The second segment is the efficiency segment. So this is a segment that still sits in the limited service. So the hotel still has mostly rooms and potentially some very limited services on top of that. However, the business mix has changed because this hotel is most likely a city center hotel and suddenly they start to get, in addition to the leisure guests, also business guests. And that makes the operation more complex. And because the hotels are mostly in cities, what you'll see is that labor costs are higher. So a hotel to operate the hotel, it the cost goes up significantly.
And in order to drive down costs, you want to have a very efficient operation, and you wanna drive lots of direct bookings whilst you serve a much more complex mix of customers. So that requires technology to step in. So if you think about the efficiency, of that guest journey, you really wanna think from how do I automate all of these pieces as fast as I can. So, on the website, the website now serves both leisure and and business customers.
And if you wanna drive more direct traffic, you have to keep the website really simple to the core. Don't distract them with all kinds of other facilities and things and things you wanna offer. At the point of the website, you wanna capture that booking. So versus the low cost segment that we talked about earlier, there you wanna inspire.
At this efficiency model, you actually want to drive bookings as fast as possible.
And you need to look at the booking engine that you use, make sure that there is no steps in there that don't need to be there, that there's no questions about addresses that you don't need at this point. You just want their last name, a credit card, and a confirmed booking. And everything else you can do at a later stage of that digital journey, but you just wanna lock in the the reservation because suddenly there's a lot more competition with OTAs when you're a city center hotel.
And then because there are business guests and business guests generally want efficiency. They are looking for the most efficient journey possible. They're not looking for a long winded check-in experience talking about all of the experience talking about all of the things that they can see in the city. They just wanna get into the room. They wanna know what the Wi Fi is, and they wanna know if there's a good coffee shop in the neighborhood.
And that's what your digital guest journey should enable. So these guests are most likely to, go through the online check-in, to download their digital key on their smartphone, and not even pass by the reception desk. And whilst we might want them to, it is much harder to drive them to do that because, actually, the guest isn't looking for that. And this is great because if you want efficiency, this is the perfect segment of customer that isn't very cost conscious. They will just book the hotel. They would just wanna get into the room, and they they don't wanna have a highly interactive experience.
The leisure customers, of course, they do want that. So, once they they've booked, you need to be able to recognize your leisure guests and make sure that you cater different experiences to them. So as they go through the online check-in, you can offer different leisure facilities in the city or tours and tickets that you want to offer them if you segment them well. And that you can do really well with a good CRM. A CRM like a Revenates that is really able to recognize which segment that they fall into, and then you can help target those guests with different apps, to drive that experience and, make sure that they have the best leisure experience in your city as possible.
One of the things that I think a hotel like this should think about more because if you are a city center hotel that also gets a lot of leisure guests and business guests, who want to check-in early, this is a great place to think about early check early check-in fees. I know that traditionally in our industry, we like to give those for free, but most guests actually end up, not getting their room until three, especially in these types of hotels. So if you can get housekeeping to give you a few rooms and you can, set up a fee inside your system that says, hey. If they're checking in early on the kiosk once they get into the hotel, offer them a twenty year early arrival fee and you'll see that a lot of guests will pay for that benefit.
And it's one way to make more revenue even if you have limited facilities in the hotel. Early check-in fees and late departure fees are actually a really great way to make more revenue, and it is surprising how many guests are willing to pay for for that benefit. And it's it's a great way to to drive additional additional revenue.
So just I think with this thing, it's it's really keep in mind that you have two sets of customers that want different experiences. But at the core of it, you need to drive a really efficient machine and need to drive as many bookings directly to cut those costs to make sure that you run a very efficient hotel. And that's really what your digital guest journey should cater to. So embrace as many automation tools that you can. You'll we see in this type of hotel, if a tech stack is a little bit bigger than what you see in the low cost segment, so they have a CRM often. They use a more advanced revenue management system to drive occupancy and get the best rate possible, because there is more demand at this destination and you need more advanced systems to cater to that. So that's that's my quick summary of what the efficiency brand represents.
Let's talk about the personalization brand. So, now we're going back to pure leisure hotels or mostly leisure hotels, but the hotel now has more facilities. So this is a full service hotel. And what this means is that the goal of this hotel is not to just put them in bedrooms and then have them explore the surroundings of the hotel.
But the goal of this hotel is to capture as much of the revenue and engage the guest as as much as possible to drive, spending at the hotel, in the restaurants, in the spas, in the different facilities that you have. This turns into a very different experience. So, I'd say you still wanna embrace the, great websites where you where you get them excited about the facilities on-site because you wanna keep them on-site. You also, on the website, already want them to start making table bookings for the restaurant, for example, or, start booking some of the tours that they want to do that that you can facilitate.
