Mr. Murray

Mobile Technology

Interacting and Marketing with the Mobile Guest

By Mike Murray, Co-Founder, TripCraft

Mobile commerce or “mCommerce” has created a whole new mindset for interacting with mobile consumers and hotel guests. Never before has so much communication power been in the pockets of so many people, and never before have hospitality brands been faced with so many opportunities to engage guests and offer better services, products, and brand experiences.

When marketing through typical channels like the desktop Internet, you have to broadcast special offers, brand messaging, customer service responses, etc., and hope that guests see (and react to) your dialogue. The obstacles are that guests have to be at their computer, and they actually need to see your message in the jungle of eMails, ads, and general spam they receive from other companies trying to engage them.

Mobile on the other hand, provides a more direct and personal means of communicating with customers. This is due to the simple fact that mobile devices are already in the pockets of your guests and (usually) always on. You therefore have many more chances to engage them - especially important during a stay at your property.

Options for Mobile Interactions

The real mobile question is not if, but how you utilize this channel. This should be guided by your overall mobile strategy and which options meet you and your guest’s needs. If you don’t have a mobile strategy - you need one. There are almost endless possibilities for communicating with mobile guests, but your business needs to adopt a strategy to be successful. It goes beyond simply identifying all possible revenue and service touch points. You need to understand guest preferences for interacting with your brand and what they expect in return. Mobile guests are maturing quickly and have high expectations. So the longer you wait, the greater the chance someone else will fulfill their needs.

Defining a mobile strategy is beyond the scope of this article, so I will simply present a quick overview of typical options available. Just remember these options can be combined into an overall strategy and are not meant to be a list of disconnected possibilities.

MOBILE APPS are the best means to engage your guests. Unfortunately, most current hotel apps are simply mobile brochures or limited booking engines. This is primarily due to lack of strategy, platforms, and difficulties integrating with brand systems. But mobile is evolving rapidly, so you must consider how it plays with strategic systems and operations. With the actual app itself, there are basically two choices. The first is a native app that runs on the mobile device and requires the guest to install via an app store like iTunes, while the second is a browser app that is basically a web site accessed by a mobile browser. There’s an ongoing religious war over which option is better and why one will ultimately beat the other, but these arguments come from people biased to either technology - so don’t listen to them. The truth is the biggest technology companies in the world (Google, Apple, Microsoft) have invested heavily in both options, so it’s a safe bet both will survive and flourish. Your decision should not be based on technology, but on the strength of your brand and how to engage the guest. I would advice that every hotel brand should have a mobile website and any strong hotel brand should also have a native app. There are obviously more details that go into the decision, but here is a rundown on the capabilities of each:

• Native apps provide the best foundation for an always-on, direct communication channel between the brand and guest. Built correctly, a native app keeps all guest interactions within the app and does not require use of other methods like eMail, texting, or website advertising. Instead you can elegantly send notifications and messages to the app, which can vibrate the mobile device and/or show up as a little “badge” over your app icon to inform the guest something is waiting for them. It’s very similar to how eMail works where a number appears over the eMail app icon telling you there are new messages. This approach is very personal, intuitive, and non-intrusive, which increases user responsiveness. The message itself can be a text message or a rich multimedia presentation. Other advantages of a well-built native app are location and time awareness. Using these features, an app can detect where a guest is or if an event should occur and then initiate an appropriate dialogue based on these variables. Using the strength of native app features creates an almost endless range of possibilities for engaging customers where and when it makes the most sense.
• Mobile websites are the easiest way to establish a mobile presence for your hotel brand. Though they do not offer the dynamic capabilities of a native app, they can achieve similar results when combined with other technologies. The important thing to remember is websites are “stateless”, which means they remain static until a guest uses them. In simpler terms, they generally cannot initiate a mobile interaction until prompted by the guest. There are ways to overcome this, but it begins to approach the complexity of native apps. There’s also the promise of new browser technologies like HTML5 that may close the gap with native apps, but they’re a work in progress and may never equal the power of native software and hardware working together. For now, the best way to leverage your mobile website for marketing and service, is to combine it with more direct communication capabilities like eMail and text messaging. Using these tools, you can initiate a dialogue with a guest and then direct them to your website to complete the interaction. Mobile websites can also have location detection capabilities, but they do not match capabilities of native apps, so consider how you utilize them.
• TEXT MESSAGING provides the simplest means to engage mobile guests. You can use Short Messaging Service (SMS), which is text based, or Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) that includes images and other media. Because this option is simple and provides direct interaction with the customer, it can be an effective tool. Especially when using MMS with images and video to deliver engaging dialogue. The key with messaging is to know your guest’s appetite for it. There are many consumers that love it and many that hate it. So using messaging as your only mobile marketing tool is risky, and always allow guests to “opt-out” of receiving messages if they want to.
• eMAIL is the old standby for direct marketing and communication and often works better on mobile than the desktop. That’s because mobile users are notified via vibration or sound when a message has arrived and often look at the subject to see if they are interested. On the desktop these notifications are less prominent and eMails are often turned to junk or quickly passed over. In general eMail is an acceptable way to begin a mobile dialogue, but you will need to use the power of a mobile app or messaging service to complete the interaction. Just like messaging, you need to allow the guest to opt-out of receiving eMails, which in turn can limit your marketing opportunities.
• MOBILE ADVERTISING is another straightforward way to reach mobile guests. Well-conceived ads within your own mobile app can produce great results, and there are also the typical mobile ad platforms like AdMob, which push your advertising to many other mobile apps. But good advertising is a completely different discipline, so I’ll leave it at that.

