Viceroy Hotel Group, which operates boutique and luxury hotels around the world, is showing itself to be an early adopter of hotel technology as it gears up to test a new solution that uses smart watches to improve staff communications, speed responsiveness to guest requests, and enhance the overall quality of the customer service.
For starters, the hotel is deploying the solution at their Viceroy L’Ermitage Beverly Hills with plans to roll out the wearable solution across their portfolio of hotels starting later this year. Viceroy hotels are located across the world, including Santa Monica, San Francisco, California; New York, New York; Chicago, Illinois; Snowmass, Colorado; St. Lucia; and Riviera Maya, San José del Cabo, Mexico; and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
The new smart watches are worn by hotel employees in multiple functions, from housekeeping and maintenance to bellman and concierge services. The solution gives them the ability to manage customer requests and resolve incidents more quickly and efficiently across departments.
When a guest request or urgent need arises, hotel employees in the appropriate department receive silent vibration alerts via the smart watch. Any employee who is in a good position to handle the task can respond to the request with a tap of the smart watch. This informs other staff that someone is attending to the matter at hand. Managers can track tasks in real-time until the employee reports that the issue has been attended to or otherwise resolved.
The hands-free solution is particularly well-suited employees who are often busy handling objects with both hands and may not have easy access to their phones or wish to be interrupted if interacting with a guest. These individuals include maintenance workers carrying tools, room service staff carrying trays and housekeepers pushing carts and handling vacuum cleaners and cleaning supplies.
The wearable technology was created by Samsung SDS, which is Samsung’s software and solutions division. The solution combines the Samsung Gear S3 smartwatch with ALICE, an integrated hotel platform that helps hotels create a unified hospitality experience by connecting departments across the hotel with a suite of front of house tools for and by facilitating better communication through mobile staff technology and guest communication channels. (Read our Spotlight Interview with Alex Shashou, President of ALICE.)
The new solution is scheduled to debut this week at the HITEC 2018 conference in Houston, Texas.