Part Four - Social Wifi® Impacts Future Hotspot Technology

Part Four 

Ryan concludes our interview by sharing how Social Wifi® is destined to make a positive impact on the future of Wi-Fi technology. 

What makes your product better and more innovative than your competitors' products?

RYAN

We are giving restaurateurs, hoteliers and other service-based companies a tool that adds tremendous value in enhancing their social media presence, email marketing reach, loyalty initiatives and customer engagement - for pennies on the dollar!

Currently, millions of hospitality and service-based businesses are providing Wi-Fi to their guests in ways that can do irreparable damage to their businesses. It's now established that providing a Wi-Fi hotspot is simply the cost of doing business, but providing Wi-Fi in and of itself means very little in terms of return for their business: it's like having a family of five and using a bicycle as your means of transportation - just doesn't make sense!

We customize the platform based on each client's brand. We fully manage the system, provide 24x7 monitoring, security, and it does not interface with their existing systems, such as their POS, PMS, etc. This means the client has a marketing, social media, loyalty promotion engine all built into their Wi-Fi and they don't have to touch it nor worry about it.

Do you think other industries, outside of hospitality and service-based, will follow suit in the next few years? 

RYAN

It only makes sense for them to follow suit. If you can have a tool that is: customized to your business, doesn't have to be managed by your staff, improves your branding, adds sales and promotional channels, is highly secure and doesn't impede daily operations - all without you lifting a finger - wouldn't you use it?

How do you foresee your product impacting the hi-tech/Wi-Fi technology industry in general?

RYAN 

Don't we all hope that we invented the next Facebook, Twitter, or Google for that matter? Who knows what the future brings?

What we do know, is that businesses are in a position to reap and continue to see long-term success by integrating one small, discreet tool (Social Wifi®) that gives customers what they want and the business more than they could ever hope for in less than 30 seconds!  I also know that by focusing on our clients' success, Social Wifi® will see similar success as well.

 

Part Three - How Social Wifi® Puts Hospitality Companies on the Map

Part Three...continued 

Ryan Chambers, principal of Adapt Marketing & Design and co-founder of Social Wifi®, explains how their hot spot technology helps hospitality businesses market smarter and faster to customers. 

How will Social Wifi® put hospitality-based and service-based industries on the map?

RYAN

Social Wifi® will be one of the most cost-effective tools businesses will have. What's really going to expose their brand is simply their customers who access the Wi-Fi hotspot. Within seconds of hopping on the hotspot - whether by mobile device, laptop or iPad - the customer is exposed to the client's social media hubs, specials, incentives, mobile campaign and is seamlessly transitioned into the opt-in email invitation.

For any business owner, CMO or marketing manager, all this data that is provided freely by their customers is worth its weight in gold! We can even segment all the way from zip codes to date of birth! So that's just the first part of how our hospitality clients win.

Then, from your Social WiFi® hotspot, customers begin to engage your brand again OR for the first time! Customers spread this viral buzz to their friends and fans, watch in interactive videos, and check out the latest deals and specials all from your digital playing field.

How does Social Wifi® alleviate their fears and worries?

RYAN

First, to the person who doesn't want people camping out, we let them know that the nature of his concept or business is what's going to create campers.

If your average menu item is at or over $8 - or your average ticket is over $11 - then you're least likely to have groups of people stay there for hours at a time - simply because it's too pricey to eat and surf for extended periods. The other way of looking at this is, if some patrons do stay at your establishment for 2.5 hours, then this gives your servers an opportunity to sell more, as well as managers to at least say hello to their customers!

For the person who thinks their customers don't use or need Wi-Fi, that translates to the business operator not knowing that people are connected to the web via their mobile devices – which are used now more than ever. These operators are also unaware of location-based advertising and its huge success.

Research shows that in August 2010 over 55 percent of hospitality locations are now offering free Wi-Fi. By December 2010, we anticipate that will be over 60 percent. The data also showed that 40 percent of women and 47 percent of men are more likely to engage brands that have content relevant to their current location.

Basically, the business is out of touch and sometimes it’s a matter of enlightening them. In other cases, you just have to thank them for their time and move on! You can't force someone to care. For corporate concerns, since the only thing Social Wifi® needs is an internet connection, it will not interfere with any business

Part Two - Why Hotels & Restaurants Don't Use Social Media

Part Two...continued

Ryan Chambers, principal with Adapt Marketing & Design and co-founder of Social Wifi®, tackles the big debate in the hospitality industry. Why don't hotels & restaurants use social media? 

Why are hospitality & service-based businesses still hesitant and/or fearful to use social media? 

RYAN 

Social media and hospitality go hand-in-hand. I think a year or two ago there was still hesitation from a significant part of the industry to avoid social media. It was sort of a ‘wait and see’ mentality. Plus, it was like any other industry. They didn't want to touch a new technology until the critical mass had validated it.

You saw the early adopters - the independent restaurant owners - who needed every single advantage they could get to keep their door opens, then, the larger franchises like Taco Bell.

On the hotel side, your boutique hotels picked up the torch, then your larger hotel brands followed suit.  You see the same thing happening on the food & beverage side now. The hospitality industry, historically, can be one of the slowest turning ships. For decades, decision makers have adopted the classic "if it ain't broke..." mentality. Innovative marketing was not a priority for hotels, partly because they had a number of tentacles touching the consumer on their behalf: travel agents, tourists, business travelers, convention centers, etc.

So with all these opportunities to generate business, the hotel’s Marketing Director or Manager is really just a sales person with a cool title. And that's not a knock on them. It just shows how the organization prioritized certain initiatives.

With restaurants you had the same issue but a little more exaggerated, partly because margins in some cases can be very thin. So when they’re looking at your books every month and they're making money, then there used to be little incentive in their minds to market or to ‘waste time’ on social media.

Then when you add ignorance about a technology and a lack of desire to do anything different, you've got a perfect recipe for stagnation. But there were three important things that kicked the industry in the butt and ultimately changed this mindset. First, the hospitality industry began to notice the social-media-successes from other industries like Entertainment (music especially) and Human Capital (mainly recruiting), and so it began to open their eyes.

Second, they began to feel the effects of the looming recession and when that bad boy hit us, it was like a bully pulling away your chair as you're about to sit. Things were not so predictable anymore - patrons held out, so revenue was shrinking. This meant they had to look at every possible angle and ways to reach out for the sale.

Then finally, we began to see a shift in the workforce - the Millennials and the progressive Gen X's were working together! Talk about an invasion on the old-school's way of doing business! Don't get me wrong, we didn't change a lot of the key business principles, but because on the outside we changed how we wanted companies to do business with us, it inevitably meant that we took these 'new-age' principles into the corporate arena. So now you have an educated, informed, progressive group of marketers who understand, love and live by social media. They not only use social media to ultimately encourage the sale, but to also build brands, engage their audience and participate in what's going on outside the four walls.