Hotel self-service reaches Africa

Southern Sun Garden Court, at Sandton City, has installed Africa's first hotel self check-in and check-out kiosks.

Southern Sun MD Graham Wood says: “The self-service environment permits guests to make choices at their own pace. It instils a sense of control, provides a quick service and maintains privacy. For those who prefer anonymity, self check-in is the perfect vehicle.”

The kiosk allows guests to check-in and out, and perform certain in-house functions, through a touch-screen application. To use the self check-in service, guests identify themselves at the kiosk with a reservation number or credit card. The kiosk integrates with the hotel's operational system, allocates a room, authorises a debit or credit, and dispenses a room key card.

Through a similar identification process, it also allows guests to check-out, charging to a debit or credit card, or billing back to the guest's company or travel agent, says Southern Sun.

Project manager Dawie Beyers says Southern Sun is monitoring the responses of customers using the kiosks and how long the process takes. This hotel was specifically chosen to host the first kiosk, because it is more of a business rather than a leisure hotel, according to Beyers. “The profile of guests using this hotel is very much geared toward this type of technology, because they find it nice and quick and short.”

Although the kiosks have been introduced for efficiency, Beyers admits that not everyone can be pleased. There are some users who have asked if they have to follow all of the steps in the check-in process - but regulation has to be adhered to and all the necessary steps must be followed.

Southern Sun is actively encouraging people to make use of the kiosks because “people won't use it if it just stands in a corner”, says Beyers. “People are scared to stick their credit cards into something they're not familiar with, but once they've used it, the ice is broken.”

In general, customers seem pleased with this innovation and, although the staff were at first apprehensive, because they thought this spelt a threat to their jobs, they have also embraced it, he notes.

“The kiosks can definitely not replace the staff. All guests have different requirements; some prefer the personal touch. We just want to free up the front desk staff in terms of taking down trivial details like names and numbers so that they can have more eye contact with customers,” explains Beyers.

The machines themselves are not very costly, according to Beyers, but bringing the kiosks into SA, integrating them into existing systems and testing them are the expensive parts of the installation, as this requires a lot of “man hours”.

Beyers says that, since the machines have only been running for a couple of weeks, there hasn't been enough time to have encountered all possible problems that may occur. “There was a power issue, but it was quickly sorted out. There are just little glitches, teething problems.”

In terms of maintenance, there isn't much besides ensuring the card stacker is always full since these are keys that customers would need for their rooms, and constantly replacing the paper for printing of receipts and confirmations, says Beyers.