SAN ANTONIO—That’s a sentiment that Jennifer Green, director guest services & in-room technology, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, stressed during a session entitled “You Do Not Have Enough Money for Good WiFi: So, What’s Good Enough?” at the recent HTNG 2015 North American Conference.
“Have you been to a session here that doesn’t talk about WiFi?” Green asked the crowd. “All of these sessions have been about how WiFi will eventually enable the progress of next-generation innovation in our hotels.” Green noted that, of course, WiFi is important to the guest, but hotels need to articulate the conversation differently. “You can choose to let it be a guest issue on your guest satisfaction scores or you can recognize that WiFi is fundamental not only to the guest experience, but back-of-house applications,” she said.
Green also discussed the role between brands and hotel owners when it comes to technology requirements like WiFi. “There’s a minimum experience that guests should have,” she said, noting that hotels have to meet at least those standards. “But… we don’t want to be so precise that we create more challenges for hotels. From a process standpoint, we want to be clear about our expectations and help our hotels by providing oversight with our vendor partners, but from a corporate standpoint, the worst thing that you can do is put standards in place and say jump tomorrow.”
The Hyatt executive also had some advice for vendor partners. “From a practical standpoint, we all have constraints,” she said, noting that no hotel has unlimited amounts of money. “If you go to a hotel and say here’s the upgrade that you need, you can give them the whole number,” she explained, adding that vendors should also tell a hotel what its biggest problems are and if it just fixed the first, which costs X amount of money, what it would see in terms of alleviation. “You should be able to give some level of perspective to the hotel. We understand we won’t get everything we want. But, don’t give me a number and not help me understand what that number gets me,” she said.
Collaboration was a key component to Green’s points. “Hotels make a lot of decisions based on their personal needs or the way they see their business developing, which is absolutely the right thing. But not enough time is spent or focused on asking our vendor partners what their capabilities are,” she said, adding that hotels should be exploring those options and taking responsibility for asking for dashboards that could help them better. Likewise, she said, vendors should include the input of hotels when it comes to designing new products. “We pick you because we look at you as trusted advisors. So if you’re going to work on a new system, I would make sure you’re collaborating with your hotel partners and delivering what they need… If you’re going to be delivering services to us, we want to be part of the conversation. Give me the opportunity to have that conversation and help you,” she said.