Concept of a Smart Hotel
A Smart Hotel is a hotel equipped with disruptive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and IoT (Internet of Things), with the aim of improving management, efficiency and control from the hotel management, as well as offering a better service to guests.
For example, a guest can lock the hotel door, close and open curtains, turn TV on or off, and manipulate the lighting system.
 
 
Tricom – the leading brand of smart hotel solution from Singapore. Kindly visit www.smarthotel.sg
 
 
Now, Smart Hotels is a trend
Smart hotels are integrating eco-friendly technologies and practices into their operations to minimize their environmental footprint. This can include using energy-efficient appliances and lighting, implementing water-saving measures, and sourcing locally produced, sustainable food for restaurants.
 
 
Functionalities of a Smart Hotel
Smart Hotels are designed to offer an improved stay in terms of services and comfort for guests, but, above all, to enable optimized management in favour of security, efficiency and control capacity.
 
Among its functionalities, the following stand out:
 
Access control and security
New technologies are used to implement advanced methods of identifying people when accessing the interior of the building or rooms. These can be codes, biometric recognition or digital unlocking. They also connect CCTV to a centralized monitoring system.
 
Smart rooms
The place where guests want to feel at home. A Smart Hotel provides information on occupancy, room service request, comfort temperature, etc. to ensure a pleasant stay.
 
Control of building expenditure
It is possible to control and monitor in real time the consumption of utilities such as electricity, water and other supplies.
 
Management of common spaces
The use of meeting rooms, restaurant capacity, use of the gymnasium, among others, can also be monitored from a control platform, thus ensuring optimized and coordinated management with the service staff.
 
Parking control
Supervising vehicle access, as well as controlling the volume of available and occupied spaces is useful when offering and guaranteeing a quality service. Digitized systems make this information available to hotel staff in real time.
 
 
 
 
 
Advantages of Smart Hotels
 
Automation of processes
It is possible to control and automate systems such as: lighting, power sockets, heating, air conditioning, electrical appliances, doors, windows, blinds, irrigation, etc.
Efficiency and supply savings
Controlling the supply through information on consumption allows an optimization of expenditure, which, in turn, leads to cost savings and a reduction in environmental impact. A smart hotel is an efficient hotel that is integrated with the surrounding environment.
 
Access to data from anywhere
Access to information can be given at any time and from anywhere as long as cloud management platforms are used.
 
Improved decision making
Thanks to these data-based management platforms, hotel management can rely on all this information and use it to assess the evolution of different areas and services of the hotel, making it possible to make better strategic decisions based on key data for the organization.
 
 
Why choose a Smart Hotel over a regular hotel?
Most of all - for the customer experience. Staying at a futuristic hotel where the room service is being brought to you by a robot which takes the elevator by itself, is quite the treat (Flyzoo Ali-baba hotel). 
The hospitality technologies have changed as well as the profile of the habits of the digital-savvy traveler. A room with a view is not all people care about anymore. 
Experiencing futuristic design is one of the great things about smart rooms. The space inside a smart hotel is very different from a regular one. For example, a smart hotel room is more open-concept oriented, meaning there are no closets and just a few drawers. Everything is out there, arranged in a more minimalistic style. Also, in many smart hotels, the rooms may be smaller than usual, in order to save some space, Internet of things in the hospitality sector is gaining momentum as we speak. Travelers who are used to smart interior design at home, will easily get used to a smart hotel room as well. 
In some smart hotels, customers can adjust the height of their bed and also switch between lying down and sitting up (that’s called a smart bed, by the way: see the image down below), or they can write on the bathroom mirror which will send them what they wrote (or doodled) on their email later. Or just use the mirror as a touch screen. Such kind of (weird) qualities of a room might be a tad difficult to process at first, no doubt. 
 
 
What are the features of a Smart Hotel?
- No registration desk, you do everything via your smartphone.
- Face recognition everywhere - you pay and open your room with your face, so to speak.
- Guests at smart hotels use voice recognition to control the TV, lights, temperature in the smart room, blinds, even room service. 
- Room service brought to you by a robot. 
- Paying with your phone on vending machines. 
 
 
Smart amenities of a modern hotel room
Besides the traditional razor, toothbrush and some 3-in-1 washing gel, you will see other things that belong in a smart hotel room. The amenities of a smart hotel room include smart technologies like:  
- Smart mirror systems - mirrors with touch screens
- Voice-activated digital assistant - Amazon Echo or Tmall genie 
- Smart concierge services
- Large flat-screen smart TV, controlled by voice commands, connecting the customer’s devices
- Temperature and lights control
- Electric curtains
 
Smart Hotels & mobile devices
What can you do with your phone in a smart hotel (guests & staff)
- Use your smartphone to check in (a.k.a. express check in)
- Place orders via the mobile menu in the restaurant/bar (guests will also enjoy the updated menu every day and fewer mistakes with the orders will be made)
- Pay with your phone (using Ali-pay, WeChat, etc.)
- Scan QR codes (again, for payment)
- Use an e-housekeeping app - for hotel staff to know when a room is empty so it can be attended to.
- Use a mobile dashboard - so the kitchen staff know what inventory they can rely on at every moment.
- Staff may use a cloud-based food safety digital platform - so they track the expiration date of products.
- Use your smartphone as a key to your room.
- Use your smartphone to check out (a.k.a. express check out).
 
