Communication is crucial for serving your guests well, and hotel compendiums provide an easy way to share important information about your property. Paper compendiums may be custom leather-bound affairs or simple notebook binders, but they all include key information like phone numbers, the location of essential services, parking directions, the WiFi password, restaurant menus, descriptions of on-site facilities, services, and local attractions, and more. Hotel compendiums have traditionally held lots of information on lots of pieces of paper.
Until now.
Introducing the Digital Compendium
Guests are increasingly using their own personal devices during their hotel stays, and eight out of 10 guests would download a hotel app in order to get information about a hotel. A digital hotel compendium takes your entire collection of paper collateral and centralizes it within a digital, interactive format that guests can access anywhere, at any time, from their own mobile devices. Replacing your paper compendium with a digital one provides hotels with a number of benefits.
Greater Convenience
There’s no denying that we now live in a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) culture. In North America, the average number of devices per person is expected to hit 13.4 by 2023. And you can bet that the overwhelming majority of your guests are bringing multiple devices to your property when they visit.
Paper compendiums are bulky, with typically only one copy per guest room – and that copy must stay in the room. With a digital compendium, there’s a copy for every guest at their fingertips on their preferred device. You can quickly and easily add recommendations about restaurants, attractions, transportation, kids’ activities, and more, along with a custom area map to ensure each guest has an authentic experience. Your guests will appreciate the convenience of instant access to hotel information whether they’re in their room, down by the pool, or even off-site.
Drives Revenue
The dynamic functionality of a digital compendium leads to longer interaction times, as guests explore your property and services through their devices. Longer interaction times mean that you have more opportunities to engage with guests and increase revenues by selling ancillary products. You can create instant offers and promotions targeted to specific guest segments – or advertise revenue-lifting partnerships with local businesses – without creating costly collateral or dealing with printing delays. Going digital also makes it easy for guests to directly book hotel services at any time, such as making dinner, golf, or spa reservations.
Reduces Costs
Each year, hotels spend thousands of dollars printing, updating, and eventually tossing out paper compendium pages. With a digital alternative, hoteliers can deliver compelling property information through videos, photos, digital documents, and live links. You can adjust content on the fly – such as updating the room service menu or directory listings – letting you significantly reduce collateral printing costs while still keeping guests informed with the latest information.
Optimizes Staff Efficiencies
Manually updating and replacing physical compendium paperwork room by room is an inefficient use of staff time. It can also lead to confusion and dissatisfied guests should a room be inadvertently missed. Also, because of the cost of making changes, physical compendium information tends to be more generic – and therefore less relevant or useful for guests – concerning current happenings in and around the hotel.
These issues are all eliminated with the flexibility of a digital compendium. Because changes can be made with the touch of a button, it reduces errors and the need for staff intervention. In addition, with a digital compendium, guests are assured that information is up-to-date, relevant, and when necessary, translated quickly into a variety of languages.
Sustainability
Hotels that still rely on physical compendiums are printing thousands of pages each year, leading to significant paper waste. Today’s travelers are looking for hotels that care about the environment. The 2021 Hospitality Technology Engagement Study showed that 58 percent of respondents consider it moderately or extremely important that a hotel is committed to environmental sustainability. And among the fastest-growing travel segment of Millennials and Gen Z-ers, it’s even more crucial, with 86 percent considering it important for a company to offer sustainable travel options when booking a trip. Being eco-friendly is no longer optional for hotels, and digital compendiums provide an ideal solution.
Would you like to create a digital compendium for your hotel?
Sources:
[1] “Study: 80% of Consumers Willing to Download Hotel App to Enable Contactless Experience.” Hospitality Technology, 17 Dec. 2021, https://hospitalitytech.com/study-80-consumers-willing-download-hotel-app-enable-contactless-experience.
[2] “Cisco Annual Internet Report - Cisco Annual Internet Report (2018–2023) White Paper.” Cisco, 9 Mar. 2020, https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/executive-perspectives/annual-internet-report/white-paper-c11-741490.html.
[3] “2021 Customer Engagement Study.” Hospitality Technology, 17 Dec. 2021, https://hospitalitytech.com/customer-engagement-study-2021?utm_source=omeda&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BONUS_HospitalityTechnology&utm_keyword=&oly_enc_id=8919F8521589B4S.
