IoT is a way for the hotel industry to renew itself and attract customers who are fond of this type of innovation.
To what extent can IoT address issues related to the hospitality industry?
IoT technologies offer many opportunities to hotel professionals. In addition to hotel room access cards, connected objects can help improve the level of service offered, both in productive maintenance and in optimizing reception or customer care. Productive maintenance allows a problem to identified before it occurs so that intervention can happen upstream. Indeed, if a customer arrives in his or her hotel room and a product does not work, this will give a bad image of the hotel. Finally, security issues are at the heart of hotel problems and the constant improvements in the field of IoT can offer ultra-secure solutions.
The market of connected objects tends to spread within the large hotel chains, however the objective is to democratize these products to all hotel players.
How is the Linxens Group positioned in this field?
For several years now, Linxens has been thinking about technological innovations in the hotel industry. Recently, Linxens introduced a wooden access card made from wood from sustainably managed forests. This product is part of a range of eco-responsible solutions called EcoLAM, which includes antennas embedded in recycled materials and even paper. This alternative to the plastic card could be of interest to hotels wishing to show an eco-responsible image to customers sensitive to these issues. Today, Linxens is implementing a real sustainable development approach that is becoming a corporate culture.
At the same time, Linxens is looking for partners to get closer to the value chain and to be able to offer new solutions to track the stocks of sheets or towels. Thanks to a traceability system and antennas in the labels, it will be possible to know where the sheets or towels are or even the quantities available. Linxens can give its technological knowledge to ensure that the antennas are wash and heat resistant.
A customized customer experience: is this the big challenge of tomorrow?
Today, customer satisfaction is achieved through a tailored experience. This means that customer needs are no longer studied in a general way but on the contrary in an individual way. At the hotel, it is possible to imagine a room that is 100% customizable and personalized, where the habits of the customers are identified. The use of the cell phone becomes a support that will contribute to improve the customer experience. Through it and through mobile applications, the user will be able to enter his preferences and use it to access his or her hotel room without going through the reception. The information will be centralized and transmitted to the hotel to be taken into account during future stays. For example, it is possible to have a connected television that turns on when the user enters the room and displays a personalized welcome message or to know the number of towels that the customer will need in order to avoid waste.
All these innovations will give value back to the tasks assigned to employees and optimize the workload by orienting it towards service. Human contact remains complementary to digitalization in the hotel sector and indispensable in a world where customer service is crucial.