Guest Touchpoints: Maximizing the four screens

Guest Touchpoints, as hoteliers we typically focus on the people aspect, and rightly so, after all this is a people oriented business.

But as technology evolves, becomes easier to use and Guests are more comfortable with it in their everyday lives, where are additional opportunities for hoteliers to further use technology to touch the Guest. Enter the four screens:

-Guest Room Television
-Guest Laptop (connected to the hotels HSIA system)
-Guest Room Telephone (display phone, not as pervasive)
-Guest Mobile Phone (a very important touchpoint, Guests always have their mobile)

While, these are obvious touch points, as an industry, we have not really leveraged any of the four screens to their full potential.

How do you leverage the four screens technology to maximize every opportunity to communicate your brand, hotel services, and partner products/services to your Guest?


Looking at traditional Guest communication, people, print, radio, broadcast tv and more recently the Internet, brands have spent significant funding to bring Guests to our hotels (Commercials, TV/Print/Radio Ads, SEO/SEM/PPC/AM-affiliate marketing). But once a Guest has arrived, they are in your hotel guest room, hopefully using your hotels f&b, television, hsia service, telephone and their mobile phone. Guests are now in your abode, by choice. They are either loyal customers and prefer your brand and what it has to offer, are choosing because of convenience (location) or because of price. Regardless of why, the fact the Guest is, that Guest is in your hotel.

So shouldn't we take further advantage of the opportunity we have to touch that Guest, to further enhance their brand loyalty and generate incremental (untapped) revenue by leveraging our technology investments?

Let's take a look at some options for each of the four screens, some obvious, some not so obvious:

Guest Room Television
>National Advertising, broadcasters are already presenting your Guest with national, regional, and local ads while they are at your property as part of primetime shows, sporting events, etc. Why shouldn't your hotel participate in that revenue stream?

>Hotel Magazine Advertising, the hotel magazine is a thing of the past,and is not evnvironmentally friendly, however it is full of pre-qualified (by your brand)advertising. Why not digitize this advertising and present these partners on the television? According to the AHMA, 94% of travelers turn on the television when they arrive in their Guest Room.

>Hotel and Partner Services, hotel services (restaurant, room service, spa, meetings, etc), partner services (restaurant, shopping, tours) can all be digitized and offered on the television (eliminate the hotel information guide, channel guide, and local ad magazines).


Guest Laptop (connected to the hotels HSIA system)
Guests almost always use the hotels wi-fi, especially in a free to guest environment.
As with Television, similiar opportunities are available at different points of the Guests HSIA experience.

>Pre-login, upon connecting to the network before the Guest connects to the Internet an ad or video can be displayed (national ad/video, hotel ad/video promoting hotels services or partner ad/video). This can work very well in a free to guest environment and can also be used as the point to upsell bandwidth.

>Landing page, a customized page (not the regular old page we are used to seeing) that has tools that are perceived by the Guest to be useful can be presented. This page can be branded, and can present the hotel and its services, weather, breaking news, date/time, a Guest message, and the major links on the Internet to email services, entertainment, social media, travel sites, even digital video. A useful page can even be utilized by the Guest outside of the hotel.

>Post Login (in session), while this may seem intrusive, there are several ways to keep in contact with the Guest and monetize the session.

-An always on browser overlay, that shows hotel ads/messages as well and most importantly services the Guest would perceive as useful, (printing, weather, wake up call, flight status, etc).

-Affiliate Marketing, while the Guest is using the hotels HSIA, they are going to various websites to do business, purchase items, make travel arrangements, visiting social media sites, watching digital video and viewing home and local information. These are just natural uses of the Internet. Affiliate relationships can be created with almost every site a Guest goes to while in your hotel and hotels can earn Affiliate commissions without impacting the Guest experience.

-Timed ads, while on the Internet and ad can be shown that promotes a Guest service, i.e. "Join our poolside Happy Hour BBQ today at 5pm" or a partner service on a timed basis.


Guest Room Telephone
While Guest Room display phones are not yet pervasive (and may never be). Guest Rooms phones can be used to display a scaled down version of the same information as displayed for the television or laptop. Use of the Guest Room display phone to promote hotel services/hotel information guide and room control device is a more useful application.


Guest Mobile Phone
The mobile phone is the Grail of Guest Technology touchpoints, what more could you ask for than to be able to touch a Guest whether or not they are in your hotel, on a device that they always with them, on an opt in/out basis of course. Guests will allow themselves to be contacted on this most personal of the four screen options only if there is useful information/services made available to them. Services, such as:

>Guest Loyalty, services such checking of points, checking reservations, confirmations, special targeted packages, use of the mobile phone to replace the membership card.

>Check in/out, allows the customer to bypass the people touchpoint if they want to. But also allows the hotel to be notified when a Guest is on their way to the hotel when the Guest checks in remotely. When the Guest checks in remotely, a message can be sent back about hotel services and events.

>Event Information, can be sent to the Guest with a sponsored by message if the Guest is attending a citywide convention or a hotel group meeting.


While there are varying aspects of the four touchpoints and varying technologies to reach each device, it is critical to be able to measure how and how often these services are being used (metrics).

For instance, the Guest Room television, do you know how often each channel is being watched? If a channel is not being watched why would you continue to present and pay for the channel? HSIA, do you know in aggregate the most popular websites your Guests visit and how much bandwidth is consumed? These are all assets to be measured to see what's performing and what's not. Not to mentioned that marketing potential of having this information.


Each touchpoint gives you various opportunities to communicate with the guest, provide additional services and monetize your technology investments, how far you go is up to you.

The next article will list various products and services you can use to leverage the four screens and how your hotel can implement these technologies.