The last time I walked into a hotel, the lobby was cluttered with tired tourists and befuddled business travelers. The hotel, at an upscale casino in Las Vegas, looked like a zoo where the zookeeper had gone AWOL.
This hotel’s queue line for check-in swerved back and forth, resulting in a minimum 30-minute wait for the many individuals that had just arrived after a day-long plane ride. With change clanking in their pockets, many of them just wanted to hit the slots and blackjack tables. Instead, they were stuck in a procession that seemed to go nowhere.
Unfortunately, this scene has been all too commonplace in the hospitality industry. Hotels and motels, small and large, have been congested with guests wanting to check in after long days of travel.
Despite the chaos, these hotels often are competent businesses. They have a capable staff and excellent facilities. But in today’s service-first environment, many are missing one important ingredient — self-service kiosks.
It’s not too hard to imagine that many of these hotels are fearful of self-service. There have been cries by many that self-service will replace the hardworking individuals that work in the hospitality business. Other critics have said that self-service is really no service at all; therefore, you are paying a high premium to stay at an expensive establishment, but in the end you get very little buck for buck.
But if you talk to the industry experts, and even many business and other savvy travelers who have experience with self-service, they will say, when done right, self-service is the way to go. Not only will it please the customers of the hotels, it will even please the staff, as they will be able to do more important tasks such as greeting customers away from the front desk.
The following research guide will give you insight into hotel/motel check-in self-service. It’s designed to give you the five most important things you need to know to have a successful kiosk deployment.
There also will be examples from several hotel chains who have implemented self-service successfully. They even talk about some of the things they did wrong and how they fixed them.
After reading this guide, the basics to deploying a kiosk in the hospitality environment should be clear.
I’d like to thank IBM, whose sponsorship of this guide enables us to provide it to you at no charge.
Patrick Avery, editor of Kiosk Marketplace 
