Travel used to be a glamorous luxury. Hotels put stickers on your luggage to remind you (and your neighbors) of the stellar experience you just had, and the prestige of staying in a first rate hotel. As travel became more common and hotel companies morphed into enterprises where size and scale were critical, hotels became less distinctive, less fun and less centered around the guest's experience.

We see an opportunity to restore the enjoyment and personalization of hotels from the past, while retaining the low cost structures and enhanced conveniences that suit the needs of the modern traveler.

New Business Conditions Make Innovation Imperative

Over the past ten years, the hospitality business has changed dramatically. Consolidation, globalization, and changes in ownership structure have changed the rules just as prosperity fueled rapid growth. Now, as the business cycle turns the corner and demand slackens, the conditions are ripe for intense competition for loyal customers.

Competition has traditionally driven innovation. Hoteliers rush to install the latest digital sockets and content feeds into guest rooms, implement global yield management systems, and compete to offer the best in-room services, coolest relationship programs, or least painful check-out. The hotel industry has a history of competitor-driven innovation.

At Perot Systems, we see the challenge of innovation differently. We've spent five years in the travel industry focusing first and most deeply on what travelers need - not on what competitors already have. We then design integrated solutions to serve those needs. Our goal is to help our clients build great relationships with their most important guests and with other key customers - such as travel agents, corporate customers, and tour operators.

To build great customer relationships, we start with a simple belief: customers value their experiences as a whole, not as a collection of pieces. Just as the various efforts of set designers, lighting designers, costumers, prop masters, and actors come together to deliver a unified experience for theatergoers, guests will experience a hotel or resort as a unified series of events and interactions.

Improvements to any single product or feature can improve a moment in a guest's stay, but the failings of any other can destroy - in an instant - what the hotel worked so hard to create. This is no different than the effect a screechy-voiced actor would have on a night at the theater.

In short, to deliver measurable value to guests (and get their enduring loyalty in return), hotel companies must deliver Seamless Hospitality.

Customer-driven innovation

With customer-driven strategy wholly new offerings are possible, and the innovative hospitality companies will reap a disproportionate share of the rewards for doing so.

Many of the strategies that will deliver unique and valuable experiences to hotel guests are made possible by embracing a new way of doing business and leveraging related new technologies. Of course, these systems and technologies must be invisible to the customers, who only care about the value that these new technologies deliver.

There are innumerable ways that an innovative hospitality company can deliver customer-driven innovation. The following are only a few of the examples:

Extend the relationship with guests - Hotels need to make it easier for their most frequent customers - both individual and corporate - to do business with them. This means going beyond creating large data warehouses containing basic information about travelers habits and preferences. Hotels should create an environment where the hotel maintains and leverages digital notes from meetings, schedule and contact information, and any other information which is valuable to those frequent customers.

Integrate information and services for guests - Hotels can offer customers a stream of branded products and services while still maintaining, or even strengthening their own brand. A hotel can apply the concept of "web portals", which has resulted in astronomical valuations for many internet companies, and become the "business services portal" for the frequent business traveler.

Streamline guests' experience - Make it easier for customers to navigate the standard processes associated with travel. An example which has become prevalent in the hotel industry is the hotel receipt which is placed under the customers' door - allowing the harried traveler to avoid standing in a long line to check out. Extend this concept to other processes - both in the hotel and in related services (airline check-in) - which have become cumbersome and time-consuming for travelers.