Today let´s talk to Jose Luis Amat Fuster, who is a Product Manager for Mobile Apps and IBE at hetras.
Jose, why did you create this App?
I have been working as a consultant for couple of years and I have spent a lot of time in business trips. I always found it very bothersome to wait for the check-in and check-out process. Sometimes, the queues would take forever, personnel would be slow and it was always the same tedious procedure accompanied by the same questions and information requests over and over again. At hetras, we thought about making the guest journey more pleasant, reducing waiting time to the minimum.
What does the hetras App offer?
We offer a simple, but at the same time, extremely powerful and convenient automated guest journey. A user friendly interface of the branded App allows a guest to create an effortless booking, check-in quickly, get a mobile room key and open the her room with the smartphone. Besides that, we added some additional features in order to increase the comfort of the hotel stay. Weather forecast and route-planning are among them. And to check-out? No need, just walk out! hetras branded app will do it for you!
Tell us more about your App project.
We have been working on the app for about 6 month now. The app has been built on top of our hetras public API which is publicly available for third-party development. Integration cutting-edge technology might get very challenging at times, but the team loves challenges and tackles them with enthusiasm an passion! The guest front-end team members come from Iran, Poland, the UK, Germany and Spain. This diversity indeed adds excitement into our daily work, as well as constantly feeding new ideas. We have already started the app deplyoment for our customer in the UK, Village Hotel Club. Key provider Kaba has been integrated in the solution. Our plan is to deploy hetras appp in all Village porperties by ethe end of year.
Currently, we are finalizing an intergration with the biggest key provider worldwide Assa-Abloy, in order to serve the next customer in the pipline, Qbic Hotels. For customers using hetras PMS and one of the already integrated key providers we would be able to set up and deploy a new branded mobile app within couple of days.
Do you think every hotel needs a App? Does this make sense?
I believe the hotels which need the mobile app are those hotels which want to be different, those which want to innovate. Innovation is one of the key components to make a business stand out and create a ‘wow’ effect among their customers.
José Luis Amat Fuster studied Computer engineering; he has been living in Germany for more than 4 years. He loves German beer but misses a lot the sun from his hometown Alicante and, of course, Spanish tapas. He has lots of hospitality experience due to the travel agency of his mother.
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