Hospitality has become much more than Hoteliers welcoming their guests for their temporary stay. The hospitality industry needs to stay on top of the latest technologies to accommodate consumers across the globe in the most pleasant way while generating significant revenue growth out of it. NFC is such a technology that can be implemented into many hospitality industry operations and has vast untapped market potential. Many hotels have accepted NFC, and many are in the transition to upgrade their processes.
How Can NFC Help The Hotels?
NFC is proving itself to be a reliable and consistent technology that has ease of implementation and many abilities to change the ways for consumers. NFC can contribute to various areas for the hospitality industry, starting from making transactions, exchanging information, access control, user engagement tactics to the best customer experience. Some of these ideas would just require the user to have a smartphone, and the rest might need a simple NFC tag for the hotel. NFC brings smooth operation, customer engagement, and higher revenue for the hotels.
NFC Use Cases And Applications
NFC has a plethora of ways for implementation already, and there are many more ideas that hotels can come up with and implement. Some of those ideas are:
- Quick check-in & check-out.
- NFC tag to make purchases easily at a food court, gym, spa, room service, etc.
- NFC based keys to unlock the rooms.
- Wi-Fi access information exchange
- Customer engagement sales tactics by rewarding customers on purchases.
- Mobile application communication after the stay to share the updates.
- Staff management registry
These are just a few of the ideas popularly implemented at best hotels. There are many innovative and surprising manners through which NFC can help both hotels and consumers.
One Of The Firsts To Tap Into NFC: The Clarion Hotel From Sweden
The Clarion Hotel, located in Stockholm, Sweden, was one of the first hotels that invested in NFC for its hotel operations. They initiated a pilot project where 28 frequent customers were the consumers who could use NFC-enabled mobile phones to use the hotel’s most of the features without any staff intervention. The guests’ feedback was astonishing as they were able to save time on check-in, room service, access control, in house purchases, and complete track of all the billing. Upon the survey, all the users preferred to lean on the idea of utilizing NFC-enabled applications.
While the pleasant experience is one of the essential things that help the hotels retain customers, there is another one, which is customer engagement. NFC based reward systems can create a customer experience where users are rewarded for using more services at the hotels. It makes perfect sense for hotels to reward the customers that are paying the most for offered services. Mobile phone applications can provide a great way of connecting with consumers even after the stay. Hotels can share exciting updates to the customers and remind them of a great time during their stay. It creates a win-win situation for the industry as well as the consumers.
