TORONTO— The Four Seasons is known for old-world service and a highly involved staff. But it's 2015. So today, the chain is introducing a new app that lets you order room service and make housekeeping requests without picking up that old room phone. On a recent trip, I got a tour of the new app from Halla Rafati, the director of PR for Four Seasons Toronto.
The app's home screen shows your existing bookings. If you drill down to an individual hotel, you'll get shopping and entertainment tips from the concierge and staff. You can check in remotely, and if you give the app your flight details, it will keep the hotel informed if you'll be delayed. If you're checked in, you'll get the option to order room service, ask for housekeeping or maintenance, or order amenities like extra robes and toothbrushes.
Hotel technology companies have been demoing these kinds of apps for years, but they're difficult to implement because they require a lot of changes to back-end systems, especially in older properties, Rafati said.
Room service, for example, is a real bear. Ordering room service from an app means the app (ideally) needs to be connected to the system which prints tickets in the kitchen and tracks whether food has been prepared and delivered. It also needs to be hooked into the hotel's billing system, so the food can be charged to your room. Many large hotel brands have IT setups that are agglomerations of different systems purchased over time, and linking them can be tricky.
Four Seasons has managed to find systems that work at all of their properties, although sometimes staff, rather than automated systems, are doing work behind the scenes, said Four Seasons global SVP Elizabeth Pizzinato.
It's especially impressive that Four Seasons is doing this because as a high-end brand, its room service revenues are under less threat than in the three-star hotels of the world. GrubHub and Seamless have been cutting into midrange room service by offering a broader range of food at lower prices, but the Four Seasons customer is less price sensitive.
About that customer: Four Seasons is treating technology a little gingerly, Rafati says, because of its unusual guest profile. Four Seasons tends to attract an older, conservative crowd who don't want a lot of things to change—they want to be able to get room service by picking up the hotel phone and to order pay-per-view movies from the TV.
But it's also starting to bring in the next generation of luxury travelers. Waiting for Rafati in the lobby, I overheard two bearded impresarios vigorously discuss the music festival they were organizing for later in the summer. So Four Seasons technology needs to add options for the tech-savvy without taking away any of the high-touch amenities its core clientele demands.
Four Seasons isn't the first chain to debut an app with these kinds of features, but it's the widest available. W Hotels' similar app is only for iPhones. Four Seasons has iOS, Google Play, and Amazon Android versions. Conrad Hotels has a similar app, but only 28 properties. Virgin Hotels has a powerful app, but only has one hotel, in Chicago.
The new Four Seasons app is available today, and it works at all 94 of its hotels worldwide.