Chapter
How to maximize revenue through early check-in and upsells
But it really transforms once you get on-site.
And, you know, a lot of the digital journey is the same for all of the different brands. But with this type of hotel, once you get on-site, you wanna have a lot more and we see that these hotels have a lot more technology in place to cater to to one percent of the different cities that they have, but they have to be really integrated so that at any point of the journey, you can jump into it. So if you imagine, if you have, bars and restaurants, you wanna capture their bookings. Right?
You wanna make sure that these guests book restaurants in advance that you know what the occupancy is. So you can have a digital guest app that pings a guest the moment they've checked in saying, hey. Welcome to the hotel. You know, make your bookings for the restaurant and provide them a link to the restaurant booking tool.
And that's where you can use a tool like a rest diary, for example, that's really good at capturing these bookings of guests that integrate back to the PMS.
At the same time, you wanna capture all of the revenue across the hotel. So you can use, a point of sale system that has a QR code integrated so that people can start digital ordering. So they could order room service from their smartphone. People don't wanna pick up a phone to call a human. So in the rooms, you can have QR codes where they can not only see the menu, but they can actually order the menu and charge it straight to their room. You could have QR codes at the swimming pool or in the different leisure facilities like at the gym. You could have, protein drinks on offer that could get delivered to the gym whilst people are enjoying their experience.
So really think about how do you digitize the real life experience and and improve that experience, that that's happening on-site.
And that's this is really where, having chats. And I find some of the hotels that have WhatsApp, some of the nicest hotels because once I come in, they give me the WhatsApp details. And I can ask questions or I can say, hey. I'm struggling with this thing. Can you get me some extra towels in the room? And in in the hotel like this where hyper personalization is key, you wanna make sure that you have a a modern tool because I have my phone with me at all times.
But I also don't wanna pick up the phone to call you, which is often what hotels expect. This modern generation wants to message. So make sure that you have messaging available, that you make it widely available for people to identify.
One of the things that really excites me is the development of artificial intelligence.
We, now use large language models to look at all the guest data because guest profiling is really critical in this type of hotel. Capturing all the historic trends or complaints that they've had, what do they spend before, did they buy upsells before.
And if we can consume all of that information and serve it to you, which we do at Mews, we've got this AI notes on profiles.
You can start to really lean into the great guest experiences.
One of the things also in this type of full service hotel is that you can take upselling to the next level. Whereas in a limited service hotel, you really have limited services. So you can do some light upselling like early check-in fees and late departure fees. But when you get to a full service hotel, suddenly, you can go much more with much more exciting tools. So you can offer, for example, a bottle of champagne upon arrival in the room.
And those things you can offer in upselling tools, like, for example, Mews as a baseline of upselling, but we've got great integrations with Oaky, for example, who is one of the best upselling apps that we're seeing on the market today.
And you could just integrate them, and they're really good at pitching their upsells at the right moments to the right guests.
These guests in these hotels are also very likely to upgrade their room to a nicer room because they're coming for their vacation. They wanna have the best experience possible. So if you give them a great upsell to a nicer room, they're very likely to buy this. And what we find is that systems are generally better at selling than humans.
Of course, the best trained human is phenomenal, But, unfortunately, the consistency of humans is not there that that a computer offers. A computer will do it one hundred percent of the time, and they will be successful.
And that's why you should lean into driving more of that upselling prior to arrival and through the systems because guests are happy to buy these great upsells.
And then as you've sold that bottle of champagne, make sure that you integrate that with a Zapier tool that pings the room service the moment the guest arrives so that the bottle of champagne is brought on in that moment. Because if you put that bottle of champagne in the room at three PM and the guest arrives at nine, the ice has melted. This is warm champagne. It's a really bad experience.
But you can integrate with a tool like Zapier that can just ping room service the moment the guest checks in. And then that you've just created a great welcome experience that is just next level. And it's really thinking about every piece of that journey and how does it match and make sure that you don't drop the ball on any of these experiences. Because in a full service leisure hotels, your guests are spending well, hopefully, they're spending every minute of that experience with you in the hotel.
And you just wanna make sure that that experience is the best end to end experience because you want them to go and rave about this online, after you invite them through your CRM to leave a great review at the end of it.
