WINGATE INNS

In 1999, Wingate Inns was a Cendant brand—the largest hotel company in the world. The Wingate brand caters to frequent business travelers in sales and technical support who require advanced in-room services such as laptop connections, portals, and high-speed Internet connections for their laptops.

The Challenge

The challenge at Wingate was to create then sell a vision of a high speed Internet enabled hotel to franchisees. Without their financial commitment, the improvements couldn’t be made and the brand wouldn’t be able to fulfill its promise to guests.

The Solution

The solution was to consider the hotel experience from the guest’s point of view. All the touchpoints and potential technologies were considered. Then, a video scenario of the ideal guest experience was created. Rather than prototypes of software, prototypes of a guest’s interaction with each system were staged then captured on film.

The Results

The results were better than expected. Seeing a guest in a “hotel of the near future” interacting successfully with the proposed personalization and data mining technologies gave the franchisees the comfort and confidence they needed to decide to fund the improvements—which also avoided financial impact on the corporate bottom line.