Hotel association confirms: SuitePads set to replace traditional guest directories

BERLIN, GERMANY - The underlying trend in the hospitality industry extends further into hotel rooms. As tablet-PCs in hotel rooms become more and more commonplace, the German hotel classification association recently reacted by allowing hotels to replace traditional guest directories, and other items in hotel rooms with tablet-PCs. In some cases, hotels are even awarded additional points in the classification process for offering guests digital services via tablet.

Tablet-PCs in hotel rooms made their first appearance roughly one year ago. Since then, the number of hotels switching to the in-room devices has increased substantially.

The German hotel classification association took this recent trend into account when revising its guidelines for hotels nationwide. Hotels are now able to replace a number of objects in hotel rooms, such as guest directories, TV channel lists, radios, etc. with tablets and administrate the information on the devices centrally. “We’re excited to see the classification guidelines now accommodating our vision of a paperless hotel room”, says Moritz v. Petersdorff-Campen, co-founder and MD at SuitePad. SuitePad’s clients can even look forward to earning extra points with their tablets, as the devices offer not only guest information, but also internet access, games, and daily newspapers. All of which count as extra digital services rewarded by the classification association with additional points.

The “guest directory 2.0” has come a long way since its launch one year ago, and is now widely regarded as the replacement for paper-based guest information. Increasing guest demand and plummeting prices for hardware are likely to contribute their share to the spread of this concept.