Having been around hotels and catering all my life it never ceases to amaze me how good they are at making delivery of massive functions in one room and dinner for hundreds of residents in another look so calm and collected. It’s what hotels are great at. Many have established suppliers who help with the details like laundry, additional staff who they trust to use their experience to bring a better customer experience. We are now reaching the point where a technology partner is just as important.

We asked for some research to be completed which helps highlight the challenge hotels are facing – over 81% of the hotels asked in the phone survey were unable to explain what kind of internet access they had for functions. Imagine that all-important agent exploring venues for their 3 year sales conference for whom high quality internet access for webcasting and the launch of the new cloud based platform are critically important, only to be frustrated at the first turn?

When asked further many of the venues which did know something about their connectivity listed it as ‘high speed’ or that ‘it’s been fast enough in the past’ both of which will cause any IT internal stakeholder to develop a look of panic when the production partner reports back.

Hotels dealing with technical enquiries need a partner they can rely on. Image courtesy of Google.

Demand for IT service has progressed from basic Wi-Fi in hotel rooms and conference facilities to specific needs which need to be addressed—if the customer is looking for their CEO to walk through the latest sales projections online with the board or video-conference with the MD of their European operations (who is reducing her carbon footprint by not flying as much and as a result also seeing her family more) the customer needs to be confident your systems can deliver.

None of these enquiries need be scary, but they do need to be engaged. The best way is to have a partner on hand who can educate the in house M&E team for the basics and then help when things get more complicated.

Our Preferred Partner Program is now starting to gain traction; forward thinking venues are looking at the best investment options to differentiate themselves from others and are prepared for the questions when they are asked from that prospective, tech dependent customer.