The Tech Features That Hotels Are Racing to Install
If you’ve stayed in a big city hotel recently, you’ll probably have noticed that the room came with an array of technological gizmos and gadgets. This is hardly surprising since hotel guests, particularly younger visitors, are getting more and more demanding when it comes to the technology that comes with their room. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the latest in-room tech trends and predict what might be in store the next time that you open a hotel room door.
Fast Internet Connections
The days of hotels offering one Ethernet cable in a room or a slow internet connection that can only be accessed through the television are long gone. Guests now expect fast and reliable internet, just like they would have at home or in the office and they expect it to be included in the room rate. This isn’t surprising when an increasing number of travellers are making video calls and using services like livi medical from the comfort of their hotel room. Despite this, it’s taken some hotels a long time to act on this, and there are still some luxurious properties that are charging for anything beyond the most basic form of internet connection. This is likely to change considerably over the next few years.
Computer Controlled Rooms
Increasing numbers of hotels are doing away with light switches, traditional card entry systems and even manual curtains, in favour of a tablet, or even a mobile phone app that can control the whole room. This means that a guest is able to control everything in the room, regardless of where they are (usually the bath or the comfort of their bed if our experience is anything to go by). The apps also make it possible to do things like play content from your mobile phone to the TV. This is an increasingly demanded feature since more and more guests are eschewing traditional broadcast television in favour of services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
Finally, many hotels are doing away with the need to visit a reception desk at any point during the stay. Instead, keys are sent straight to a guest via their mobile phone before they even arrive at the hotel and simply deactivated when the time for check-out arrives. This has advantages for the hotel and the guest. The hotel saves on the cost of staff to run a reception desk, and the guest is able to go straight to their room without delay, which can be a godsend after a long flight.
The pace of hotel room evolution is only likely to increase in the next few years with tech we haven’t even thought of yet likely to be standard within the decade.