Chapter
Business vs. leisure hotel guests
And the last core segment is the frictionless experience. So this is a full service hotel, that runs in a city mostly because they are serving both business and leisure. So these are some of the most complex hotel operations that you encounter when they have multiple services and restaurants and spas, but also operating in a city where labor costs are really high. And then you've got a mix of business customers who are expecting something very different from a leisure customer.
And what we find is that these types of customers generally buy a best of breed PMS, and then they build their own experience on top of this because they have such high expectations of what that digital guest experience is that they wanna build it themselves. And and that's okay. That's good. So we're finding that these hotels will embrace pieces of what we offer, but they're saying, okay. For this type of experience, like a kiosk experience, we're gonna go with a solution like an Ariane solution that helps them build a custom kiosk kiosk experience, for example.
Or they're gonna go with a really high end CRM solution like a Revinate that can help build really segmented guest journeys that target the guest in the right way. So a lot of the personalization that I talked about in the previous segment and a lot of the systems that you have there, they lift also into this segment. But here, they go further because suddenly they're also serving, business travelers. So you need to cater to the complex workflows of a corporate traveler and corporate individual traveler.
So, potentially, they may want to book a coworking desk because they're looking for, a way to do their work whilst they're traveling in an efficient way so that you might wanna start offering coworking spaces to to these types of guests, but also meeting rooms. Right? So do you have boardrooms available on sale because you don't want them to go to the coworking space down the road. You want to keep these guests with you.
And we find that all of hotels have a lot of underutilized real estate, in their hotels. So here, besides all of the leisure, facilities that you have to cater to leisure guests, make sure that you also, cater to the business travelers because they actually have money to spend, and they will because they're inviting their business guests to your restaurants. They have the meetings at the hotel, and you need to build a really great custom journey for them. And their expectations of technology are probably higher than anyone else.
They're looking for an incredible amount of efficiency, and it just needs to work because they have no latency on their guest expectation. They want the experience to be seamless because they're there for business. They're not looking for a a handheld level of service. They're looking for everything to just work the way it's supposed to, and for you to think in advance of what they might potentially need as a next step.
And that's really where a digital app comes in to help cater to allowing them to book any of these additional service at the hotel, to make sure that things happen on time, that the room is cleaned once they leave the hotel. And you have to build a really great custom journey for that. But we do find that these types of hotels generally have the biggest tech stack so they will end up with ten to fifteen different types of integrations to figure out how do they best serve this type of clientele in their complex environments.
So as I talk through so I think everything starts with the whiteboard.
I'm really stepping back and saying, okay.
What type of hotel are we? And who are the guests that we're serving? Are they leisure guests? Are they business guests?
And what are they looking for from the experience, that we're having? And then what you do is you map out that entire journey from the moment they enter the website or they even discover your website to begin with to, an online check-in, to a kiosk. Potentially, you wanna have a experience in the lobby where you've got people with tablets. Maybe you want a big marble desk with receptionists, and maybe you don't want any check-in at all.
And those are all choices that you have in order to specific your brand experience.
Once they've checked in, do you want any continuation of the digital journey? So do you want guests to engage with you, and book some of your services? And I think if you're in the full service segment, you definitely want to have a continuation of the digital aspect to try and capture as much of the guest attention and their spending as possible. And then what do you want the, departure to look like? Do you want that digital? And how do you want that experience post departure?
Chapter
The power of modern cloud systems
And making a switch to a modern cloud system, it's a big thing because we've, for decades, been running on these systems that they were fine. They checked in. They checked out. They did bills, and they catered to reservations, and that was enough. The challenge is that guests have changed and the perception of guests, especially with AI. Guests are seeing in certain hotel brands that they're getting a much better experience, and they're choosing those brands. And if we don't see a shift from hoteliers to move into the cloud, it is really hard to facilitate the needs of a modern a modern guest.
So let me talk through some of the things that we've done, that you can think about doing with your hotel.
So we have created this great online check-in, that we have at at Mews. The idea is that you the moment you've made a booking, we will invite you to check-in online. It will ask, if anyone's traveling with you, you can invite them as well. Fill in your registration card. Submit your credit card in a safe way.
Do you want an upsell? Do you wanna add any products to your room? Do you maybe want a coworking desk as you're staying with us?
And then the last step is really the digital key. So if you're working with modern lock providers like ASSA, ABLOY, or SALTO, we can help you integrate that digital key key experience into this online check-in so that if you're serving business customers or leisure guests that like that digital experience, they can literally walk through the lobby of your hotel. They can get into the room, without having passed by, a reception desk and queuing up.
So the online check-in has evolved significantly in the last decade.
