Printed room directories are a thing of the past. With the arrival of smartphones and changes in guest behavior, these directories have become obsolete. We can show you why and present you with a more sustainable alternative.
1. Is continuing with print directories a good decision?
A hotel directory was born with a very practical objective – to provide guests with information about the hotel, its services, menus and information about the environment.
But in reality, are they that useful?
High printing costs
Printing room directories turns out to be a considerable expense. As the hotel is "alive" and updates its services and schedules, the directories quickly become outdated. Not only this, but, as it passes through many hands, the directory often has wrinkled, wet or dirty pages, and gives a bad image and welcome to our guests.
If we calculate that the average cost of a printed directory is €30, a 100-room hotel spends €3,000 per year on replacements.
Outdated Information
If the menu changes, or there is a change in the opening hours of the services, the hotel staff must reprint the additional material, and then go from one room to another replacing the previous information in the guest directory. This leads to outdated information in hotel rooms and dissatisfied guests.
Let's do a test. Go to a room in your hotel and check the directory. How many errors have you found?
Inappropriate Format
“It's put in the directory, but no one reads it”, say many hoteliers.
And our question is – who wants to read a 30 page book on the first day of their vacation? Guests today need information that is organized, at their fingertips, and that doesn't mean spending valuable vacation time finding it. Not only that, but guests are increasingly susceptible to sustainability policies, and seeing hotels spend paper, ink, and plastic on something that doesn't generate value for them seems like unnecessary waste.
2. What are the benefits of using a digital hotel directory?
Why is it important for hotels to have a digital directory? To avoid all the problems mentioned above.
Costs
The investment in a digital tool, apart from other benefits it provides, is much cheaper than a printed directory.
Update
We assure you that in case of changes, it will take 2 minutes to update them and have them public.
Format
It is not the same to give the guest a book where they have to be looking for how to access the Spa, than an App with an integrated search engine, where just typing the word "spa" will have complete information, schedules, treatment menu, and even the option to book.
3. How can hotels make the most of a digital hotel directory?
We leave you three ideas to make the most of a digital directory and offer guests information in a fast, specific and updated way.
1. Create a welcome letter
What if instead of giving the guest a bunch of papers when checking in, we simply invite them to enter the App? In this way, we increase the "engagment" with the App and make sure that customers know that it exists and that they can find all the information on there. Once the client identifies themselves within the App, we can provide them with a welcome letter, with the most important information they need to know.
2. Generate QR codes
One of the most sustainable options, we have found, is to remove all the prints and replace them with a QR code, which turned out to be a simple and fast way to access the necessary information. We have the possibility of generating a QR code of the pool parameters, for example, and posting this same QR in the pool area, where the guest can comfortably consult the parameters. At the same time, we save time for the Technical Service personnel in filling out the posted sheets on a daily basis.
3. Customize the content that the guest sees in the App
Thanks to Hoteligy 's digital directory, it is possible to personalize the content that the guest sees, therefore, we can provide only the information that interest them.
There are several customization options – we can select that the page is seen only by certain customers, we can segment the pages by type of accommodation or by board type. How does it benefit us? Well, only the clients staying in the rooms with jacuzzis can see the jacuzzi instructions. Or that events for children are only seen by those who are staying in the family rooms. Or we can launch some Upgrade offers that we don't want customers who are not hosted with that regime to see.
Right information to the right people.
4. Does the digital directory help to save costs?
Here we will provide you with statistical data. During 2022, in a 485-room hotel in Tenerife, a total of 920,375 queries were made within the App.
If only 10% of these queries had been made by phone or at reception, and if each query would consume only 1 minute (which we know is the minimum) of your employees time, we are talking about a saving of 1,534 hours per year . If we multiply it by the gross cost of a worker per hour, we would arrive at an amount of €16,873 per year.
Maybe you don't have a 500-room hotel, but you can understand the impact of digitization.
Let us remember, a digital directory will not replace a receptionist, but it will reduce your workload.
Conclusion
If you think that your type of client is not ready for this digitization step, analyze how many people in your environment learned to use QR's in record time, during the pandemic. Even the senior client got used to scanning the code to see a restaurant menu or to travel by train.
According to the results of the survey launched to the users of the App, they confirm that thanks to the fact of being able to search for information autonomously, they save time on their vacations, since they avoid queues and long waits at reception.
WebApp Standard Remember that with our Standard App, you will have at your disposal the digital directory, interactive maps, digital menus of the points of sale and entertainment schedule. It is a good base to start with the digitization of communication with guests, to which, additionally, we can gradually add many operational modules. If you wish to receive more information, fill out the form and we will contact you shortly.
