“…a conference application, which put all the materials you typically get at a conference on the device, but also a directory of all the other people at the conference, with photos. We could push video and photos to the device during the meeting and update things real time as the conference was happening.”
Clearly the consumers, the guests we serve, are increasingly on the road and increasingly connecting to us through mobile devices, and there’s a tremendous pace of innovation on these devices. We don’t talk about smart phones now as much as we talk about super phones.
We’ve already launched applications for the iPhone across our brand, but we’re also building out applications for other mobile devices–a whole host of location-based services. You could imagine a time when a guest wants to find things around the hotel, or even within the hotel they’re at—if they need to find a coffee shop or a clothing store because they have forgotten something for their trip.
We rolled out 2,500 iPads—the largest one-day rollout of the iPad ever. We included on those iPads a couple interesting applications—a conference application, which put all the materials you typically get at a conference on the device, but also a directory of all the other people at the conference, with photos. We could push video and photos to the device during the meeting and update things real time as the conference was happening.
The other application we piloted was the beginning of a virtual concierge idea. It allows our guests to order room service from the device, find out more information about the hotel, see all the information that is typically in a booklet on the desk in the hotel room—with rich video and audio and linked right into the property management system at the hotel.
