Is the future of mobile technology for hotels disappointing? Not quite...

It’s quite ironic that "innovation" is now synonymous with "mobile". Somehow everything new must be related to something that used to be new. When you think about it, it’s completely contradictory to innovation being disruptive. We prefer to see innovation in continuity with the recent past, maybe because it makes it easier to predict and plan. For instance, smart phones are far from recent. Blackberry and Apple have been in this business for quite a while now, but it is obvious that mobile devices are still evolving. In particular, in the hospitality industry, we are yet to experience the full potential of apps.

The first generation of apps was about directly generating revenue, in other words, booking. After all, a hotel operation’s first goal is to fill rooms; mobiles just offer an additional opportunity to fill more rooms. Very few have really given thought as to why individuals would perform bookings on a ridiculously small screen. Booking a hotel room is booking an experience. It has nothing to do with booking an airline seat or train ticket. And this applies both to leisure and business bookings. If I can choose between taking a cab from the airport plus a mediocre hotel room or take the subway and a significantly better room, there is no doubt that I’ll choose the latter. The experience matters and you need to have an idea in advance of what it will be like before making up your mind. You want to see the location, pictures of the hotel and its restaurant, and possibly virtually visit your future room. A mobile screen is rather impractical for that given its form factor. So, in a nutshell, I believe that booking capabilities on a mobile are needed, but we must not dream too much about the additional revenue it’ll generate.

If you tell me that slate computers have a larger screen, I’ll tell you they are not that different from laptops, and the difference will become smaller and smaller with time. The most recent tablet computers are equipped with solid state drives and are already booting in seconds (say, less than 10, like the Apple iPad), and their battery life is improving all the time. Slate computers are not mobile telephones. They give you a hint about what laptop computing will be very soon.

So is the future of mobiles disappointing? Not quite.

While there are only some scarce cases where you want to book a room from your mobile, there are a lot of cases where mobiles can be used to order services during the hotel stay. And you know what? It’s largely still a vacuum. In the following list we can see customer satisfaction enhancement services and also revenue generating ones:

- Updating the booking, adding a night or cancelling the last one. These cases are not uncommon and happen often after check-in, and possibly while guests are not at the property;

- Booking or updating amenities at the hotel. Guests have already had a glance at what the property proposes, and just want to place a reservation at the restaurant while at the pool, or playing a round of golf while they are still in a… business meeting (okay, I know that's not really professional, but it happens). When you think about it, this is massive and not anecdotal;

- Booking a cab;

- Room service;

- Checking in and out of course, and opening the room door with the phone, and everything around requiring localization of the guest. With a GPS equipped mobile, we can now locate guests down to a few meters, allowing delivery of items or food without asking convoluted explanations from the guest to be able to find him in the property, and allowing guests to ask for pickup wherever they are, even far from the property.

Even better, some devices now have a gyroscope and a compass. Combined with the camera, augmented reality can bring them to their room, they just need to follow the arrows on the screen.

I’m so convinced, I’m going to look for independent app makers to buy their stock!