As technology evolves, guests’ expectations for service are growing. Hotel kiosks enable hotels to meet these expectations with agile and practical solutions. Kiosks can reduce front desk line wait times and improve customer satisfaction by collecting personal information proactively. They can also retrieve data on past purchases and room preferences, making it easy for your team to deliver a personalized experience.
Self-service Check-in and Check-out
Self-service kiosks allow guests to check in and out without waiting in line at the front desk. This saves time for hotel staff and reduces stress for both parties. Additionally, kiosks can collect customer data and help hotels improve future guest experiences. While it is commonly believed that self-service will decrease human interaction, this is not necessarily true. Self-service can free hotel staff to focus on high-touch moments to build brand loyalty and generate positive reviews and referrals. These moments include providing travel advice to guests before they leave for a day trip, attending to an urgent service issue, or simply engaging with a guest through friendly conversation. In addition, a hotel kiosk can capture incremental revenue by offering additional services and upgrades to guests. Research shows that restaurants with self-service kiosks experience higher ticket averages than those without them, which can be true of hotels. Kiosk software solutions can also enable guests to retrieve information/preferences from their previous stay at the hotel so that staff can deliver personalized service for repeat customers. In today’s digital age, consumers expect flexibility and choice. Providing this level of control for your hotel’s guests is an easy way to improve satisfaction and drive repeat business. When linked to a hotel’s PMS, hotel kiosks can capture valuable information such as room preferences, accessibility needs and purchasing history, making it easy for front desk staff to provide a customized experience that will delight guests.
Convenience
Taking inspiration from industries like retail, restaurants, and airports, self-service kiosks offer a solution to reduce wait times for guest services, improve customer satisfaction, and free up employees for other tasks. A well-designed and user-friendly hotel kiosk, linked to the PMS system, can allow guests to check in themselves, pay with a credit card on-site, and make recommendations. Sometimes, one kiosk can handle the same volume as a team of 1.5 front desk staff members, eliminating the need to hire more people or redistribute current employees’ responsibilities. In addition to speeding up service, a hotel kiosk can provide opportunities for upselling and additional revenue. Similar to how a booth increases sales averages in restaurants and grocery stores, hotels can upsell amenities or room upgrades by making the process more effortless for guests, increasing impulse purchases. This is especially effective for guests opposed to the hard sell. Self-service kiosks can also gather valuable guest data, including room preferences, past purchase decisions and special requirements, which are easily accessible to your front desk team. When this information is used to create a personalized experience for every guest, it enhances the customer journey and can lead to greater brand loyalty. To learn more about how kiosk technology can transform your guest experience, contact us to request a demo.
Personalization
Despite the perception that kiosks can be cold and impersonal, they allow front-line staff to focus on providing a personalized service. This is because kiosks are programmed to follow specific workflows and reduce the risk of human error. Moreover, they can collect a raft of useful data that can be used to tailor the guest experience, resulting in increased customer satisfaction. For example, kiosks linked to a hotel’s PMS can store information on past purchases, room preferences and special requests. This allows staff to deliver a truly bespoke service to loyal customers. This can also help to overcome staff shortages and high seasonal demand. Kiosks can also be a great tool for up-selling products and services. Guests can easily upgrade their room or purchase additional services like continental breakfast or room service using a self-check-in kiosk. This enables hotels to increase revenue without hiring other staff to handle the extra work.
Moreover, kiosks can be configured to show upsell offers on a user’s home screen. This can also be a great way to remind users about up-selling opportunities. Ultimately, the goal is to provide an easy and seamless process for the customer to have more time to enjoy their stay at your hotel. However, it is important to remember that not everyone will be happy with a kiosk-only approach. Some people want to talk with real people and create that emotional connection.
Data Collection
Guests provide feedback on their hotel experiences through kiosks, and these data can be useful for improving facilities and informing marketing strategies. Kiosks also allow hotels to reduce the paperwork and back office work that must be completed, easing the load on staff in both the front and back of the house. Different from traditional methods, where guests must hand a paper form to a hotel employee, which could get lost or misplaced, kiosks are a safe way for your guests to provide information. This can help your team focus on the conversations that matter, like giving advice for a day trip, attending to urgent service requests, or simply engaging with your guests through friendly conversation. When a guest uses a self-service kiosk, the system can collect their booking ID, personal ID and any additional questions you might ask them on arrival. This data can be transferred to the hotel PMS, which will be reflected in the guest’s account. This helps to ensure that the latest data is always available and that there is no confusion between the kiosk and the guest’s booking information. Using kiosks can also increase up-selling opportunities, allowing guests to upgrade their room or redeem special offers on things like continental breakfast, extra room service or even extra nights. This type of offer can appeal to many people who respond poorly to being sold something face-to-face while also providing the hotel with additional revenue that does not require extra staff hours.
