The Newltimate Guest Experience – are your guests and buildings benefitting?

One year after lockdown and as we get closer to The Date of reopening fully on the 17th May, we see the hospitality industry making the last few touches to provide the safest and cleanest environments for their guests. As important as this is right now and as important as it always was, we should not forget that guests are looking for much more than just safety and cleanliness. We need to give guests an experience which entertains and delights, especially after what has been a very long and locked down winter. The overall experience, whilst it may be different, has to be on par with, if not better than that of 2 years ago if the sector aims to recover to 2019 levels and beyond. How can building controls and technology help enable this?

That’s exactly what all this digitalisation, automation and robotics being embraced by the industry is all about: creating a new level of guest experience, one that can be adapted to each individual’s need for personalisation whilst still providing a safer, cleaner and greener environment. And in a time when anyone can come up with a trendy word, I’ve decided to name this the Newltimate guest experience.
Technology provides the tools to actually enhance what sits at the core of every hospitality business: human interaction.

The Newltimate guest experience redefines the way guests interact with everything around them whilst in your hotel from the second that they start the booking process. Of course, technology plays a role here, but contrary to what was initially thought, technology provides the tools to actually enhance what sits at the core of every hospitality business: human interaction. Just think how labour intensive and time-consuming bookings were managed back in the early 2000’s in comparison to today! By releasing human resources within a business from having to perform a task, however essential it is for the business, those human resources can be dedicated entirely to performing the most important task: delighting and focusing on guests through personal and meaningful service. Whether it be looking after guests that are already in the hotel or focusing on those that are having problems or require something out of the standard, letting technology do the doing enables the human resource to do the serving.

The above is applicable to many other processes which include check-in/out, food ordering, guest services, cleaning, maintenance…but I have a bit of a fixation with building controls. This is just another link in the long chain of technology, covering how guests control their rooms but also how the building as an infrastructure is managed, how energy consumption can finally be addressed and policies to reduce its waste can be applied with just a few clicks. Guest experience, management, guest services and sustainability are all covered.

I thought a video would be a better way to transmit what building controls can achieve when done properly and, more importantly, when they are created with the guest in mind.

Javier Aguirre holds a Bachelor Degree in Industrial Technologies Engineering and a Master in Financial Management and has committed his entire professional career to the building automation industry. He joined Zennio in 2019 with the mission to support the UK market and is currently one of Zennio’s UK branch directors.