Hinfo vs. In-Room Printed Hotel Compendiums
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6min read
Unlock a better way to keep your guests informed and connected during their stay.
Hinfo delivers what printed hotel compendiums can't — seamless communication, instant updates, and effortless access to essential details.
Many properties still rely on printed compendiums to showcase amenities, services, and local tips. But these outdated solutions are costly, hard to maintain, and anything but convenient when updates are needed.
In this post, we'll explore how the Hinfo Guest Digital Compendium transforms the guest experience, offering advantages that printed guides simply can't match, along with its value proposition.
Guest Access Anywhere
Hinfo is accessible on all digital devices (via our mobile app and web-based solution), which your guests already bring to your property.
With guests carrying their smartphones everywhere they go and 97% of guests accessing our service via their smartphone, providing an easily accessible solution to your guests is now more viable than ever before.
Fully Contactless Solution
The printed compendiums you provide in each guest room are less than ideal for on-going maintenance.
With needing to do a quick or thorough clean of each folder, your property is now investing more unnecessary time and labour to keep them clean and sanitized.
At Hinfo, we believe that minimizing the number of surfaces you need to clean thoroughly on every guest changeover, will result in improved time efficiency and less stress for your housekeeping staff.
Unlimited Information Updates with Auto Delivery
Printed compendiums quickly become outdated, making it hard to keep guest information accurate. Updating even small details, like a phone number or room service pricing, takes significant time, cost, and effort—often discouraging properties from making updates at all.
Hinfo solves this with unlimited, instant updates. All changes are automatically delivered to every guest, removing the hassle of manual delivery.
With Hinfo, you can focus on keeping guest details current, without the time and labor of managing printed compendiums.
Individual Access for Every Single Guest
As of late 2023, there are now almost 7 billion smartphones and tablets in use regularly worldwide.
Your guests are already bringing their own devices to use during their stay, including smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
This means your guests no longer need to huddle around the single printed compendium or wait their turn, to view the details most important to them.
Environmentally Friendly
In recent years, there's been a strong push for greater environmental sustainability in all aspects of life.
With Hinfo, your guests can access everything they need right from their own devices. This means no more bulky binders or extra hardware to communicate with guests.
By switching to Hinfo, you'll save materials and eliminate the need for replacements due to wear and tear, making it a smarter, greener choice.
Guest Messaging
Hinfo allows your guests to send a message to your reception staff, from anywhere, by providing only their first name and room number.
This provides your guests the option of not needing to go to reception to ask a quick question and both your staff and guests can respond in their own time.
Multiple Languages
Supporting multiple languages for your hotel compendiums, no longer requires using additional resources in each guest room.
To support more than just English in your hotel compendiums, there are 3 components to achieve this.
- Time and cost to translate to each language,
- Additional resources needed in each room, and
- Time and labour to deliver details to each guest room.
Our Hinfo service has an optional Auto Translate service for 14 languages we support on-top of English, which addresses the first component.
Publishing the updates via our cloud-based solution, delivers the details directly to your guest's devices, which also eliminates points 2 and 3 above.
Notifications
All printable content is static content.
This is especially important when specific information is time sensitive.
Hinfo allows you to schedule notifications ahead of time and send on-demand, to make guests aware when they matter most, wherever they are.
For example, promoting your specials at your in-house restaurant, 1-2 hours before dinner service.
Keyword Search
With printed compendiums today, your guests may be flipping back and forth between all the pages of content you provide, trying to find the exact details they are looking for.
With keyword search built into our digital guidebook, your guests can now search for the details they are looking for, which is a faster way to find the exact details they are looking for.
One-Tap Calling, Web Browsing and Directions
If guests want to learn more about a local restaurant listed in your printed compendiums by visiting their website, then phone to book a table and/or look up driving/walking directions to that restaurant, what is the first thing they would do for each of these?
They would immediately grab their smartphone!
Hinfo allows your guests to view webpages, get directions and dial phone numbers instantly, for all local places/events and services listed, creating a more seamless experience.
Guest Usage Analytics
Traditional printed compendiums cannot provide you valuable analytics on the level of engagement your compendium details are receiving.
Hinfo provides your property management useful statistics based on the number of guests viewing your property on our service, how many views for each section/local attraction etc.
These details are all provided in an anonymous statistical manner, that also respects your guest's privacy.
Cost Comparison
Now that you understand what is unique with our hotel compendium format compared to printed compendiums, you must be thinking this has to come at a premium.
This is not the case at all, because we can provide you an upgrade that is better value for money overall, by eliminating the need for any costly resources to be provided in each guest room.
Each printed compendium is costed at an average of $40 each, which factors in their production and delivery.
For a 50 room property, Hinfo is up to 51% cheaper compared to replacing printed compendiums every 2 years and does not factor the additional time and cost to clean and distribute information updates.
Depending on your property's room count, our Hinfo service breaks even with the upfront cost of printed compendiums every 1.5 - 5 years, assuming their is only a single binder folder during this duration.
To conclude, the cost of Hinfo is on-par or significantly less than printed compendiums (depending on your property size). You also receive several unique benefits that reduced time and labour for your management, whilst also increasing ease of access for guests.
To learn more about our Hinfo service via a copy of our beginner's guide or request a demo, please send us an enquiry via the form below.
Date of Publishing: 22nd June 2021
Date Last Updated: 19th December 2024
