Immersive experience, anyone?
Of course, the answer is yes!
From applying filters to our smartphone selfies to scanning a restaurant menu barcode or test-driving a car from the comfort of our sofa – the instant and engaging interaction we enjoy with our favourite brands has us all craving more.
The augmented reality (AR) technology powering this latest communicative innovation is reimagining the way we source, research and consume products and services.
It can explain, demonstrate and activate in ways which seamlessly merge the real and the virtual: giving us the ability to simultaneously inhabit both the physical and the digital worlds.
Smart businesses in every sector are combining the power of AR with an omnichannel Communication as a Service Platform (CPaaS) to revolutionize the ways in which they engage with their customers.
In hospitality in particular, it can truly transform the guest experience.
For direct customers and IT resellers alike, the opportunities to capitalize are huge as research suggests the sector’s deployment of AR is expected to grow by 35% over the next five years.
Pick the right provider partner and the returns for all parties are likely to be significant.
“With AR, hospitality sector customers can have a much more in-depth, immersive, almost life-like online experience,” says Christopher Chreck, Senior Product Management Director at leading global digital provider Syniverse, whose Concierge CPaaS solution integrates and delivers that customer AR experience both broadly and in highly personalized ways.
“Adopting an omnichannel approach means that a hospitality enterprise’s target audience and guests can enjoy through their smartphone a uniform AR experience via any, and potentially all, channels they may wish to engage through.
“That means web, WhatsApp, SMS, and voice – enabling marketing, sales and operations teams to manage the entire customer experience with ease and consistency while offering an immersive experience, which is able to create a very personal bond and emotional connection.”
The use cases are multiple.
Interactive Rooms
Old-style printed information brochures can be replaced with “scannable” places around the room, using hotels’ own dedicated apps or popular AR platforms, such as Meta. For example, guests may scan the in-room entertainment system and receive quick tips on how to use it, or scan recommended restaurant bar codes and view menus or watch high-quality videos.
Show Your Guests the Way
Whether it’s navigating through a hotel or the surrounding areas, AR can be a great tool for guest convenience and comfort; guiding them in real-time. Add more value to the guest experience by offering AR guided tours of the areas surrounding your hotel; opening up mutually-beneficial opportunities to partner with other complementing vendors or places of interest.
Make It All a Game
Make a hotel stay even more exciting by incorporating gamification into the guest experience. Devise fun quests to complete that unlock rewards or special opportunities.
Clever Keys
Send virtual keys to guests’ phones together with rich, interactive, and highly personalized, information about events happening near to their location.
Overall Enhanced Guest Experience and Marketing Boost
Best Western, in partnership with Disney, recently used AR to enable kids to see themselves alongside characters from Disney films. Guests can be encouraged to share on social media, creating conversations and promoting your brand.
“A consumer survey of the wider retail market has found that 71% of consumers would shop more often if their favorite brands had AR experiences,” says Chrcek.
“32% of consumers said they are already using AR while shopping and 70% of all consumers surveyed, between the ages of 16 and 44, were aware of AR. Those numbers are increasing all the time, which means AR presents significant opportunities going forward.”
There’s no doubt that the key to maximising those opportunities is to deploy via CPaaS.
Affordable, scalable, and quickly implemented, Syniverse’s Concierge platform helps hospitality sector organisations communicate and respond via every communications channel there is to customer queries about reservations, changes, special requests, hotel activities, and more.
The check-in/check-out process can be simplified through SMS and WhatsApp, helping guests to enjoy a more responsive experience, while freeing up staff for more important tasks.
Confirming tickets and accessing guest-only areas of the hotel can be automated and streamlined using integrated frictionless authentication and security.
Integrated AI voice messaging that does not sound robotic means natural-sounding voice calls can remind guests of important events.
And chatbots and AI-driven digital assistants can be integrated to further reduce staff workload by allowing computers to answer the most basic and frequent questions; requiring human intervention only where necessary.
Omnichannel efficiency and AR magic…now that’s a winning combination!
To learn more about how Syniverse can help your and your customers’ businesses digitize and grow, visit Syniverse.
