How tech is changing the guest experience—and hotel networks

Without a reliable network, a hotel's best applications will look lousy. And when apps look lousy, the hotel looks lousy. See app trends and the network needed to support them: http://bit.ly/HospBlog TRANSCRIPT So the new consumer experience that we're seeing is a consumer who is completely self-sufficient, in control, has complete transparency into everything they're asking for. The first thing is that a smart hotel has to acknowledge that the guests are coming that much more intelligent. They also have to understand what the guests do outside of the hotel in order to better provide those same types of services inside of the hotel. When you first enter a room, having the TV turn on, welcoming you there, music start playing, the lights turn on. All sorts of these features really make a guest feel amazing while substantially increasing operational efficiency by saving energy and saving resources from having to do a lot of extra work to maintain these systems. So, from a hotel industry point of view, robotics brings a level of innovation and on-time delivery that you don't see typically. We look at it as a technology that allows you to improve the guest experience. And so, whether that means being able to provide room service at three in the morning, when you wouldn't normally have staff available to do that. Whether you can simply delight guests by giving them an experience at the guest room door where there's not somebody asking for a tip. When the robot comes to your door, it's not gonna judge what you're wearing. The network is everything. If I don't have a reliable network, then my best applications look lousy. And when my applications look lousy, the hotel looks lousy. When the hotel looks lousy, the guest says, "I'm not coming back here again." So the guest experience, the follow-up surveys that the chains do to assure the proper guest experience is ever so important. So the network I see as the glue that makes all that work.all us today.