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CU AT4: SMS boosts hotel services

By Nick Easen for CNN

An SMS will tell you which hotel room you've booked online.
An SMS will tell you which hotel room you've booked online.

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(CNN) -- Don't know your room number? Wonder what the latest hotel or restaurant deal is? Does your room need cleaning?

SMS information on mobile phones is answering these questions and making inroads into Asia's hotel services from Singapore to Japan.

If you book a room online through the Singapore National Trades Union Congress, you will receive notification of your room number via SMS two days before you check in.

And now when your room is cleaned the housekeeper sends an SMS to update the hotel management.

Towards the end of your visit you may also get another SMS offering you preferential rates to stay longer.

"Today's technology is so cheap and we needed to cut down the queues and phone calls to the hotel asking which room people were in," Anthony Rodriguez from Hotel Information Systems told CNN.

"We can also target future guests -- we can filter through the hotel's history so if she/he stayed 10 times and spent $3,000, we can send them a special SMS inviting them back."

Grand Hyatt Singapore is also using a software system that tracks guests' demands.

Bellboys are alerted by SMS if they need to deliver or pick up luggage while a request for a towel goes to a call center and is redirected via an SMS to a staff member.

In Japan, Hilton Tokyo and Hilton Otaru hotels use mobile phone marketing programs to generate customer loyalty for their food and beverage outlets.

"Hilton Mobile Club" inputs restaurant patrons', e-mail addresses for their mobile phone and other customer information, such as birthdays and gender into a database and sends out e-promotions, discounts and surveys.

"Mobiles are an excellent media," Gunnar Brandberg of Hilton International told CNN.

"They are always within reach of the consumer even when moving. It is a media used during relaxation periods and when people want to kill time."


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