The Future of Visitor Experiences

In episode 9 of our "Driving Place-Based Innovation" podcast series, in partnership with the?NewcastleGateshead Initiative, we learn about how technology helps shape the future of visitor experiences. Maldron Hotel Newcastle and SPARK EPoS share insights about how their partnership to introduce butler bots has increased productivity, revenues and guest satisfaction. Calvium highlights the importance of human-centred design processes in digital placemaking.

Maldron Hotel Newcastle and SPARK Epos

Maldron Hotel Newcastle?- part of the?Dalata Hotel Group?- is a 4-star hotel located in the heart of Newcastle City Centre, within a minute’s walk of many shops, restaurants, bars and popular tourist attractions. The hotel general manager is also the co-chair of the?North East Hotels Association; representing approximately 50 hotels in the region from the Scottish border through Cumbria to North Yorkshire.

SPARK EPoS?is a cloud-based smart hospitality platform that offers operators simple, cost-effective and efficient solutions for managing their sales and operations. SPARK EPoS creates average sales order size, maximises operational efficiency and reduces label costs. The platform consists of smart Point of Sales and payment solutions, a modern Kitchen Display System, staff scheduling, algorithm-based reservations, real-time inventory management, a dynamic loyalty programme, marketing automation, self-ordering web app kiosk tablets and customer relationship management as well as an integrated robotic hospitality solution to provide a complete end-to-end solution for the sector.

Partnering for Innovation

The Dalata Hotel Group puts innovation at the forefront of development to keep following trends and market shifts and review the different types of technology available to take hospitality to the next level. At a conference, images of butler bots were shown, which piqued the interest of the company having seen how that type of technology was being used in Asia and America. Shortly afterwards, SPARK EPoS asked Maldron Hotel Newcastle if they were interested in trialling their butler bots.

In February, the UK's first trial of a butler bot?was launched and has been extremely well-received in the hotel. People don't expect to see this technological tool in a Newcastle City Centre hotel, but the robot delivers guest amenities to bedrooms and takes up room service to supplement staffing levels. Over the last couple of years, hospitality teams have been depleted due to a range of factors, such as COVID and Brexit, resulting in challenges due to labour shortages across the hospitality industry. The butler bots act as extra staff members and are very reliable and user-friendly.

As an innovative and quirky piece of technology, the butler bots help to set the hotel apart from its competitors. People come to see the robots, helping improve the visibility and perception of the hotel. The butler bots are also really useful for supporting the hotel's teams during service pinch points, while simultaneously giving guests a wow factor.

As new technology is introduced to the market, there will always be a degree of resistance. Therefore, identifying the right partners and the key decision-makers within those organisations to champion and showcase new innovative tools and platforms is key.

Demand for innovation in hospitality is growing rapidly. However, adopting technology comes at a cost, especially in terms of learning and changing operational flows. Nevertheless, with a strong partnership, high-quality performance in innovation projects can be achieved, such as launching the first butler bot that can control lifts, adding fun to the customer experience, while also respecting customer privacy.

Implementing Butler Bots

The future trend of hospitality technology is driven towards increased automation, personalisation and data-driven insights. Hospitality companies are investing in technology and streamlining their operations to enhance the customer experience. The data generated can also be used to make informed decisions and for forward-thinking management.

COVID forced a lot of hospitality businesses to increase their usage of technology, including online ordering systems and installing QR codes. It helped to provide an incentive to innovate in the UK hospitality sector, with the move towards robotics seen as the next phase of hospitality technology development.

Robotic solutions are already widely introduced in other parts of the world, providing opportunities to observe their usefulness for other organisations. In fact, the founder of SPARK EPoS identified the potential benefits of robots for the hospitality sector 5 years ago in a Chinese hotel when room service was delivered by a robot and realised that the infrastructure was already available. The opportunity was identified to progress robot manufacturing to adapt to user preferences in the UK. Robots have enormous potential to streamline operations, without worrying about scheduling, holidays or people's emotions.

There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work required to enable the butler bots to operate the lifts. These robots are not humanoid robots and don't have arms. This means that there was a need to work with lift manufacturers to implement a control box in the lifts and programme the telecommunications box to connect to the phone system so that customers are alerted when the robots arrive outside the room. Both the technology provider and the hotel teams need to support the project because there is a lot of interaction with other suppliers to adapt current systems and ensure new technologies are interoperable with them.

Maldron Hotel found the process of implementing the butler bots to be fairly seamless. It required learning about buildings and new systems and integrating the robots with the WiFi, lift and phone systems. The staff have also adapted to the new technology well as the Millennial and Generation Z team members are very adept at using technology.

