“AWS Is How”: the Accor hotels group is inspiring its customers with personalized travel experiences

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The international hotels group is using technologies which are fully integrated on AWS to create an innovative customer service approach and provide personalized experiences.

Hotel Vacation

That’s it, you’ve managed to get tickets for your dream destination and get away. Now you just need to find the ideal place to stay during this unique trip. You could spend hours checking marketplaces and opinions about holiday rentals and hotels, but most of all you want peace of mind and the certainty of staying somewhere that everything you might need is within easy reach.

Whether a guest has forgotten their toothbrush or they want to book a luxury spa day without stepping outside the hotel, the Accor hotels group strives to go above and beyond its customers’ expectations and provide each of them with inspiring and personalized experiences. To achieve this, the hotels group is supported by Amazon Web Services (AWS) technologies and uses scalable cloud solutions, along with smart Internet of Things devices which run on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Accor hosts millions of traveling customers in 5,200 hotels in 110 countries around the world, with the capacity to open one hew hotel every day.
 
The international hotels group is using technologies which are fully integrated on AWS to create an innovative customer service approach, to provide personalized experiences and to identify potential members for its loyalty program. By migrating its databases and its infrastructure to the cloud, Accor’s hospitality ambassadors can retrieve loyalty program information up to six times quicker than with the previous system. Accor has also improved its service response times and increased its visibility in order to adapt its customer service approach better. In 2018, the hotels group launched the Accor Consumer Digital Card which registers each customer’s own specific preferences and centralizes them with cloud technologies. Thanks to this information, Accor’s hospitality ambassadors can identify which customers are visiting their hotels for the first time and which ones are returning customers. They can create customer profiles which include individual preferences such as drinks, favorite meals and services required.
 
Accor also guarantees a high level of availability for its digital offers in the cloud in order to facilitate the collection of customer opinions in almost real time. Instead of receiving an opinion a long time after a customer has checked out, Accor encourages its customers to fill in a short questionnaire immediately when they connect to the wireless Internet network or by scanning QR codes displayed all around the hotel. Accor’s hospitality ambassadors use these comments to provide amazing and relevant experiences which enrich their customers’ stays, improve their overall satisfaction and increase their loyalty.

At Accor’s Mercure London Hyde Park hotel, the hotels group has strengthened their operational effectiveness and improved its customer service by equipping each of its charming rooms with AI-based devices which run on AWS. AI is the electronic science domain which is dedicated to resolving cognitive issues which are usually associated with human intelligence, particularly learning, problem-solving and model recognition. These smart devices use AI to answer any questions customers might have during their stay, for example, the latest checkout time or the location of the gym which is accessible 24/24 in the hotel. Customers can use simple commands to adjust the temperature of their room, call the concierge, order room service and check airport waiting times. Staff can also use these smart devices to inform reception when a room is ready. Internal processes are rationalized and customers who are traveling are sure of a much more pleasant experience both when they arrive and when they leave.

Mercure Hotel

Customer loyalty is a major strategic objective for the hospitality sector. In 2019, Accor launched ALL – Accor · Live Limitless, its loyalty program and booking platform in order to breathe life into the Group’s Augmented Hospitality vision. Didier Zapparata, SVP Engineering & Delivery at Accor, explains why the technological platform which supported the old loyalty program has been fully migrated to the AWS cloud. In particular, this is because of the range of services provided by AWS and also because of the expertise of its teams who have worked hand in hand with Accor throughout their project. This has resulted in an improved customer experience, maximum service availability and shortened time to market for the new services which are proposed to customers.

Behind the Innovation. AWS is how.

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