hospitality kiosks
A perfect fit
High-end kiosks designed
for specific locations
By Lorenzo Gabellini, CEO & Founder, Totem of Design –
www.totemofdesign.it
Whenever we think of the best-known user-friendly operating
system, what comes to our mind is Windows which was
launched in the 1980s and soon became a household name.
However, what most people are possibly unaware of is that the
first kiosk came into being almost eight years before Windows.
A medical undergraduate at the University of Illinois designed
the first kiosk in 1977 called Plato Hotline. It used a plasma
touchscreen and helped users to see bus schedules, directories
and maps of campuses. After Plato, the first retail kiosk arrived
on the scene in the mid-1980s, which was called the Florsheim
Express Shop. Since then, kiosks have had a long and interesting
history, and the future looks equally promising.
Kiosks in hospitality
Kiosks have been used in the hospitality sector for a while, but
their role has evolved over time. The good old motivation of
enhanced customer satisfaction for better profits still works
wonders in the hospitality sector; kiosks can drive sales for
quick-service restaurants by handling a greater number of
orders in a shorter period, and they can improve the overall
experience of customers by not only reducing their waiting
times but also providing them with the option to customise.
The increased competition and the ever-changing consumer
demands have resulted in quick-service brands clambering for
better products and faster and fresher deliveries.
In the early 1990s, many government agencies used
kiosks as an effective way of circulating critical information
and promoting government services to the people. However,
deployment proved much more complex and challenging than
originally anticipated. Not only were the kiosk programmes
grappling with shrinking public-sector budgets, but they
12 KIOSK solutions