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HOTEL FACILITIES
Hotels can enhance guest experience, spend and customer loyalty by maximising the facilities and services on offer.
For most visitors, choosing the right hotel is about far more than simply finding food and lodgings for the night. Today, guests expect to find a `home from home', with a hotel room providing electronic gadgetry such as a TV, radio, PC and games console - in addition to gym facilities and an extremely comfortable bed.
The stakes have been raised for the hotel industry, and if guests do not find the facilities they need, they are likely to take their custom elsewhere. And with so much depending on repeat business, making the best possible impression is of the utmost importance.
Advances in technology mean that the choice of entertainment and business options open to hotel guests is about to enter a new era meaning a richer and more diverse choice of service for the guest, and new and lucrative revenue streams for the owner. Guests want their hotel experience to be about far more than just a bed for the night - the accommodation should be a place to work, rest and play.
Consequently, many hotels have seen heavy investment in the infrastructure that delivers phone and TV services to the rooms. As it is expensive to replace this infrastructure, smart hoteliers are exploiting its full potential to deliver more to the hotel visitor. Customer appreciation for a full range of interactive, on-demand TV, video, audio, gaming, PC and fast internet access delivered to their TV sets is virtually guaranteed, and all of these services can be delivered on a chargeable basis.
A spokesman for BT believes the company has developed the perfect package for the hotel industry. He said: "BT's in-room entertainment and business proposition is to deliver a suite of entertainment services and business tools which takes advantage of the hotel's existing investment in TV sets and cabling infrastructure. Telephone, TV, video on demand, audio, gaming, fast Internet, email and PC applications will be available to guests though the TV and a single remote control keyboard.
"The new entertainment package will deliver increased and new revenue opportunities, enhance the customer experience and reduce the number of suppliers the hotel has to...