Digital foundation

Travel is more accessible than ever and is now much more about experiences. Hotels are often the base for this, and consumers have increasingly high expectations of their accommodation. Guests expect a tailor-made experience and, in a particularly competitive market, hotels cannot avoid this if they want to retain guests.

Ensuring a personalised experience is no easy task for hoteliers and hotel chains. Technology can lend a helping hand here. Data is becoming increasingly important for providing personalised experiences throughout the process from booking to after-care. Technology can also enhance guest comfort in the hotel accommodation itself. This is where AI-powered networks can play a central role. AI-powered networks give hoteliers unprecedented insights and automation capabilities that enable them to provide visitors with an optimal, personalised experience. 

Customer satisfaction has always been a major focus in the hotel industry. The question now is how hoteliers can meet the ever-changing needs and expectations of modern, digitally-oriented, travellers. Highly personalised interaction is needed to ensure that every guest feels valued.  

A good example of a hotel chain enabling such highly personalised interaction through technology is citizenM. This well-known hotel chain with Dutch roots uses technology to completely revamp the way guests sleep, work and relax. CitizenM uses a network in its hotels that provides reliable support for intelligent hotel rooms and common areas. Travellers are welcomed on arrival by a host or hostess. They can bypass the reception desk and check in via an information kiosk or app. From there, a digital key is created. Guests can move into their rooms within a minute. With a tablet in the room, all kinds of smart equipment can be operated to control room temperature, lighting and blinds. Guests can log on to the network in no time and stream their favourite apps, movies and games to a HDTV. They can open room doors with an app thanks to the outstanding wireless connection, even while streaming. 

Ambitious digital transformation projects like citizenM's can be a great success, or turn into a disaster. Because however well individual digital applications work, the underlying network infrastructure is the determining factor. Check-in must be flawless. Room doors must open immediately at the first attempt to operate them via the app. The wireless connection must always work without a hitch, even while streaming. And the controls for the devices in the room should simply do their job. A wireless network unable to handle all these tasks quickly and reliably time after time is guaranteed to spoil the clientele's experience. 

So the question is how to realise such an infrastructure. Modern solutions for AI-driven networks can make fixed and wireless networks predictable, reliable and measurable. They can also offer unprecedented levels of insight into the user experience. For instance, these networks make it possible to instantly provide guests with secure connections and personalised experiences. In addition, they simplify the implementation and management of the IT infrastructure and network services that span the various locations of hotel chains. All this is possible based on provisioning without human intervention and automated workflows managed from the cloud. AI-powered networks can proactively detect and fix anomalies. Hotels can thus operate efficiently without having to have a network specialist in-house.

Hotel employees, in turn, can benefit from fast and reliable access to key applications for facility management, content management, physical security, payments and video and voice applications, among others. Advanced firewalls can provide a full range of capabilities for inspecting data traffic, providing protection against cyber threats and ensuring top performance despite the daily arrival of new, unknown and therefore potentially untrustworthy external devices within the network. All these capabilities ensure hotel guests and employees secure access to the internet and other digital resources. 

Most hotels are characterised by standard offerings. Hotel chains like citizenM go a step further by offering highly personalised experiences. This makes them stand out in the market. Strong personalisation of guest interactions boosts customer loyalty and transforms hotels from a basic amenity to the beating heart of any trip. And AI-powered networking technology is at the heart of this transition.