Hotel Technology Roundtable

What are the key factors a hotel must consider when purchasing software and technology products?

AMIT SHARDA: I believe technology products should optimise hotel sales and revenues. This can be achieved by increasing operational efficiency, resulting directly from the use of better software. Hoteliers should ask how well the software will aid management, and hence improve revenue contribution from repeat guests while enabling the hotelier to better manage the business.

MANIT NARANG: Technology should be modular and upgradeable so they don’t have to reinvest the full amount again when technology develops. Purchasing from a reliable and trusted provider with a reputation in the market and good local support is absolutely key.

SANJIT BARDHAN: With technology advancing rapidly, one of the major factors that hotel owners and operators should consider is ‘future-proofing’ themselves. Having been involved in various hotel projects in the Middle East, the biggest pain-point that hotel owners have today is reinvesting in technology much earlier than previously anticipated or budgeted for.

MORGANE RAMI: The key factors a hotel must consider when purchasing software and technology products are all based upon efficient solutions for hotel operating. This will include room management, staff activity, building monitoring, energy efficiency, comfort and simplicity for end user and aesthetics of in room equipment.

What are the biggest needs of your customers that your products address?

AMIT: We have found that our customers want to deal with just one information technology vendor. Our application is tightly integrated and therefore reduces lots of manual intervention, providing better controls and reducing the total cost of ownership. Our applications are also functionality rich, easy to use and require minimal training.

MANIT: The biggest needs of customers consistently relate back to the latest technology and the desire for reliability, aesthetically pleasing design and highly responsive customer support. Our solutions are also designed to specifically address the need of offering a safe and user-friendly environment.

SANJIT: The biggest need today is safety. With internal and external threats becoming very common, hotel operators must ensure that safety of their guests and employees is top priority. Our products are world renowned and are used by some of the leading hotel chains. Arecont Vision’s surveillance cameras provide users with high definition video that security operators can use to address their security needs.

MORGANE: Our guest room management system provides design, ease of use and customisation, while controlling the maintenance and operational costs. The biggest needs of our customers require obtaining a complete solution, flexible, simple to install and studied for hospitality verticals.

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How do you maintain a balance between price and quality?

AMIT: Our operating costs are rising and competitive pressures are driving revenues down. Our corporate philosophy does not allow us to compromise on services, regardless of price. We are glad that our philosophy has paid off. After years of following this method, we now have a positive brand image and customer loyalty that helps us grow, in spite of pricing pressures.

MANIT: While competitively priced, our solutions are known for their high quality and offer increased value over the years thanks to their unmatched durability and upgradability. Customers can therefore gain long-term financial benefits as a result of the decreased need for maintenance or costly door lock upgrades.

SANJIT: There is no doubt that better quality products are higher priced. However, we understand this theory very well, and take it into consideration on a daily basis. The four steps that allow us to maintain the balance between price and quality are education, product selection, smart designs and support.

Morgane: Maintaining a balance between price and quality requires simple products that guarantee competitive pricing, but also comfort for guests and efficient usage by hotel staff. Quality is guaranteed also by our experience in building systems.

What aftersales services do you offer?

AMIT: Our value proposition is that we will provide our customers benefits and return on investment. Therefore we provide 24x7 support to our customers for mission critical applications like property management systems and interfaces. We provide free upgrades to customers who have signed our service level agreement. We also visit our customers and conduct site audits too.

MANIT: As part of our service level agreement, we provide all customers with 24x7x365 support. We also offer on-site support in the vast majority of markets that we operate in globally. SANJIT: We have a large pre-sales, post-sales and field-applications team that are available to our customer base 24x7. We follow the principle of ‘Follow the Sun’. Due to this, a customer will always be attended to at any given point of time in the day, wherever they are based. For Middle Eastern, African and Indian customers, we have technical and after-sales support staff based in UAE, India, Lebanon, South Africa.

Morgane: We offer support locally and remotely to guarantee reactive intervention, this includes local technical assistance to ensure the best aftersales services are provided to clients.

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Do you have any products that are new to the market?

AMIT: Our electronic distribution enables hotels to distribute room’s inventory and rates to the plethora of online reservation web portals and to receive bookings from them. To make mobile POS more affordable and usable by all seated dining outlets, we have also launched software for use on Android-based mobile devices.

MANIT: Our latest contribution to hospitality security is Assa Abloy Hospitality Mobile Access; a multi-platform ecosystem for issuing, delivering and revoking digital keys across a broad range of smart devices, Mobile Access allows guests to skip the front desk entirely when checking into a hotel. Instead, guests can simply go directly to their room and use their own personal device as an access key.

SANJIT: We have recently introduced our SurroundVideo Stellar, MicroDome G2 and MegaVideo G5 series products. We are in the fifth generation of our MegaVideo series product line, which is endorsement about our focus and commitment to the industry.

Morgane: Our new guest room management system is programmed with entry and exit scenarios. The room settings can be altered to suit the guest’s requirements when they make their reservation, when they check in, or when they arrive at their room. Guests can select from a number of pre-set scenarios to suit their requirements, including comfort (do not disturb, temperature set, dimmer), sleeping (do not disturb, make up room, lights off) and eco scenarios (open window, eco temperature).

To what extent can your products increase efficiency?

AMIT: With the market pressure and competition increasing, it has become of the utmost importance to provide tools to our customers enabling them to achieve efficiency and accuracy. Our suite of applications are integrated and have in-built tools like user defined alerts, dashboards, access to important information over smart phones, escalation processes and electronic approvals etc.

MANIT: Online access management technology has largely eliminated many physical aspects of door lock maintenance and service. With remote access to the status of each individual lock, employees can effortlessly monitor battery status, check whether a door has been left ajar or be alerted to any unauthorised access at any time during the guests stay.

SANJIT: Our solution has the ability to dramatically reduce the number of cameras that are required in a property. With reduced cameras, there is a massive reduction on other elements in the surveillance system. This then has a knock-on effect in reducing costs on infrastructure, civil works, maintenance and operational costs. This increases overall IT/security system efficiency. The same applies to manpower. For example, a fewer number of security operators are then required to monitor the security system, as there are far fewer devices to track. The productivity of these operators increases, and thus the overall efficiency of the system increases.

Morgane: Efficiency for hotel operating, thanks to simplicity of our supervision system. Energy efficiency guaranteed by the global system (automatic actions when guest is out). Installation efficiency thanks to a simple solution characterised by easy commissioning.