By Elizabeth Wasserman

Oct. 1, 2007—In the multibillion-dollar global hospitality industry, hotels, resorts and restaurants are competing fiercely to engender customer allegiance by creating loyalty programs and increasing their use of customer relationship management techniques, as well as with branding and marketing. Now many in the hospitality industry believe that radio frequency identification could give establishments that invest in the technology a competitive advantage, by personalizing the customer experience and making services more convenient.

It's a well-known fact in the hospitality industry that it's far costlier to attract new customers than to keep existing ones, especially high-end patrons. RFID may enable establishments to provide more personalized services and pampering that result in return business. For example, with RFID-enabled room key cards and RFID interrogators stationed at key locations on the premises, the concierge or the bartender in the lounge could greet guests by name. And if guests opted to have personal information loaded onto the RFID chips in their key cards, their rooms could respond to their preferences for temperature, lighting and even radio stations.



During the past few months, the RFID Hospitality Management Systems (RHyMeS) Center at Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore has been demonstrating to executives of hotels, resorts and casinos from all over the world how to use RFID to personalize services, which has attracted interest from several chains. "A number of hotels in Singapore would like to empower their staff, particularly those who come into regular contact with guests, with the ability to identify and recognize the guests," says Ng Poh Oon, manager of the RHyMeS Center, which opened in 2006. "With this capability, the hotel staff would then be able to provide that extra personal touch by addressing the guest by his/her name and anticipating his/her needs accordingly."