When Monscierge first began our journey, we spent several days working in the back-of-house with staff at a well-known hotel in downtown Oklahoma City. Their team talked with us about their passion for our industry, their love for their guests, and the challenges they face every day. I asked one of the bell staff “If you could change one thing about the operation of your hotel, what would it be?” Without hesitation he said “I’d kill the cheeseplate. Every day I deliver complimentary cheeseplates as welcome gifts to our VIP guests, and every day I’m the guy that later discards most of all of them – totally untouched. If I could tailor the welcome gifts to something each guest truly valued, they would feel cared for, I would feel more invested in the people I’m caring for each day and we’d reduce significant waste at the hotel. Everyone wins.”
We at Monscierge couldn’t agree more. Over the last ten years, I’ve been privileged to work with some of the world’s brightest hospitality minds. Our mission?
To kill the cheese plate. With help from one particular person in the industry – we’ve figured out how.
Let me explain.
In 2014, Monscierge and Dolce Hotels and Resorts entered into a relationship where we connected with the then VP of Technology, John Edwards. We’ve since embarked on a journey together discovering new ways to implement hotel technology. Now the CIO at the Red Lion Hotel Corporation, Edwards and the Monscierge team have worked to create a platform that transforms the guest journey from just “taking trips” to instead, “having experiences”.
The only way to get there was to start with a complete, unified work of technology that allowed hotels to connect and communicate with guests throughout the entire journey. Most industries had this technology years ago, and have set the bar high for user expectations with regard to what a platform like that can do, especially in hospitality, an industry thats very foundation is service.
Beginning with thought-leaders like Edwards, we discovered more partners with similar goals and began building a new ecosystem of service, for the service industry.
To accelerate the mission, Apple is helping us impact the iOS traveler’s experience faster and better than we can on our own. And with options like Apple Financial Services our hotelier clients are able to support their largest-scale rollouts and get help managing their device inventories. With guidance from the teams at Apple, we are transforming the guest experience by using the Apple Watch combined with beacon technology for guest recognition, and putting iPads in guests rooms to recommend local experiences and book onsite amenities, and developing the Apple TV to order room service and stream guests’ content better and faster. As an Apple MPP partner, we’ve built an experience center that realizes this journey; for others to experience first-hand using live product in the field.
Monscierge’s patented communication framework – delivered through Apple to the guests and staff of the Red Lion Hotel Corporation – will soon incorporate machine learning and AI to connect guests to immersive local experiences. Having the functionality and power of one platform combined with partners like John Edwards, Red Lion, and Apple – we have only just begun to scratch the surface of what’s now possible in hospitality technology.
We’re now taking what we’ve discovered with Red Lion and deploying it with some of the world’s largest brands. We’re strengthening the connection between hotel staff and guests every day. We’re customizing and personalizing the guest journey like never before. Yep. We’re killing the cheese plate.
To visit the Monscierge Experience Center and see how we’re killing the cheese plate in hospitality, you can reach me at:
killingthecheeseplate@monscierge.com