Smart Hotel Experience
A normal customer journey generally would be divided into 4 basic the following segments: Pre-stay, Hotel stay, Departure, and Post-stay.
 
Pre-stay
The Search
First off, customers would start out the Search phase. They are looking for accommodation for their planned destination based on various factors including but not limited to location, pricing, referrals, and their past experiences. Smart Hotels advertising or posts would have appeared once customers start their search for the hotel destination inspiration. There would be promotion packages and deals personalized to the customers’ criteria, assure to capture the lead once you detect it.
Customers can contact your hotel through the chat-bot available on your website, get instant assistance on questions and queries related to bookings or accommodation features. Any unanswered questions can be followed up through emails or direct phone calls, making sure customers do not need to go through multiple sites to get the answers they are looking for. In addition, your customers intentionally ask for your hotel room’s photos and details on the room’s layout. Nothing would explain better than a VR experience of the hotel tour from room to the common area, restaurant to fitness facilities, swimming pool to the spa and lounge. This would prompt your customers to quickly decide and close off on the best-suggested deal from your hotel offers.
 
The Purchase and before the arrival
Once the guests are ready to make their bookings/reservations, hotels can offer guests to choose the room’s attributes such as views, bed and pillow type, corner or connecting room, non-smoking/smoking room, etc. Guests can choose to log in by using their social accounts, which allows the system to load all their information and auto-fill as required without entering these fields by themselves. The smart hotel experience would enable guests to take their picture at the moment of booking and store this identification photo to use for check-in later on. Payment by cards is easily done by taking a snapshot of the credit/debit cards. The purchase stage is closed by your booking system automatically sending out a verification email once the payment is completed.
Before your guest arrives, a reminder email about the trip should be sent out a few days before the events. With the help of social media, hotels can customize personalized accommodation to fit guests’ stay and upsell packages as needed.
 
Hotel Stay
Smart Hotels enables customers to check-in via the mobile app. All the customers’ private information is processed on their mobile devices and highly secured. Guests can check in at the self-service kiosk station available at the hotel property. By scanning guests’ identification such as passport / national ID /driver licenses. Thanks to the OCR technology, the system will automatically check in the guests, and take their pictures at the kiosk station. Depending on the hotel’s, the physical room key card or the electronic key card would be sent to guests’ mobiles. Contactless check-in is possible! Your hotels might not need a physical front desk.
Some hotels have upgraded their game by letting the guests check-in using facial recognition via their hotel camera. Once the guests walk in, facial recognition features are built-in with hotel camera matches with the guests’ identification picture given during their booking process, check-in the guests immediately, and send the check-in completion confirmation to their email. The elevator would give direct access to guests’ designated floor and let them into their room with facial recognition devices or programmed e-cards. All room features such as curtains, lighting, TV, phone, AC temperature can be adjusted via mobile/tablet app or the voiced demand.
Hotels are trying to make their guests feel comfortable and truly relaxing like they are entering their own space. Access to hotel apps to request room services, laundry, and housekeeping, everything is within their fingertips. Robots are in use delivering/collecting foods and collecting/returning to the guests’ room. All appointments regarding restaurants (including buffet status, restaurant busy status), fitness center (full or empty), and spa would be available on the hotel apps at the guest’s convenience. Hotels’ partners such as tour companies, nearby attractions suggest guests with promotional packages through the hotel apps. Everything is taken care of for your guests to enjoy their stays even if it’s in-hotel or outside-of-the-hotel.
 
Departure
It’s finally time for your guests to leave. Queuing in line to check-out is no longer a thing. Everything is done through the hotel apps. Even minibar assumptions can be billed with IoT technology enabling electronic bills sending to guests once they pick up items from the bar. All other services would be billed and added to the check-out invoice. Cashless payment, which we mentioned in our previous blog, can be processed with guests’ mobile devices. The guests walk out with their luggage and the check-out is completed.
 
Post-stay
Upon their departure, emails should already be sent to customers’ inboxes to share their feedback regarding the stays and ask for their review on our hotel website in return for rewarding points for them to save up in exchange for added value services or room features upgrade for their next stage. Following up emails in a few months offer promotional and value packages for their upcoming stays.
 
 
Conclusion
Smart technology is increasingly improving guest experiences while making operations leaner in hotels around the world. Smart hotels are more sustainable with the environment, offer exclusive cost savings and enhance guest satisfaction