3 Reasons Why Hinfo is a Subscription-Based Model
← Blog Main Menu
5min read
Since launching Hinfo back in 2017, some properties have questioned why our service is sold on a subscription-based model.
We understand this is an entirely different way of thinking how you are paying for your hotel compendiums, but we strongly believe in the benefits of this for your property management, mainly for being a digital solution.
As you will quickly realize, our motivation from the beginning was always to be a subscription-based model, to help keep costs down for you, including over the long term.
Dramatically Lower Upfront Investment
All successful businesses rely on a positive cash flow.
Acquiring a new asset or service for any business is more manageable in smaller payments, than one large upfront expense, especially if the latter is several thousands of dollars.
Our Hinfo service is available with either an annual or monthly membership. Every property pays no more than one year in advance at a time.
Either of these add up to significantly less than any other digital solution and is cheaper for most property sizes up-front compared to paper-based hotel compendiums.
Depending on your room count, Hinfo is 57-98% cheaper on average compared to other traditional and digital options after the first year of use.
Most of this difference is due to requiring dedicated resources in each room.
With printed in-room compendiums needing to be replaced every couple of years due to wear and tear, Hinfo will always work out at cheaper while doing more for you and your guests.
For larger investments like TV compendiums and Hotel Tablets, Hinfo takes several years, if not decades to break-even with the upfront hardware cost.
Another comparison is that providing a hotel tablet in one guest room, costs more than our Hinfo service does when paid annually, for many small to medium sized properties.
If your property wanted their own mobile app and website solution, with the same feature set as our Hinfo service, it would require a six-figure upfront investment. The on-going maintenance cost for this would also be multiple times more than joining our Hinfo service annually.
On-going Support and Maintenance
Any piece of software or online service is like a car. They are initially in perfect condition, but a lack of on-going maintenance will lead to significant costly issues to fix.
All major online services receive continuous updates, even if it is for simple little fixes. Here's a list of popular iPhone apps and how many updates they received in the last several months.
App |
Number of iPhone App Updates |
Duration for All Updates |
Twitter/X |
25 |
2 Months |
25 |
4 Months |
|
25 |
4 Months |
|
Uber |
25 |
4 Months |
YouTube |
25 |
5 Months |
25 |
5 Months |
|
The New York Times |
25 |
5 Months |
Spotify |
25 |
7 Months |
TikTok |
25 |
8 Months |
The Weather Channel |
25 |
10 Months |
Zoom |
25 |
12 Months |
All figures provided above are as of early December 2024.
This shows that all popular apps are regularly updated, anywhere from weekly to monthly on average.
But why are these updates important?
Software that receives continuous updates are far more like meet the following criteria:
- Work reliably with all operating systems (including iOS for iPhone and iPadOS for iPad, along with Android),
- Increased security and less vulnerable to attacks,
- Works with the latest devices and operating systems as they launch to the public by leading manufacturers, including Apple, Google, Samsung, Huawei etc. and
- Work on all device types and screen sizes reliably.
Any software service that has an up-front cost, has little to no incentive, to update their software, since there is no on-going financial incentive to do so.
Future-Proof Service with Continual Development
For every software as a service (SaaS) business, if they were to include every feature possible and not have a single technical or security issue, the software would never reach public available.
This applies for Hinfo, online accounting software, social media networks etc.
Our Hinfo Guest Digital Compendium has a roadmap for how we plan to continuously improve our service, with almost every feature on the roadmap being considered bonus over the current feature set.
We are open to supporting new operating systems and devices that have a decent acquisition in the consumer market. For example, iPhone, iPad and Android make up around 95% of all smartphones worldwide, so it's not viable to support the other 5%, which is where our Hinfo.com website comes in to fill in the gaps.
The future is unpredictable!
The current trends in the tech space, suggest that foldable smartphones and tablets, along with smart watches and smart glasses will become a bigger part of the consumer market device in the years to come.
If you bought a digital hotel compendium solution outright today, your property will not be ready for the future, when guests staying at your property are using these new categories of portable devices.
This point alone is worth repeating!
Smartphones and tablets may not remain the only primary consumer devices several years from now, that your guests are using today. Investing your time and money into a service that will adapt to new technology trends, is a safer choice.
Moreover, the fact our solution is fully contactless makes our service compared to all other alternatives, priceless.
To conclude, our service is the most cost-effective solution on the market and provides the best value for money to properties of all types and sizes.
To get started with our cost-effective Hinfo Guest Digital Compendium, please send us an enquiry via the form below.
Date of Publishing: 31st March 2020
Date Last Updated: 3rd December 2024