Practical Examples

When it comes to mobile interactions with a hotel guest, I generally think of them as either marketing or service opportunities. In reality they go hand-in-hand as one feeds the other, so I often just use the term “dialogue” to refer to any of the mobile interactions a hotel may have with a guest. Good marketing and service build a stronger bond between the hotel and guest, which ultimately increases revenue. So here are some examples of how mobile can strengthen this bond.

• Your guest has just arrived at the airport. How about an automatic message welcoming them to the city and offering them transportation, a room upgrade, or any number of other offers applicable to them – right now.
• It’s Thursday and you’ve got unsold room nights in Boston this weekend and want to sell them fast. How about broadcasting a private, special offer to guests with your app that are either in Boston or have a booking there? Try that with your OTA or brand website!
• You have a guest and know their preference for an early breakfast and a 6am wake up call. You can accomplish both by sending them a dialogue at the appropriate time with a greeting and breakfast order dialogue.
• A guest by the pool wants to order from the bar or restaurant. But there’s not a server in sight and they can’t muster the enthusiasm to place an order themselves. Instead, they simply pull out their mobile device and place an order for poolside delivery. Better yet, what if your mobile app knew they were out at the pool and automatically sent them a lunch offer?
• A guest has forgotten about their spa appointment and is miles away from the property sightseeing. Rather than lost revenue, you can send them a friendly reminder with directions from their current location back to the property, or of course allow them to easily reschedule.

There are may more new, practical, and interesting ways to engage mobile guests, just remember to keep it relevant, personal, and timely. Mobile consumers are more action oriented than desktop consumers and don’t like spam or useless communications.

What’s coming

Okay, so I’ve talked about the greatness of mobile, different options for using it, and also presented some (hopefully) interesting examples of mobile interactions. Lets push the envelope.

One of the most intriguing things mobile can provide hoteliers is the ability to sell ancillary products and services from in and around the property. With desktop interactions it’s difficult to interest guests in a local restaurant or museum when they’re not on-property or in front of their computer. However, mobile guests are more inclined to purchase ancillary items because they have the capability in their pockets and actually rely on hotel guidance for purchases during their stay. How many times has your concierge sent customers down the street to a restaurant, museum, scuba shop, or whatever? How many times do you see guests walking out through your lobby using their mobile device to find a good local establishment? What if you could actually make some revenue off these interactions?

Now I realize this depends on the type of property and its relationship to the items a guest may wish to purchase. But at the end of the day, a hotel is home-away-from-home for guests and their buying instincts are much higher during their stay. So with all the noise around increasing revenue and ADR, guest loyalty, and all the other financial battles hoteliers have been fighting forever, why not step out of the box and do something really interesting? You’ve got a property full of consumers looking to purchase and a neighborhood full of vendors who would love their business. Rather than simple referrals, why not facilitate the deal and make some money in the process? This would be very difficult on your desktop website, but much easier from your mobile app.

Consider this:

• Ask any hotelier what their top priorities are and you will usually hear “increased revenue” “maximizing ADR” or some other similar and highly difficult financial objective. Ask them about their top challenges and you’ll probably get the same list.
• Most hotels have a large and captive audience of consumers (i.e. guests) who look to the hotel for “what to do”, “where to go”, or to be blunt “how to spend money” during their stay.
• Mobile is the only sales channel that enables consumers to purchase “right here and right now”.
• Ancillary services can be setup and offered through the brand’s mobile app as a straight purchase or with coupons guests redeem with the vendor. Combining this with a mobile concierge would be incredible.
• Adding to the degree of coolness (and difficulty), purchases could actually be billed to their folio.
• If I told you a year ago there would be a multi-billion dollar company that made money by bringing together large, captive audiences to purchase items with discount coupons via there mobile devices, you probably would have scoffed. Its called Groupon.

This might be a lot to consider, but I’m actually just scratching the surface. Sure there would be challenges like choosing the right mobile platform and establishing agreements with vendors whose goods you promote, but when all is said and done, none of this is impossible - let alone difficult. The simple story is that hotels have an incredible revenue opportunity emerging right in front of them, and it’s only possible due to the convergence of hospitality, mobile, social media, and the tech-savvy guest.

The mobile roller coaster ride is just beginning, so jump on and strap in. It’s going to be fun.

Mike Murray is co-founder of TripCraft, a mobile technology company offering an innovative mCommerce platform for hospitality. At TripCraft, Mr. Murray oversees product development, technology, and business strategy while remaining a hands-on developer and architect of the company's products. Mr. Murray has been developing innovative travel and technology solutions for over 25 years and his innovative thinking and systems can be seen powering some of the travel industry's biggest names. Mr. Murray can be contacted at 781-588-9100 or mike.murray@tripcraft.com Extended Bio...

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