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From online check-in to table reservations, mobile ordering solutions are becoming increasingly sophisticated and popular. Elly Earls reports


want to download and update a different app at every venue they visit. Wi-Q’s HTML5 tech- nology overcomes these limitations.” David Taylor, chief commercial officer at GLH Hotels, agrees that customers are much less impressed by apps now than they were in the early days of smartphones. “Back then, everybody everywhere wanted to download as many apps as they could because it was novel, but today people are much more ambivalent about apps because of what I call ‘app clog’, where you have so many apps on your phone that you end up running out of memory.” Guests also want to be treated as individ- uals, says Agel. “Increasingly, they expect no standard offerings, no standard distribution channels, but interaction recognising their location, time, expectation, context and so on, so that the offering becomes unique, person- alised and differentiated,” he says. And while hotels are not yet able to offer all


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of this in a coherent way, Alastair Campbell, former customer mar- kets and strategy director at GLH Hotels, thinks it won’t be long before they’ll have to. “As soon as it comes in, people will find it hard to remember when they didn’t have it,” he predicts.


PULLING TOGETHER


When it comes to F&B, the ultimate solution for hotels would be to pull all related revenue streams together into one mobile-enabled online ordering solution, something that up until now hasn’t been possible. “Hoteliers haven’t had much choice up until now and have been limited either by the technology available or the prohibitive develop- ment costs,” notes Tagborlo. Indeed, at London’s Eccleston Square hotel, which has a comprehensive app – enabling guests to order room service, request house-


Technology Prospectus 2017 | 19





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