Current Location & Auto Information Updates Upgrades
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📆 February 23rd 2022 - 4min read
Late last year, we introduced Version 3 of our Hinfo service, which brought with it several major upgrades including F&B ordering, Guest Service Requests, Immediate Notifications and so much more.
With our first feature update since Version 3 (sequentially labeled Version 3.1), we are announcing today multiple upgrades to our Hinfo service, including an expansion of current location use cases, improved detection of information updates, refinements to our property feedback feature, plus many more refinements.
New Find Property Via Current Location Screen
As our member properties continue to adopt our Hinfo service, we have quickly run into situations with properties based next to each other, including but not limited to holiday homes.
When guests tap on the Current Locationbutton to find your property, they will now be presented with a list of all properties they are within the set radius of, for each property.
For the overwhelming majority of guests, only a single property will be listed on this screen, but we have designed this method to cater for guests that are in close proximity of 2 or more properties.
As soon as guests see their results, the GPS coordinates will stop updating in the background, which provides the same level of security as our previous implementation.
This upgrade is included in both our mobile app and website.
Unlock Secure Details via Current Location
In our Version 3.0 update, we introduced a new Secure Details feature, which allows your property to hide sensitive details to only guests that have verified to Hinfo that they are actually on-site.
Our methods to date include:
- Entering a dedicated Access Password that can be provided for each of your room types separately,
- Load the property details via the Current Locationoption (opt-in on a per property basis),
- Access on our website via your property's dedicated QR code (opt-in on a per property basis) and
- Guests that tap on the Open in Appoption on our website, to transition to our app after already verifying manually or via any of the above points.
Options 2-4 above are designed to avoid guests needing to enter the Access Password and today we are introducing another additional method.
For guests that access your property and local area details by our Search via Nameoption, they can now later on utlize our Unlock via Current Locationoption when asked for verification.
This means if the guest is looking at your details by the hotel pool, they can now verify they are on-site without needing to return to their guest room or reception to find and enter the access password.
This option will only appear for guests if each property gives permission in their allocated Hinfo CMS account for verifying via the Current Location.
Improved Property Information Updates Detection
One of the top reasons properties decide to join our service, is to easily be able to deliver property and local area information updates, to all guests, in all rooms, immediately.
For our mobile app users, we have with this release improved the detection of information updates coming in.
Previously, guests would have to close the app from the multitasking screen on their smartphone and relaunch from scratch for the updates to be detected.
Now, guests can simply navigate out of the app and re-enter (via home screen icon or multitasking screen) for the app to immediately check for updates, if the guest has an active internet connection.
Please note that this background check is limited to once per minute per device when the app is relaunched, to eliminate significant network congestion.
This means if a guest is switching between the Hinfo app and any other app on their smartphone in a short timeframe, it will only check for updates once per minute.
Promote On-Site Activities and Local Places Together
In a previous upgrade to our service, we added support for rebranding our Near Mesection to be labelled as Activities.
This was originally designed to cater for resorts etc. that have only activities to promote and no local attractions/restaurants etc. to include.
Today, we are adding a new category to the Near Me section called On-Site Activities.
This means if your property wants to promote activities available on the premises above the local attractions/restaurants/supermarkets etc. in the local area, you can now include both.
Encourage Repeat Guest Room Reservations
This upgrade to our service not only focuses on refining our service further, but also introduce an additional option to drive additional revenue.
Your property can provide a Property Reservations URL in the Account Details tab of your CMS account, which will appear in the Home tab for guests.
This link when provided will direct guests to your online booking engine, to assist with driving repeat visits from guests. E.g. reserving dates ahead for the next summer holiday season.
You can also utilize this to save on booking fees if the guests book through your property's website directly (depending on the booking system you use).
Property Feedback Option When Guests Leave The Property
Last but not least, the final big improvement added to our service today, is promoting the Property Feedbacksection (if your property is using it) when guests tap on the Leave button.
We decided to implement this to improve exposure to the property feedback section and it also due to being contextually relevant since guests are departing.
If your property does not already have this enabled, you can enable this via the Property Feedback section of your Hinfo CMS account, otherwise the original "Are you sure you want to leave? Yes or No?" alert will still appear.
Minor Upgrades
At the same time, we also include the following minor updates throughout the service.
- Minor tweaks to the property feedback standard questions,
- All property search results now display the country of each property in full,
- Properties found via current location now each display the suburb, state and country,
- Removed alerts for phone buttons throughout the service to eliminate an additional step and
- Multiple Bug Fixes and behind the scenes improvements.
All of these updates are available now for guests to access and the new options are also accessible via your property's CMS account.
