Tag: hospitality industry

These travel accommodations have also been using augmented reality to an increasing degree.

The hospitality industry has been among those that have been the most willing to embrace the use of smartphones by consumers and have been implementing geolocation technology through beacons, as well as augmented reality features, more than many other consumer facing industries.

In fact, hotels that haven’t implemented a mobile friendly strategy are already starting to fall behind.

While making it possible to book online over mobile devices has nearly become an industry standard, there are two other forms of mobile tech that are being adopted by hotels even before they are being seen in the majority of other places: geolocation technology and augmented reality. These are both emerging forms of tech that are barely seen in most other industries but hoteliers are starting to use them to help them to keep ahead of the competition – or at least stop them from falling behind.

Geolocation technology through beacons are becoming especially popular with some hotel brands.

These use low energy Bluetooth connections to provide added hyper local, relevant services to guests with smartphones and tablets. The beacons can be placed on physical objects or they can be fenced into entire physical locations in order to push the right information to mobile devices at the most appropriate times.

On the other hand, augmented reality can help to enhance services and features for hotel guests, making certain processes more appealing. The use of this type of tech is becoming increasingly important as Millennials become the largest consumer segment with disposable income. It is estimated that by the year 2020, they will be spending an annual $4.1 trillion.

Furthermore, among Millennials, about 52 percent are well above average when it comes to technology adoption. This means that when appealing to that particular demographic, it can be invaluable to reach them through the mobile devices that they use for many of their everyday tasks. This is the adult demographic most likely to look to smartphones and tablets in order to complete a broad spectrum of tasks, meaning that hotels can add draw by interacting with those consumers over channels such as those that are geolocation technology based.

SMS has now become a form of advertising and promoting upon which this industry is highly dependent.

According to a recent report that was made by mGamingWatch with regards to a data analysis that they conducted on the latest mobile marketing trends from Promotion World, hotels are now depending quite heavily on SMS for their promotions.

The report showed that marketing over text messages is only getting more important with time.

The report indicated that when it comes to mobile marketing from hotels, SMS is a super-hot category that is only getting hotter. Hotels are using texts for a broad spectrum of different types of advertising and promoting in order to communicate with customers throughout their stay or even to attract them in the first place. According to the author of the report, Adam Groff, “Whether it’s spreading the word about last-minute deals or discounts on rooms, hotels of all kinds are going mobile.”

Groff also pointed out that Las Vegas was the ideal environment for studying mobile marketing from hotels.

He explained that “there’s no better place to look at hotel test message marketing than in the hospitality capital of the world: Las Vegas!” Throughout the report on the subject of SMS marketing and other types of mobile advertising, Groff pointed out a number of different examples of the way in which texts were used in order to communicate with hotel guests.

For instance, he showed that the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino used text as a way to promote its loyalty program. SMS was used to send information to guests about discounts at the hotel, merchandise deals, and other types of loyalty offers.

Equally, the MGM Mirage has implemented a tracking system to be able to better understand their guests through the history of their interactions with the hotel and its services. That way, they can ensure that the texts that they send to their guests will be as relevant as possible.

The Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino uses mobile marketing texts to provide rewards to its online subscribers, offering them various types of deals such as casino game play money, or even free stays that they will be able to use.