Accor last week announced its first fully digital hotel, Ibis Styles London Gloucester Road. Accor’s goal is to offer a full suite of digital technologies to make guests feel welcome, while improving the guest and employee experience.
Ibis Styles London Gloucester Road is the first Accor hotel in Northern Europe to provide a fully digital experience with contactless solutions at each step of the guests’ stay. The hotel, Accor says, will provide an experience that is quick, safe and easy, with contactless solutions that “rethink the guest journey from arrival to departure.” The digital ecosystem will include such capabilities as online and mobile check-in, in-hotel payment, the “Accor Key” (a digital guestroom key solution), digital F&B services and guest relations via WhatsApp throughout the stay.
The adaptation of the experience at the London hotel is the first step in a rollout plan, which will include at least 50 percent of hotels across all brand segments in North and Central America in the next five years.
Carla Milovanov, SVP customer technology services, Accor, said in a press announcement: “This is not about robots or faceless technology; this is about the smart integration of innovative, customer-facing technology at pace and at scale. Technology is part of our daily lives and is now fully part of our hotel experience—and with this important step, we give our guests the opportunity to adapt their hotel stay according to their preferences.”
Here’s what to expect:
Check-in will be made easier for the guest with a full, tailor-made contactless online check-in experience. Any guest can choose to self-check-in from their smartphone, tablet or laptop. Accor has also extended its existing Fast Check-Out (FCO) functionality to all guests, allowing them to check-out via their smartphone and a PDF invoice will be sent to their email.
Accor’s proprietary mobile technology, FOLS, enables hotel teams to greet guests with ease, removing the need for check-in desks and enabling employees to interact with guests directly. The introduction of FOLS Mobile gave the hotel teams the freedom to engage personally with guests while using their mobile operating system to manage their day-to-day tasks. Since the launch of this technology in 2018, Accor says both guest satisfaction and employee engagement at hotels have increased.
In addition, Ibis Styles London Gloucester Road will have digital keys where guests can open their room door via smartphone. Each guest will be provided with an “Accor Key” that will allow room access, entry to meeting rooms and floor access from lifts. (Accor has announced the global rollout of “Accor Key” and an objective to equip 20,000 doors in 2021 and all new hotel openings from this summer.)
Hotel guests will also be able to make online payments for their stay through a quick and secure payment experience by Pay By Link. Guest only need to sign in once and they can then pay for expenses throughout their stay. Accor's Click Pay Collect technology also enables guests to order food and drink from the hotel's digital menu using just their phones. Fully integrated with Accor's hotel systems, expenses can either be paid up front or charged to the room and paid on check-out.
Enhancing the guest experience further, Accor has integrated WhatsApp into the in-hotel customer journey, enabling guests to liaise directly with hotel teams before and during their stay, making pre-arrival requests and helping to facilitate their needs during the stay.
Situated in a prime London location in Kensington, Ibis Styles London Gloucester Road is located just 200 yards from Gloucester Road Underground Station, 550 yards from both the Natural History Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum, and Harrods is a 20-minute walk away. The hotel will reopen following the end of the U.K.’s lockdown restrictions.
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