It’s been a long day for your guest. He wants to turn off the lights, pull the curtains, lower the blinds and set his room temperature at a comfortable 19,5 degrees. Just before browsing your movie offering, he wants to set his wake-up call for the next day. At the new citizenM Bankside which opened last week , the guest now holds all these room functions in his hands, in the form ofanelegant media tablet provided in every roomwhose interface has been completely mass customized for guest use by Swisscom Hospitality.
The new, completely hotel branded room controls solution, which was launched at the citizenM London Bankside opening last week (20 Lavington Street), is setting a new standard for service integration and interactivity in the guest room. Within a few days, it has already triggered an avalanche of enthusiastic guest reviews on Tripadvisor.com
“The mood lighting is incredible, and the combination of sound proofing, blackout blinds, and air conditioning made it the perfect room for a good night sleep after an evening out in London.”
Guest review, July 5
“But the best bit by far was the touch screen ‘Moodpad’ tablet gadget thing with which you control the entire room, including the wall mounted flat screen TV, window blinds, temperature, lighting, wake-up alarm, as well as browse the web too, all from the comfort of the comfy bed. And don’t worry; it’s so easy to use even a fat fingered touchscreenaphobe like me got the hang of it pretty quickly.”
Guest review, June 27
The new citizenM room tablet is jam-packed with amazing functionality: It drives the guest room environment and serves as a regular media tablet. As a control device, it controls all room lighting, the room temperature and air conditioning, the window blinds and curtains.
It also replaces the traditional TV remote control, allowing the guest to browse available TV channels and citizenM’s library of free video-on-demand offerings. Finally, citizenM uses the tablet to deliver unique guest services, such as themed room environments from “Business” to “Romance” and hundreds of worldwide e-newspapers available for free straight through the same user interface.
Says Michael Levie, Founder and Chief Operations Officer of citizenM hotels:
“citizenM uses technology as an enabler to enhance the guest experience through mass-customization. Providing the guest with a tablet that allows them to steer and manage all aspects of their room and have all internet offers available at their fingertips, is a true surprise and over delivers on expectations. We have become accustomed to all the technology and devices available in our day-to-day lives, Swisscom Hospitality as our partner allows us to offer this worry-free to our guests. The complexity of integration that Swisscom Hospitality designs, installs and controls in the background, allows citizenM to focus on guest satisfaction.”
As a hotel device, the tablet is dynamically adapting its content to the guest’s language and service settings. Upon checkout, all guest data is being wiped off the tablet; this way a completely new profile can be loaded for the next guest check-in. However, knowing guest preferences in terms of room temperature, ambiance, language, music and entertainment, and being able to push a corresponding profile to a room prior to guest arrival, citizenM is best prepared to delight its repeat guests with an extra surprise.
As with previous citizenM hotels, Swisscom Hospitality has built a convergent IT infrastructure for the citizenM London Bankside that integrates all hotel and guest-facing technologies, including Swisscom IPTV and Swisscom High-Speed Internet Access with additional managed third-party solutions for lighting, heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC). Central hotel systems and utilities including the hotel’s Central Reservations System and Property Management System are provided via the computing cloud. It is this “unified” technology setup that enables citizenM to package all room functions into a single room tablet and bundle them with customized branding and extra services.
The citizenM London Bankside is the 4th citizenM site and its 2nd property in the UK after the citizenM Glasgow. Since the first citizenM hotel opened in Amsterdam in 2008, the company’s guiding philosophy has been “affordable luxury for the people”. Room rates at the new citizenM London Bankside are 99 to 199GBP – an outrageously low price range that is kept even during the Olypmpics. citizenM hotel group has ambitious roll out plans including three additional, already confirmed London properties at Trinity Square near the Tower of London and at the Holburn Viaduct near St Paul’s, as well as two in New York (on Times Square and the Bowery), and one in each Rotterdam and Paris.