by: Aitana Jansana & Hasini Uthpala Ganewita
Both the Tourism Industry and the Hospitality industry are in constant development to meet today’s guest’s needs and expectations. In order to keep being updated and competitive within such a concurred market, every business sees themselves in the obligation of adapting their offered services and reinventing their core ideas to keep occupying the top positions of the different Hospitality ranking scales. This remarkable evolution that the Tourism industry is experiencing has provided the opportunity for different technological solutions to appear in order to cover new necessities during the customers’ journey.
SuitePad is one example of such. Founded in 2012 in Berlin, the company started as a provider of guest in-room tablets in order to enhance guest communication within hotels. By supplying hotel rooms with their tablet devices, they allowed guests to communicate with the hotel staff, avoiding the need for them to walk down the hall. Accompanying guests during their pre, during and post stages of their stay, they provide them with hotel services booking options; detailed information about the hotel services and relevant information about possible activities and spots to visit in the concrete destination. Establishing such service based on a B2B and B2C model, SuitePad not only enhances the quality of the guest stay in a hotel but also boosts both hotel revenue and local business revenues.
However, technical components are not less important. Providing an efficient, comprehensive, accessible and profitable service through technological devices as tablets are not that simple. By the learnings from their first prototype errors, SuitePad decided to invest in designing their own hardware, which gave them the prospect to avoid dependence from a third-party supplier and to adapt it precisely to the needs they aimed to cover.
Furthermore, performing in a highly turbulent and ever-evolving market requires a successful business strategy to keep updated, recognize and understand the contemporary targeted customers’ needs and expectations. Therefore, SuitePad chose to follow a ‘Go-to-market’ strategy, so that they could assure a strong customer base in the long-term. Even if the success of SuitePad is evident, it is crucial for a company like them to stay innovative. As a result of that, the company started to provide further devices than the in-room tablets with distinct features, for example the ‘SuitePad Lobby’, the ‘SuitePad BYOD’, the ‘SuitePad Phone’ and the ‘SuitePad TV Control’.
SuitePad also makes explicit their concern about sustainability by contributing to reduce the carbon footprint via the Green Solution. It is a precise opportunity at no additional expense. It encourages guests to omit the cleaning of the room in exchange for a small reward and the satisfaction of knowing they have positively contributed to the environment protection. SuitePad’s Green Option serves also as a key cost-saving source for hoteliers by facilitating them refinance their SuitePad subscription and significantly lower their carbon footprint.
Currently, while the COVID-19 crisis set the whole world at chaos, SuitePad has taken steps to help its clients to keep them informed about how to deal with this crisis through their push messaging service. SuitePad also offered tailormade solutions on how to tackle the upcoming COVID-19 travel boom by using digital technological solutions. For example, SuitePad has optimized its in-room tablet to enhance the use of room services in order to adapt to variable guest behavior during this crisis.
Because of their business strategy, their concern about current issues as sustainability and their high understanding of the market they are performing in, SuitePad occupied the top 1 position in the category of best Guest Room Tablet by hoteltech Awards 2020.