Skift Take
In an age where almost anything can be on-demand and every hotel company says it wants to personalize and customize hotel guest experience, why is it still so hard for us to get the exact room we want to stay in?
Have you ever wondered why it is you can't, in most cases, book the exact hotel room you want? You know, the room that's not near the elevator, but close enough to the ice machine (but not too close), and with views of the beach instead of the hotel parking lot.
We get to pick our own airline seats (even if we often wind up with the middle seat), so why is it that we can't do the same with our hotel rooms?
This is something only one major hotel chain, Hilton Worldwide, and one hotel metasearch company, Room 77, which licensed its technology to Google two years ago, seemed to have figured out, to varying degrees.
A Tale of Two Apps/Sites
Using Hilton's mobile app, Hilton HHonors loyalty members can pick the exact room they want to stay in via mobile check-in starting at 6 a.m. the day before their booked stay. The feature debuted in the summer of 2014 on its mobile app, and last week, Hilton announced that it teamed with Google Maps to give guests a better perspective as to what kind of views their rooms will have, and where they are in relation to the hotel's surroundings. Rooms offered via digital check-in are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
However, as far back as 2011 or even further, Hilton had enabled its guests to choose their own rooms 36 hours or less before arrival on desktop. Back then, the feature excluded Hilton's upscale Waldorf-Astoria and Conrad brands, and the company was still testing out the pick-your-own-room feature to see if the demand was there.
Since Hilton's digital check-in with room selection launched on its app, that feature is now available at more than 4,500 Hilton Worldwide properties out of the company's more than 4,660. Guests have used the feature more than 13 million times, and Joshua Sloser, Hilton Worldwide's vice president of digital product innovation, estimates that one in four Hilton HHonors members is using the feature.
Sloser say
