Think twice about in-room tablets

At a glance, the idea seems to be nice: In-room tablets as a value adding amenity to your guest rooms. And providing these tablets as a hardware component plus exclusively running our software is also a good business model for us. However, we ask you to rethink your decision on adding hardware to your guest rooms. We are pretty sure, you will put aside the idea, as running your communication on your guests hardware (what we call the “bring your own device approach” BYOD) is so much more beneficial to you and your guests. Scroll down to discover why!

Personal data

Would you feel safe entering personal data, like credit card information, allergies, full names of your family on public devices having been used by others before and certainly also after you? We doubt so. And so do most probably your guests. The benefits from running an app based guest communication channel however base much on your guests booking and ordering your services in a self-service mode. Instead, offering all these services on the device of your guests (BYOD) will support a personal use.

Exposure

You have a great hotel with hundreds of thing to do. Activities, sports, spa, culinary experiences. All happening outside the guest room. Still an in-room tablet is limited to an in-room use. How many hours do your guests actually occupy their guest rooms while being awake? 2 hours per day? Maybe three? How much of this time do they want to spend using your tablet? See, that’s a rather small exposure. Too bad, the usage of your content, offers and services is limited. No so if everything is accessible on the guests personal devices (BYOD). That’s the 24/7 approach.

Take me home

What about if you’d be given the chance to occupy app space on the home screens of your guests? Sounds utopian? No it’s not. The BYOD – running on the personal devices of your guests – does exactly that. Once installed as your own hotel app, guest will most likely keep the installation, securing an app icon of your brand on their smartphone’s home screen. And they will receive your communication in the app too. Exclusively without any distraction from other mails or posts as in the email inbox or social media apps. Let the utopia become reality with Hotel MSSNGR!

IT support

Your guests are demanding. And rightly so. Imagine how this would look like for in-room tablets. How many support calls would you expect? How many broken screens because guests dropped the device unwillingly? How many torn out charing cables? And guests rightly expect all this to be fixed immediately. Experience shows, that resources running this kind of support run high rather soon. Is this, where you want to spend your money, if running on the guest’s personal devices (BYOD) is the far better alternative?

Investment

Buying or leasing hardware is costly. Buying or leasing 5* hardware is even costlier. But this is exactly what guests expect when coming to your fine property. 5* rooms, 5* service, 5* food and 5* hardware. A no-name low performance tablet is no 5* hardware, nor is used outdated devices. Too bad, in-room tablets are replaced by new models almost every year – are you willing to replace hardware this frequently? BYOD – running on the personal devices of your guests avoids all this. Do not compromise and follow the BYOD approach!