This guide will outline the considerations you should explore as part of your decision-making process.

If you are evaluating how a mobile app or mobile website can add value to your hotel, there is more to consider than just how it looks or the features that it contains. For a mobile solution to truly be successful, it must be easily integrated into your existing systems, readily adopted by your guests, supported by your staff and built for future innovation. This guide will outline the considerations you should explore as part of your decision-making process.

If you have ever returned to your house after realizing that you left your mobile phone at home, you proved just how valuable your phone has become in your day-to-day life. Now, imagine going on a trip, either for leisure or business, and leaving your mobile device behind. Impossible to imagine, right, because it just wouldn’t happen.

We rely on our mobile phones and tablets during travel to do everything from checking in to our flights, to arranging car service, to staying up to date on email, to finding restaurant recommendations, to getting walking directions, to calculating currency conversions and much more. In fact, TripAdvisor reports that 85% of U.S. travelers used their tablets during their time in-destination and nearly half of the polled respondents said their cell phone is an essential part of every journey.

Hotels need to adapt to these trends and ensure that they are providing guests with great mobile experiences across the entire guest lifecycle, pre-stay, on-site and post-stay. When done correctly, mobile can be a critical aspect of guest loyalty as it can power personalized service and surprise and delight perks. And, just as importantly, mobile can help hotels drive more revenue by making purchases and reservations more convenient.

But finding the right partner and building the right mobile solution isn’t as simple as hiring a team of developers or selecting a while-labeled solution, as there are many considerations that can affect ROI, guest loyalty and the long-term value of the solution.

In this guide we aim to outline the most important considerations when evaluating a mobile solutions provider for your hotel or brand and provide tools that you can use when interviewing vendors and analyzing solutions.

Mobile Form Factor

Are you envisioning a mobile optimized Web site or a mobile app? A philosophical debate is raging about whether HTML5 or native apps are best for your guests’ mobile experience. While a native app traditionally provides the best user experience on a Smart Phone since it can use the features of the phone, such as GPS, developing for both iPhone and Android can be time consuming. In addition, getting guests to download an app can be an inhibitor to active use, whereas the Web is accessible on any smart device. And, with ~25% of wi-fi connections in the hotels being used by iPads, HTML5 is attractive because of how responsive the design is, meaning that it looks great on a phone or iPad. In addition, content within apps is not discoverable which is troublesome since Google searches can't drive traffic to their content and 80+% of web browsing sessions begin with a search.

Since both native apps and HTML5 have pros and cons, your best bet is to ensure that your solution includes both a native application and a mobile-optimized Web site to get the most from your investment and to ensure that all guests have a solution available to them. Since anyone can click a link, your strategy should be to get guests to first engage with the mobile site to understand the value of the service and then encourage them to download the app for even greater functionality.

Hospitality Expertise

Your mobile solution needs to be built not only with your customers’ needs in mind, but also the specific needs of your hotel, which are very unlike other businesses in terms of operations and ingrained technology. The vendor you chose needs to know the intricacies of the hospitality business and the other technologies that make hotels hum.

Hotel guests expect 24/7 service so mobile service requests need to be available around the clock. It’s reasonable for the business down the street to say that requests will be responded to during regular business hours but hotels are open continuously. The ability to immediately route requests, via text messaging, to someone ‘on-duty’ and in the right department is critical to guest satisfaction.

In addition, to provide the most personalized and seamless service to your guests, your solution also needs to integrate with the existing technology in place, including booking, PMS, and POS systems. These solutions are the life-blood of your operations and without direct integration, you run the risk of losing data, disappointing guests, duplicating efforts and not being able to accurately measure the ROI of your mobile investment.

Ability to Make Content Changes

Beware of the mobile solution that doesn’t come with a Content Management Solution or you will be at the mercy of the development team or company you hired for changes, which could lead to long delays in content changes and hefty service fees.

Why is being able to make changes on the fly so critical for hotels? If you run out of an item on your room service menu and don’t want your guests to be disappointed, you need to be able to make changes in real time. If you update your photography after a remodel or change your policies, you want to make sure that your guests and prospects have access to the latest content. And, more importantly, you want to be able to optimize the guest experience and that means monitoring performance and making changes to design, features and wording as needed.

Direct Communication Channel

Without a two-way communications channel with your guests, your app or mobile site is simply brochure-ware. For your mobile solution to drive revenue and loyalty you need the ability to market to guests pre-, during and post-stay and they need to be able to reach you on their terms.

In the era of online reviews and social media, hoteliers today need to ensure that every guest checks out happy. Providing guests with a simple way to provide guest feedback, while they are still on site, is critical to positive reviews and future bookings. According to a June 2014 Skift survey, nearly 40% of individuals between the ages of 25-34 prefer to leverage social channels to resolve a travel problem. With a direct mobile channel, guests might be persuaded to work out the issue with you directly, versus on a public platform.

Rich Guest Profiles

Loyalty programs are moving away from points-based systems to spontaneous rewards and surprise and delight moments based on rich guest data, such as previous stays, money spent on the room and ancillary services and social profile data. But for these systems to work, your hotel needs access to all the data you are collecting, across all your different systems and information readily available through the social graph.

The best mobile solutions take advantage of all the data you have on your customers to deliver the most personalized experience possible. For example, if you know your guest has visited the spa in the past, you should be able to send her an in-app notice or email about spa specials or open appointments during her stay. These types of targeted promotions will have a higher response rate than traditional marketing campaigns since they’re interest-based. In addition, because more targeted offers connote more personalized services, you have the opportunity to drive word of mouth marketing as well, as guests tell their friends about the spectacular service they received.

Check-in/Check-Out/Upgrade

The airline industry has set the bar high when it comes to mobile functionality. At a minimum, travelers today expect to be able to check-in in advance, select room upgrades in advance and check out in record time. Your mobile solution should be integrated with your PMS so that you can communicate with guests in advance of their arrival to capture their needs and preferences. With this information you can speed along the check-in process by cutting the room key in advance. Research has shown that guests that have trouble at check-in are the hardest to recover. If you can provide a seamless experience and delight them from the start, you can build a great relationship from the start.

Localization/Translation

If you cater to an international clientele, you will want to ensure that your mobile solution can be localized into the languages that you need to ensure that every guest can benefit from mobile services. Guests should be able to set their preferred language for an optimal experience.

Dashboard and Analytics

You shouldn’t invest in any mobile solution that doesn’t provide back-end analytics to allow you to analyze the revenue that comes from mobile transactions, guest usage and time to solve guest requests. This data is critical for you to understand the impact that mobile is having on your business. Just as you wouldn’t lower your room rate without first looking at your projected occupancy numbers, this data can help you determine staffing needs, operational efficiencies and the ROI around special mobile-only offers.

Forward Looking

Mobile technology is constantly changing and any mobile solution needs to be built with an eye for the future. For example, with location-aware technologies like iBeacon coming to market, you need to ensure that your solution can grow along with new technology and you won’t need to scrap your app and start over to take advantage of new technologies.

Training and Support

Your mobile developers need to understand the always-on nature of your business and be available for support around the clock, regardless of your time zone. And, with hotel mobile solutions touching so many departments, getting everyone trained and up to speed will be critical for a successful roll out.

Remember that good service means being responsive to guests on their terms. Today, many guests prefer to communicate through their phones. So go forth and be mobile.