When introducing new robotics technology, businesses don't say that their aim is to replace people. Instead, the ambition is to support their employees during busy operational periods and reduce staff stress levels. On the other hand, consumers see robotic interactive experiences as providing additional client privacy and helps to boost customer satisfaction by giving a wow factor. Room service involves a limited degree of customer interaction as customers don't expect to have a conversation when hotel staff knock on their door. Robots help to transform this mundane job into something that can excite customers and improve the efficiency of hotel operations.

The data that can be obtained from the butler bot includes the number of deliveries and the time of day orders were made, which can be matched to till systems and enable managers to have more information to make smarter business decisions about hotel catering. The robots don't only provide a friendly and unique environment, but also drive business and helped to boost room service revenue by 250% in its first month of implementation.

Typically, people stay in hotels to experience Newcastle and will explore the different food and beverage options in the city. Some people want food service, but don't want somebody standing at the door with a tray, resulting in them using Deliveroo, Just Eat or other food delivery platforms. The butler bots act as the Maldron Hotel's own delivery platform, with non-personal interaction that lets people relax after a busy day. Instead of taking a waiter out of the restaurant to deliver room service, this can be done by the butler bot. By using the technology smartly it enables people to decide whether they want to do down to the hotel bar or restaurant to have drinks or a meal. The waiters can then spend time with guests that want personal interaction which can lead to enhanced experiences.

Technology can help businesses to work smarter, not harder and enable the best use of the resources at their disposal. Continuing with the status quo stops businesses from making progress and they end up going backwards against their competitors. Businesses need to keep moving forward and look at the different options available.

An enlightening part of the process of implementing butler bots was seeing the lack of guest awareness about this type of technology as some visitors hadn't travelled to Asia or the US and therefore not seen them in operation before. In particular, older demographics didn't fully understand the benefits of the service robots and were cautious about using them. Guest education is fundamental when implementing a new platform that changes the interaction with service personnel. However, the hotel staff were supportive of the idea from the beginning.

In terms of implementation, the key contacts from partners should be involved at the appropriate time to set up the required integrations. Bringing the different stakeholders together quickly can help to successfully achieve the end goal.

Optimising Technology

There are some small challenges with implementing new types of technology. For example, across the world, older generations prefer not to use QR code mobile ordering systems. While they support contactless interactions and will interact with a physical screen, they are more reluctant to use their personal phones and get the QR code to work. It takes a bit of learning for people to change their thought processes and be willing to use technologies that they are less familiar with.

As a hospitality technology company, SPARK EPoS is at the forefront of innovation in the sector and is well-positioned to take advantage of the growing demand. Technology has the potential to disrupt the market and drive significant returns for businesses.

SPARK EPoS is a product-focused company and constantly goes through the product development cycle of building, measuring and learning to keep updating, streamlining and improving the service provided. The company takes customer feedback onboard, especially around how to inform customers that the butler bot is outside their room. For example, sometimes challenges are encountered when guests use a phone to order room service but don’t put the handset down correctly and the phone still appears to be in use, preventing guests from receiving the delivery notification.

Overcoming this challenge involves notifying the guest when such a situation occurs. Combating this type of challenge requires considering how to streamline the ordering process. It's also important to invite different hospitality experts to form a focus group to identify their perspectives about possible solutions. Technological solutions should not just be based on internal discussions within tech companies, but also involve external experts from within the sector who have a better understanding of industry-specific trends and their customers' desires.

Through an open conversation, it becomes possible to discuss the challenge, generate consensus about the best solution and identify the role of software development in combatting the challenge. For example, it may be possible to streamline the ordering process by placing a digital screen in the room, which can play ads and also be used to request room service. When the robot arrives, the screen could display that the food is ready. This would also resolve issues where guests don't see the QR codes or didn't want to go through the hassle of using them to make their order.

Digital solutions should reflect that every culture and business operation is different. Companies have different demographics and user groups. Understanding the voice of customers should be appreciated and used as input during the digital service design process to improve products and combat the specific challenges faced by different markets.

The Significance of Innovation

With legacy technology in the market, SPARK EPoS sees lots of opportunities for vertical expansion and driving the business forward. In every industry, there are always pain points and challenges, which technology companies can use their innovative thought processes to solve.

We've seen rapid change and lots of innovation over the last few years, with AI technology becoming mainstream. The world we're currently living in is much different to the nineties when smartphones hadn't even been invented. We're already living in the future and change will continue to occur. Innovation is the drive towards more forward-thinking processes and to bring out creativity, while utilising and combining infrastructure, hardware and software to deliver the next level of operations and customer experiences.

