What hoteliers should know about the new iPhone 4S iOS
Yesterday at their highly anticipated keynote, Apple announced updates to it’s iOS which is the operating system of the beloved iPad’s, iPhone’s and iTouch. As a hotelier who needs to stay attuned to guest needs and changes in the technology space we thought we would summarize what these new changes can mean to your hotel.
- As we learned at this past year’s HITEC show in Austin, guests are more interested in accessing their own media rather than what you provide via your in-room televisions. With the new iCloud guests will be able to store, post and view photos & videos in real time from the guest room. Guests will expect more from your WIFI network and the traffic will increase dramatically.
- An interesting new feature is Siri, a voice enabled personal assistant for your mobile device. If you have a hotel App you may want to consider adding features where guests can say things like ‘Add wine to my room’ or ‘Make me a reservation for next Monday’.
- It’s getting even easier to post photos and text to social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. With the new iOS people can post to Twitter directly from their photo library – which means they may publish photos of less than perfect room conditions upon arrival.
- Updates to Safari, the web browser for iPhone’s etc, now include an enhanced suite of CSS and html 5 functionality bringing in a whole new web platform commonly known as Adaptive Web. This new platform is what Guestfolio is migrating to and it allows the information you present to a guest be dynamic and custom based on the mobile device they are using. What this means is that YOU DON’T NEED TO INVEST IN YOUR OWN HOTEL APP. Some of you are discovering the on-going costs involved with managing the App for your hotel and it’s huge.
UPDATE: We also like this article published today by Hotel Chatter in response to the new iOS updates.
Posted by admingf
