It is a well known fact
that people research the place they are about to visit before they actually set
off on the trip. Increasingly, travelers are looking for non-touristy
destination activities to enhance their travel experience. This is where companies
like Airbnb have stepped in to cater to a previously unmet need.
Airbnb realized a while
ago that people are hooked to their smart devices. In almost all cases, these
smart devices are Wi-Fi-enabled. So when you have smart travelers walking
around the destination with smarter devices, constantly looking for and
researching local options, it made perfect sense to deliver what they wanted!
Hence, the Airbnb Local Travel Guides. Initially seeded by the Airbnb team, these
travel guides soon harnessed the power of crowdsourced content to result in
unique destination activities options – with Airbnb cleverly included at the
heart of it all! Big win for everyone all around!
Today, these user-curated
lists have become the go-to destination for all travel aficionados. Hotels,
which have been watching services like Airbnb warily from the sidelines, were
not slow to step-up their game in this area. Hotel Indigo, a division of the
Intercontinental Hotels Group, launched something called Neighbourhood Guides a while
ago. It is an interesting step in the right direction.
A proprietary offering, the
interactive Neighbourhood Guides are only available at Hotel Indigo Hotels.
They offer complete details about the Hotel Indigo chain of hotel properties,
great neighbourhood stories, the city hotel team’s recommendations of unique
and interesting local attractions as well as access to a photo-sharing tool
linked to Facebook and other photo sharing networks. This gives the guests
access to great, curated lists of local activities which are not biased in favor
of the hotel itself. Rather, they actually end-up enhancing the guest travel
experience prompting many to re-consider other Hotel Indigo properties for
their next holiday experience.
The interactive
Neighbourhood Guide experience is also available on the Hotel Indigo Mobile
site. So even those travelers who aren’t actual guests of Hotel Indigo can
access and use the information to enhance their travel experience. This has
actually expanded the scope and freed-up what was the traditional service of
the old concierge at the Hotel lobby. After all, happy guests and visitors make
for assured return guests!
No comments:
Post a Comment