Innovation is a combination of different things and involves identifying how to overcome challenges on a daily basis as the world evolves. Challenges also continue to evolve, so innovation is about creating opportunities out of challenges. This involves understanding how to better support operational teams and keep up to date with the evolving market conditions and guest expectations. Some core themes will remain ever-present in terms of guest demands, requiring discussions with experts to integrate technology into businesses and continue driving them forward to improve customer service in the future.

Calvium

Calvium?is a digital innovation agency, which focuses on digital placemaking centred on healthy, enriching and vibrant places. Digital placemaking is about understanding users, user interactions and the technology to inform and underpin the design of location-based digitally-enabled solutions.

Over time, IT systems and the user experience movement have helped establish better practices to improve the functionality of user interfaces to make applications easy and pleasant to use. Digital placemaking is an extension of this movement focused on ensuring the frameworks and mechanisms for embedding and using these applications within the environment will make places equally inviting, easy to use and accessible. This ensures that digital layers in a physical place work with the environment and the people it's meant for.

Opportunities for Digital Placemaking

Digital placemaking is an emerging space and since COVID-19 people are more aware and accepting of different things. For example, most people now use Google Maps to get directions. Some of the things with which we are familiar in the consumer space are now ready to be utilised by destinations and there is an opportunity in recognising this potential. The fundamental building blocks, such as WiFi availability, mean that there is a digital on-ramp for more people now.

With this infrastructure and capacity, destinations should look towards the large technology companies and startups to review the amazing technologies they have created and look for opportunities to leverage these to maximise the visitor experience and integrate their own personality into the different solutions. To do this, place managers need to channel these technologies in the right way using a digital placemaking framework and strategy to ensure that they can distinguish their destination from competitors. Therefore, destinations should successfully leverage the opportunities rather than be a part of someone else's vision.

Destination managers don’t necessarily need the technical skills to develop new digital placemaking solutions since they can form partnerships with other organisations to create these solutions. However, destinations do need an adequate level of expertise and knowledge to decide which platforms and technologies are best suited to complementing and building an overall experience based on their local environment and strategic objectives.

Curiosity and exploring new types of technology are important for monitoring new opportunities as they become available and instilling a drive to remain creative. Nevertheless, human-centred design is a useful tool to prevent organisations from making assumptions and rushing into new technological developments that may not be appropriate for their specific context. Therefore, there is a need to balance market research and the desire to respond quickly to new opportunities.

The Importance of Human-Centred Design

Human-centred design is fundamental because of the common trend to jump on the hype curve and see a false solution. Many of these technologies are still at the mature end of the hype curve. Destination managers need to recognise that they have the best insights about what will work in their location, which is just as valuable as any new technology.

Trying to take a tech-first approach and saying that will solve your problems is not the right way round. Using a human-centred approach gives the opportunity to think about the distinctive characteristics and unique selling points of a destination as well as knowledge about the market appeal of the location to different demographics and interest groups. Such a process of working collaboratively with people requires not thinking about the solution too early. The priority should be identifying what people actually need and then developing a solution that is right for an organisation and its users to prioritise the aspects that are most important to the consumer experience.

If it's possible to get 80% of the value with a solution that is much simpler and cheaper, then it's important to really think about the design process for projects and the business case for implementing technology. Working at the cutting edge of technology on witty proof-of-concept initiatives is exciting, however, it's also important to break that hype and wait until technology is mature. Destinations should think carefully about what works in their situations and concentrate on those elements.

The project management process and who is in control must also be a focus of much-needed attention. Calvium has invested recently in making sure that the tools people have to create experiences can be easily tweaked so that destinations aren't totally reliant on third-party agencies for everything. This means that destinations have control over their own content and can make it distinctive and include the voice of the local community, while also considering the types of people they want to visit.

A human-centred design approach is about the early consideration and understanding of the type of experience you want in your destination and thinking about those distinctive aspects that should be included. Within digital placemaking, there are lots of different elements that should be thought about during the evaluation of which solution to invest in, enabling a conscious decision about what to prioritise.

On the one hand, destinations must have a good understanding of the needs of their visitors and the numerous types of users that should be catered for through a single experience. On the other hand, there is a requirement to consider the strategic goals of the organisation and identify the aspects to prioritise, such as improved efficiency, competitiveness or overcoming specific barriers.

Destinations should also think about their own needs and how they will use the technology. It's equally important for an organisation to understand its own capabilities, processes and the changes required to make the technology work in practice. Such a consideration is often missing in decision-making processes. If the custodians of the digital intervention aren't fully onboard themselves and lack knowledge about how to support, nurture, market and use the tool, then the technology will become outdated and not bring the desired return on investment.

