When planning the next travel, we’ll most likely check booking.com or aribnb.com for a place to sleep, ryanair.com for a flight deal, and tripadvisor.com for personal experiences and reviews about other travel-related services. Relying on technological tools has become our second skin whichever kind of traveler we are.
That’s why the hotel and tourism industry should seriously think about embracing digital needs of tech-savvy travelers (and those who serve them), providing them with tech tools such as digital signage platforms.
To have such innovative amenities in your business means making a step ahead of the competition and enhancing your clients’ travel experience. As prices of both hardware and software are getting more affordable and easier to implement, there is hardly any excuse left in delaying developing a digital signage project in your (or your clients’) hotel.
Steer Your Customers
1) Wayfinding
“Where can I find…?”, “Where is the…?” are usually the first questions that customers ask you as they arrive. A digital signage touchscreen placed along hallways or near entrances can provide this nformation by simply displaying a map of your building.
2) City maps
The same kiosk or board you placed for wayfinding, can also display m a local city map and points of interest, so that visitors can immediately organize their visit.
3) Weather Information
It could be a great idea to supply your digital monitors with a weather widget. The displayed message can also be personalized with a triggered mechanism based on weather conditions, so that it could sound like: “It’s cold today: take a scarf with you!”. You don’t have any? See point 2: here’s a map to a great store selling locally made textiles!
4) Currency Exchange
For the international guests, it’s important to know what the current foreign exchange rate is, which can be displayed on your digital signage board with a help of a simple widget.
5) Flights Schedules
Let’s suppose your guests’ flight back home was canceled due to weather conditions: likely they will extend their stay in your hotel for one more night. Besides being a nice caring gesture for your guests’ plans, showing real-time flight schedules’ updates is quite a real source of income.
6) Display local points of interest amenities
Run images and videos of local must-sees, fascinating landscapes or glamorous places in the vicinity and leverage on improved experience of your guests. Not to mention the time your personnel would save by “outsourcing” the local-guide function to digital signage.
Promote Own Services
7) Hotel Services
If your hotel is provided with amenities and leisure facilities such as SPAs, fitness centers, laundry services, gift shops or pools, make sure your clients are aware about their location and opening hours. Sometimes a small reminder of services’ existence is all that’s needed to gently push the travelers to use them.
8) Restaurant Menu
Digital boards are the perfect solution to display your restaurant (or room service) menu, promote meals of the day, and slideshow mouth-watering photos of the dishes to make sure the guests’ won’t go past the restaurant during their stay.
Internal Use
9) Improve Wait Times
To make waiting times more bearable for clients you could install a digital signage kiosk or board in your lobby, in order to give them something to do while waiting (so that you can also easily do your job without being interrupted by visitors’ incessant asks).
10) Specify Security Norms
By placing digital boards along hallways, in lobbies and waiting areas, and other highly-trafficked areas, you can better coordinate communication to guests in case of emergency and, for instance, guide them to the nearest emergency exit.
11) Manage Events
A digital platform provided with the right widgets will help you run events in the hotel’s conference facilities. show time schedules and locations of each meeting placing your platform right at the entrance, or you can display title and meeting informations just the entrance of the room where it will take place. Displaying schedules and meetings’ locations at the entrance or directly at the conference rooms’ doors can help guide the event’s participants without overburdening the front desk personnel and creating traffic jams in the hallways.
12) Manage Staff’s shifts
Though guests’ experience is a priority, digital signage can be used in the back offices too and help the staff be updated on shift schedules (including last minute changes), vacations and leaves and so on.
Partner Businesses’ Promotion
13) Promote local events
Let your guests know about exhibitions, concerts, fairs, parties and social events in your city, to get the real local vibe and really enjoy the visit.
14) Promote local businesses
Promotion of affiliated local businesses such as restaurants, cafes, or gift shops could be an additional source of revenue – and done with style if you use digital signages’ visual appeal.
Not to mention Other Benefits
15) Stand out
In an increasingly competitive environment, it’s essential to stand out.
When digital tools perceived by your guests as a leisure and a functional amenity, as a sign that you care; they can make your hotel more appealing to choose your hotel, to come back and to reccomend in to others.
16) Receive feedback
A digital touchscreen platform is the right tool to get honest (and/or anonymous) feedback from your guests, thanks to its accessibility.
17) Get social
A digital touchscreen kiosk can be a highly engaging tool thanks to sharing social network pages with your guests for either pure entertainment or to connect with the visitors to get a feedback.
And last but certainly not the least…
18) Generate Profit Stream
The Benefits from using digital signage in your hotels are almost limitless, as you have seen. Just use your imagination…
It can increase staff management efficiency, enhance your guests’ experience, and most of all – it could be a source of additional revenue, if used smartly.
So there are no excuses about it, you just have to try!