And one, you could use Mews app, but there are great apps out there that you could could could look into using as well. And they work with most modern systems. I think the biggest pain point of an online check-in is capturing the credit card details that are then interfaced with the PMS because payments is one of the most painful journeys, at a hotel that you want to make sure that is done the safest and most automatic way possible. So look out for how is the payments integrated back to my PMS, and how does the digital key journey work?
Does it work in both Apple and Android? And is it really seamless, or is there a lot of hoops that my guests have to jump through? And the more friction that you create, the more drop off that happens. So the more partners you put into that journey, the more drop off you will start to experience.
So that's the online check-in.
Chapter
How modern hotel reception should look like
Kiosks has all have also evolved significantly. So a couple of years ago, kiosk was a dirty word, but you see them now everywhere.
And because of COVID, people have embraced it. And, like, I love reading these case studies of McDonald's where McDonald's say that the kiosk is significantly better than a human in upselling. They are so consistent. They never miss a beat. They always offer the upsell. Would you like fries with that? Consistently, that they've deployed kiosks in all of their outlets today.
And I think you're seeing more and more of this in the hotels where it was a dirty word a couple of years ago. Kiosks are actually really, really good. A kiosk is also offering upsells. It is also offering saying, hey.
I actually have a room ready. Would you like to pay twenty euros for that room? Where we, as humans, we sometimes feel embarrassment or shame to say that. A kiosk does not.
And guests actually are very happy to pay that because they understand that it is actually benefits. We've told them time and again, come back at three, store your luggage. And if a system can actually say, no. I've got a room ready.
It's, you know, it comes at the this benefit comes at an additional fee, and guests are truly, truly embracing that. And I think this is we've seen a real shift.
Our kiosk does okay. Like, it can automate a lot of the guest journey. But I think when you work with if you are looking to completely automate, like, have no reception desk at all, you can definitely do that. You've got really great technology partners in our marketplace that you can work with to build a true custom journey, whereas our kiosk is still assisted. We can probably do sixty, seventy percent of your check ins for you. And then for thirty percent, you have staff available to help with their complex setups and their their complex, needs.
And then you really think about a reception. Right?
So most hotels have a big lobby with a big marble desk and a computer that you're looking down at.
We're actually seeing a shift towards hotels getting rid of that. We're seeing much better design elements in lobbies where, hotels are embracing having, like, a lobby where you walk in, you've got a a great staff member at the door waiting to sit you down in the lobby and then just check you in on the tablet because most of the check-in experience has already been done online. So it's really much more about creating their guest experience in the hotel and giving them that information rather than can have your passport and your credit card and here's a plastic key. Most of that piece, you can automate, so that you can focus on the guest experience today.
And then really just dig into our partner network. We've got a thousand integrations and, we can do a lot on-site. So we've we've got our own POS that you can deploy so you can have QR codes and digital guest ordering everywhere.
But we've got such great partners. We've got partners like a Bookboost and a Runner who are sitting on that CRM element. So Runner integrates on WhatsApp and it's phenomenal AI. And it's really good at engaging and answering the simple questions.
If you can answer ninety percent of questions, that's incredibly powerful and that's what you're looking for so that they're not disturbing your staff with those questions and then your staff can focus on those the questions that they want. BookBoost can can serve, guests across a number of platforms. And then one of my favorite apps is definitely Zapier. So whatever you can't do today, that isn't a out of the box solution, you can put together with Zapier.
Like, if you want, for example, one of the things I remember from being at a reception desk was when a VIP guest checks in, it would have a note saying call GM on on arrival. And I remember like, okay. But I'm in front of the guest. Do I have to now call the GM in front of the guest saying, oh, mister Jones is here.
Can you come to welcome them? That could be automated. Right? The moment you press check-in, an SMS could be triggered to the GM saying, mister Jones is waiting at the reception desk right now.
So it's a much smoother experience. And you can really use Zapier to set up these flows. Like, if this happens, then do this.
If this guest checks in, then notify room service to bring the bottle of champagne to the room, for example. And it's it's incredible what you can do with those types of applications.
And every hotel is unique, but it is important that you sometimes step away from your operation. Don't just buy any app that is the loudest app. Really think deeply about what you want the experience to be. Map out exactly what those app does.
Make sure that you don't over flood your guests with with with notifications and emails and things from different systems. You want that to be really mapped out so that it feels like a cohesive kind of story. But when you get this right, it's going to be so so powerful for you. And I'm excited to explore my digital experience as I stay in your hotels in the future.
Thank you for making it this far, and I really hope to welcome your Mews in the very near future. Thank you.
