Providing a better experience for the digitally savvy, with little effort and low energy.
The ‘connected traveller’ is a well-known persona.
IATA showed that 60 per cent of international travellers use social media whilst travelling. Digital travellers expect high quality mobile, connectivity and digital services when on the move.
45% of UK smartphone users are comfortable researching, booking and planning their entire trip to a new destination according to Google Consumer Insights. A survey by TrustYou found that 54% of hotel guests had left an online review about a hotel, and 80% of travellers who received a request to leave one did so.
Beacons have been developed for a variety of uses and can be easily leveraged by any hospitality venue, hotel, camp site, theme park or destination. Beacons come in different designs but are all basically the same, a small device, that runs off a coin battery, and has a fixed identity (essentially, it transmits one-way signal, which says "hello, it's me - a Google Beacon, I'm here").
Beacons can be placed in and around your property and will automatically connect to guest's phones. They have one purpose, to give guests a fixed geographic location for pinpoint accuracy, more accurate than GPS. This is great for large hotels working over many floors, and outdoors in various side buildings.
As well as being able to buy and install your own beacons, Google is also sending out free beacons to selected businesses under the name ‘Project Beacon’. If you receive one, we recommend you install it in a sensible place according to the instructions.
Once you have set-up your beacons there are several benefits for your hospitality business.
Google will have more accurate peak visiting times and pin your business on Google maps more accurately. This is very useful if you have multiple offerings like accommodation, restaurants, a spa and wedding facilities in the same building, but in different locations.
Guests using their Google maps will be identified, asked questions, and presented with requests - such as adding photos and reviewing your business on Google.
Google likes real data, and by customers coming into your business and interacting via the beacon, they are providing hard evidence of their trip. This makes your business more trustworthy and helps improve your search engine rankings. The more popular your property is in real life, the better it will be displayed in natural search results.
If you are running pay per click ads via Google Ads, you can now use real visitors to your property as a goal. So if a visitor sees your ad, does not make a purchase, but instead visits your property, this can be connected to the ad and be reported as a success.
Google are providing free beacons which work out of the box. You can also buy them, which is a better option of you want to develop your own app to run along side them, or if you need more than one beacon for all of your business offerings.
For more information on Google Beacons, please visit the webpage.