IHG Hotels & Resorts Introduces Effortless Wi-Fi Connection for Guests Worldwide

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IHG Hotels & Resorts Introduces Effortless Wi-Fi Connection for Guests Worldwide

IHG Hotels & Resorts (IHG), a leading hotel company with a global presence, is thrilled to announce the launch of a new mobile product feature – IHG Wi-Fi Auto Connect. A first-of-its-kind innovation available at scale in hotels, this feature is now available exclusively in the IHG One Rewards mobile app for both iOS and Android users and will automatically connect IHG One Rewards members to Wi-Fi upon arrival at more than 5,000 IHG hotels worldwide – no separate passwords or logins needed!

IHG Wi-Fi Auto Connect is enabled by the newly redesigned IHG app and IHG’s proprietary internet solution, IHG One Rewards Wi-Fi. Globally, the company logs more than 5.3 million monthly Wi-Fi logins. With this new solution, guests who opt-in via their mobile devices will join the internet upon entering a hotel without having to worry about separate login codes or passwords, saving time and enjoying a better user experience. A one-time set-up is required via the app where the member user can enable auto connection via settings. The functionality empowers guests visiting a hotel for a meeting, overnight stay or dining at a restaurant in a hotel.

“We know that our guests expect seamless instant connectivity and convenience, especially when it comes to Wi-Fi. At IHG, we are constantly looking for ways to enhance the guest experience, and IHG Wi-Fi Auto Connect is just one example of how we’re doing that,” said Brian McGuinness, Senior Vice President, Global Guest Experience, IHG Hotels & Resorts. “The solution will deliver IHG One Rewards members with even better connectivity and a seamless experience across 5,000+ hotels around the world.”

Motivated to improve the guest experience for loyalty members, the company continues to innovate and prioritize technology, comfort, and convenience. In addition to the improved Wi-Fi experience, the app has new enhancements designed for speed and convenience, including a new lock screen widget feature on iOS. Widgets allow guests to see their points balance and upcoming stays from the lock screen of their device, and to quickly launch the app. The app has also recently launched booking features allowing guests to select room enhancements during booking, including rooms with specific views or more space.

Technology in Hospitality, Evolution, Innovation and Guests.

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In hospitality, technology is a complicated problem. For an industry that has historically excelled and set the bar for customer experience, buying technology solutions has not been on the top of the list. Not because hoteliers like to be old fashioned, but because until recently guests really didn't care. Guests do care about the quality of the mattresses; they care about the wear in the carpets. They care about hot water, air conditioning and operational elevators.

But innovation and competitive advantage in guest experience and comfort is not going to come from installing an elevator or hot water. Those innovations were solved a long time ago. On the material side of comfort, innovation has pretty much plateaued. The future of innovation in guest experience is through technology.

In the 2000s there were approximately one billion computer users, most of them PC users, either wealthy enough to have a computer at home or they had to use a computer at work or school. In other words, very few of the guests were active computer users during their stay. Today we have over four billion computer users, most of them using a smartphone. We can quite safely assume that every hotel guest is now an active computer user during their stay.

The future of hotel guest experience is based on how good your technology is. Let me explain.

"Hospitality being slow to adopt."

In the hospitality industry and more specifically, the technology side of the hospitality industry, it is often said that technology moves slowly. That hotels don't invest enough in technology, and thus systems are old, and new technology doesn't get adopted fast enough.

But if one looks back over the last century and if we look up from our iPhone and it's frantic iteration cycle that we've been accustomed to, things have evolved - a hundred years ago we celebrated elevators in hotels. Today guests complain if there isn't a ramp up to the front desk.

Enterprise technology doesn't evolve fast, from a vendor side, it might, but for the customer side, it doesn't. In fact despite everyone being tired of hearing cloud-this and cloud-that today only 20-30% of Fortune 100 companies have moved to cloud systems. And those old mainframe computers that were invented in the 1950s and which most people only get to see in movies, well they're still selling, in fact, over 70% of the Fortune 500 companies use them

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