With hotels across the Gulf region turning to technology to deliver a terrific guest experience, expectations of the guests are at an all-time high as the hotels keep themselves busy reinventing their services.
Frederick Sabty, Global Vice President, Hospitality Solutions, Avaya, says positive guest experiences are the top criteria travellers use to select hotels, far outweighing price and location. “Improving the guest experience is profitable, too: customers who report having positive guest experiences spend 140 per cent more than those who had poor experiences,” he says.
However, the flipside of this focus on guest experience is that today’s hotel guests want more from their stay, and if they aren’t satisfied, they’ll share their disappointment with the world via social media – and they’ll choose one of your competitors for their next trip, Sabty points out.
Sabty works at Avaya, which provides solutions that enable customer and team engagement across multiple channels and devices for better customer experience, increased productivity and enhanced financial performance. Here, Sabty shares with Community three ways how technology is helping hoteliers in the region to improve the guest experience:

Communications-enabled
Nearly every hotel in the world today has a website. Most major hotel chains have either launched an official mobile app, or are actively developing one. These self-service websites and apps are designed to help guests book a room, and connect with the hotel before arriving. Forward-thinking hoteliers are building interactive tools to help enhance their guests’ experience during their stay: indoor maps, spa and restaurant reservations, room service and suggested day trips through partners.
The Avaya Engagement Development Platform is a software development kit that makes it easy to communication-enable websites and mobile apps. With just a few steps, developers can add “click to call” buttons inside any app, instantly connecting the guest with the front desk, concierge, onsite restaurant, and more. Hotel app developers are exploring time- and location-aware notifications to, for instance, encourage people to book restaurant reservations during slow times, or push relevant information about
the property as the guest walks past.

Customer Journey
Your customer experience is the sum of all interactions customers have with your brand, so it is essential to connect all customer engagements across their digital journey. For instance, the most commonly reported customer frustration is that they must repeat themselves. Performance management tools like advanced reporting, workforce optimisation, analytics, and survey capabilities help to contextualise interactions and derive value from them. Avaya offers integrated, Omni-channel solutions supporting both inbound and outbound customer interactions over media such as voice, IM, e-mail, social, Web chat, and more for both automated and agent-assisted interactions.

Flexible, Virtual Networking
A flexible, virtual network is critical to a successful hotel experience. Avaya SDN Fx is an open, software-defined networking architecture that delivers “connect anything, anywhere” simplicity, making it simpler for hotels to provision new services and reconfigure networks on the fly. Consider Sheraton Doha, the luxury convention centre in Doha, where almost all VIP events take place. The Sheraton was built in 1982 and a full renovation took place in 2014. The timeframes were very tight, and required nearly six months for a full renovation. As a part of its ground-up transformation, Sheraton Doha required a Next-Generation Networking and wireless infrastructure within the deadline of the project – capable of connecting a high number of users without failure or bottlenecks, across 370 guest rooms, large conference halls, resort and outdoor areas and health and recreation centre.
With Avaya SDN Fx, the end-result was a solution that more than meets current needs, and is scalable to future requirements, providing the technology element to keep the property’s reputation as the leading leisure and MICE destination in Doha, Qatar.

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