It is important to emphasise that the technical solution should address a specific need and not just be thought of as a one-off project. Places don't ever stop, they're continuously evolving. It's important to think about the product development cycle and take the time to reflect, respond and adapt based on human input to keep updating and improving user experiences.

Digital Placemaking in Practice

Calvium's founder has worked at all ends of the digital placemaking spectrum. Prior to launching the company, the founder worked in a research and development environment, exploring and testing new technological solutions.

Calvium worked with Historic Royal Palaces on a project called?The Lost Palace. This initiative utilised different types of sensors through a technological approach that also included user testing, feedback and creating a commercial output.

While working with new technologies is exciting and organisations should strive to keep innovating, it's also important to recognise that innovation is not just about implementing the latest technology. There remains significant value in trying to make current solutions more accessible. This attempt to integrate existing solutions also helps to embed sustainability within the creation of great experiences. The experiences won't be new because the technology isn't cutting edge, but the enduring value of storytelling and the fundamental aspect of communicating the right information at the point it's required will remain.

Encouraging more destinations to utilise digital placemaking tools is essential so that everyone can see and experience unique dimensions when visiting a new place. The infinite layering of digital means that visitors can listen to the voices of multiple people depending on their personal interests. This allows visitors to have deeply engaging and enriching experiences based on where they are and what they like. To this end, Calvium developed the?Place Experience Platform?to make it easier for organisations to deliver successful projects and build up their digital placemaking capabilities over time.

Calvium also works with artistic elements and has a longstanding collaboration with Exeter University. The company enjoys working with people who can transform historic narratives into a dramatic form. This collaboration helped to bring history to life through dramatic storytelling in a replicable manner.?

Calvium has a growing suite of?Hidden Cities apps. This historic concept digitises old maps so that people can have amazing experiences by walking around ancient cities. For example, Florence was the first destination in this project, with the original map being from a monk's wood carving. As the majority of the buildings remain to this day, it meant that it was possible to walk around the city during the user testing phase and think about how ancient artefacts can be used in a new and modern way to augment visitor experiences and give an indication of what was previously there. This sort of magical moment is what inspires Calvium's founder.

When working with clients, the process involves identifying these special moments in destinations, the unique artefacts that can be brought to life and the best tools for storytelling. This always needs to be place and person specific. There is a need to match the right experience at the right time to the right person and consider all of the different elements in terms of the final output, such as how the level of brightness in the location influences the ease of viewing screens.

The Role of Innovation

Innovation is driven by needs and problems and the desire to fix and improve things. This is achieved through taking human-based approaches and being knowledgeable about the opportunities available and thinking about how new capabilities can be applied when envisaging a better world and making it a reality.

The core of innovation is driven by the imagination of a better future. Calvium worked with some visually impaired individuals who recognised that blind people can perform on stage, but when watching in the audience need to be led by someone, instead of being in control themselves. In this regard, working together to create a functioning place-based wayfinding system is a good example of being innovative.

Conclusion

Organisations should monitor trends and outline the business case for utilising technology to solve their challenges. Technology can improve the usage of resources and boost organisational efficiency. It also provides lots of data to help make smarter decisions and drive businesses forward. Technology can also give customers a wow factor, which differentiates companies from their competitors and enables them to showcase their own personalities. Adding digital layers can enable an enhanced focus on playfulness and joy and add an additional element to human interactions.

When deciding which solution to implement, it is important to consider the needs of both visitors and the organisation, strategic goals and how the technology fits within company processes. There is a lot of behind-the-scenes work to ensure the successful implementation of technical solutions. Therefore, projects need to be well-designed and involve the input of multiple stakeholders at the right times.

Tourism companies don't need the technical skills to develop solutions themselves and can partner with technology companies for this aspect. However, they do need adequate expertise to decide on the correct approach to take and should first focus on identifying the actual user need for implementing technology. Human-centred design approaches help to facilitate collaboration and ensure input from experts as well as include customer opinions.

There is always resistance to implementing new technology. It's essential for organisations to fully commit to technological development projects. Guest awareness of technology is also an essential consideration and customers should be educated to understand how to interact with different systems. There is a need to continuously learn from feedback and optimise processes to streamline experiences. This necessitates regular prototyping and testing of solutions.

There is a cost of learning when implementing new technology. Organisations should remain curious about new opportunities but also realise that they don't always need to implement the latest cutting-edge technology. Organisations should avoid the hype curve and balance the speed of development with a sufficient degree of research. Replicating existing initiatives can also bring value while also enhancing the accessibility of technology, ensuring that inclusivity can be incorporated within the design process.