ACTIVATE CONVERSATIONS
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system , but many such service providers now offer the Chinese mobile payment methods as a turnkey solution . The next level would be using WeChat ’ s Official Account and Mini Program , or to integrate into Alipay ’ s unified shopper journey .
Major chains like Hilton
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and Marriott International have invested heavily on the Internet of Things to transform the hotel room experience . However , hotels should really think beyond just the in-room experience , but more broadly about the whole end-to-end in-hotel experience . For example , |
many hotels now offer mobile check-in services to allow customers to pick a favorite room before getting to the hotel , but it still requires a physical checkin at the hotel counter . In China , hotels have started to use artificial intelligence , including facial recognition |
and motion tracking , to offer an “ unattended ” experience for check-in and check-out . Frankly , the e-commerce world has already embraced this trend for some time , such as Amazon Go and the un-manned convenient stores that have ballooned across China .— C . R . |
LINKING
LOYALTY with social
The concept isn ’ t a new one : Choice Hotels International allows loyalty members to sync up their social media accounts to Choice ’ s system to earn up to 30 points ( 10 points per each account linked ). Marriott International took it a step further this year when it launched its “ Extra Points Sunday ” Twitter campaign , which allowed loyalty members to weigh in on NFL trivia in exchange for points ( up to 14,500 through the course of the regular season , using the # rewardspoints hashtag ). In theory , over the course of the campaign , a guest could have earned enough points for two free night stays .
“ Once a member connects their account , we can then actually measure ROI based on their lifetime value with us ,” says Amanda Moore , Marriott ’ s senior director of digital and social , loyalty .
If members do engage more on Twitter , are they also higher up on the loyalty bar ? Moore says some 68 % of all participants in the campaign were indeed elite members .
Benji Greenberg , founder of social media management company BCV , says Marriott ’ s campaign was well planned on multiple fronts .
“ They know there ’ s a lot of downtime in a football game , so people are on their other screen during this time and they ’ re usually in a community environment . It ’ s also really
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... There ' s a renaissance of using Twitter to
ACTIVATE CONVERSATIONS
between membership bases and , of course , the hotels and the brands themselves .
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— BCV ' S BENJI GREENBERG well done from a scalability standpoint ,” Greenberg says . “ By forcing users to connect their Twitter account to essentially their rewards account , ( Marriott ) made themselves a lot of long-term value in terms of qualifying the results .”
Greenberg sees the move as evidence that , when it comes to engaging guests , Twitter ’ s still in the game .
“ Because Twitter ’ s such a friendly platform to third parties and developers these days , I do feel almost like there ’ s a renaissance of using Twitter to activate conversations between membership bases and , of course , the hotels and the brands themselves ,” he says .— C . R .
20 hotelsmag . com June 2018