Technology in food and beverage is jumping ahead in leaps and bounds, and yet we are missing a basic fundamental in guest’s satisfaction… can you guess what it is?

I have recently returned from a mix business/holiday trip to Ubud in Bali. A truly amazing place where it feels, certainly to me, like you are stepping back into another world, and yet modern day conveniences are there, all at the same time.

I bring this to your attention because I was completely set back by the level of technology available to guests in restaurants and hotels alike.

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I want, specifically, to focus on the technology available to guests in a rural, local restaurant whose speciality are the finest in Indonesian cuisine and yet, although the food was amazing, the one thing that has stayed in my mind was the fact that with no air-conditioning and minimal lighting, I had access to wi-fi… and it was free! And it was not password protected!

A few simple clicks and my emails downloaded like the naturally running waterfalls throughout the monkey forest just a few doors down. Impressed was I.

Back in the land of the Middle East it occurred to me that most recently, across several projects we have been working on, the discussion around provision of wi-fi has focused on how best do we use this tool to gather data about our guests?

I grant you, data collection is important. But the number of steps, levels and hoops people are asking our consumers to jump through in order just to log into their computer or tablet to check email seems, to me, a bit ridiculous.

Technology has its place in our world, that is for sure. But when we are constantly trying to make the experience for guests to ‘log-in’ the equivalent of undertaking one’s SATs then I think the feeling left, and impression given, might be one that fails rather than regales us. Here is the kicker… wi-fi is now a service that we all must provide, similar to the provision of toilets and music in our operations, wi-fi is here to stay.

It has now become part of the expenses column on our P&L and should be treated as such. Not as a means of revenue recovery but as a daily tool our guests use to check-in on social media and hopefully report on how absolutely brilliant our operations are.

There are some ‘service providers’ for wi-fi who ask the guests to like the outlets page in order to have the facility made available to them. To those I say, be confident in your operations. People should not be forced to like something; they should choose to do it for various reasons, one of which is not to access your wi-fi facilities.

I, of all people, understand the importance of data collection… ABCD ‘Always Be Collecting Data’, but this is absolutely not the tool to do it.

Hospitality, as I have stated previously, is a dialogue, and I was more than willing to enter one with our lovely waitress in Ubud, share my details freely and like their Facebook page, all without one single prompt.

Duncan Fraser-Smith is the founder of The Cutting Edge Agency, which specialises in developing and creation of benchmark F&B concepts through conceptualisation and training, as well as sourcing and partnering with international brands and high profile chefs to successfully establish their presence in the Middle East. Visit: www.thecuttingedgeagency.com for more information.