Upon this renovation, Raffles saw an opportunity to enhance its old school heritage with sleek and discreet 21st century technology. The challenge was to retain the aura of the hotel’s colonial architecture while also providing modern travelers with the technology and comforts they’ve come to expect in a luxury stay.DigiValet designed an iPad based guest room solution that is not overpowering and makes life easier for the guests and hotel team.
The resulting Raffles guest room experience provides guests with handily control of room environment, entertainment and guest services along with the Legendary Raffles Butler Service.DigiValet designed the full guest room automation system with true juxtaposition — a fully innovative system inclusive of lighting, thermostat control, and curtains to meet the demanding needs of the ultra modern luxury traveler, while holding true to the core design element representative of the Bronze Period, depicted by the brass clad Porcelain rocker type switches — a true marriage betweem old-world charm and modern guest technology.DigiValet also provided easy access to information on social spaces, restaurants, spa making them as brighter, lighter, inviting and approachable.While there is an iPad based interface on display for the guest what makes the guest stay memorable are the magical moments through out the guest journey.
An integration with the property’s guest room door locks triggers a custom set welcome scene, bringing the room to life before the guest’s eyes. Lighting and curtains both autonomously adjust into the welcome scene, while a personalized welcome letter is displayed on the Television. A language selection screen appears on the iPad, and once the guest’s language preference is selected, the personalized welcome letter is duplicated onto the iPad. This becomes the entry point to the full DigiValet experience, custom created specifically for Raffles Singapore.
The Entertainment is fully loaded with Live TV and next generation streaming services such as Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime. Guest are also able to Airplay and Cast their own content in a seamless way as they do at home The guest also has the ability to sort channels through a variety of custom filters, such as language or genre.
The hotel in its new renovation has done away with check in counters in an endeavor to offer a differentiated arrival experience. This created a need for a novel check in solution which would empower the Front office executives to complete the check formalities in the comfortable environment of the guest room. DigiValet has been developing the custom paperless check in app for Raffles Singapore to allow for full guest check in capabilities, passport capture, and method of payment capture along with pre-authorization to fully integrate with the Raffles Singapore’s personalized check in. The assisted check in app will be available to the property in January, 2020.
The Butler serves as the main interaction between the hotel and the guest. The Raffles Butler feature is developed into the DigiValet solution in a manner that it always stays visible for the guest to easily use it.The Butler button gives the guest two options for communication – calling the room or coming to the room — allowing the guest to decide the interaction depending on the request. DigiValet has also opened the possibility of capturing the most requested items from the guest, and allowing them to be pre-populated at the top of the request screen for easy finding.Since the installation of the DigiValet system on property, Raffles Singapore is showing an 86% usage rate in Butler requests coming directly from the iPad.
The guests can prepare to go to “sleep” with a single touch. Should the guest be watching television, the solution is smart enough to recognise that the in-room TV is still on, and it triggers a request for a sleep timer. The guest can choose to wake up at a specific time with a music of the choice and lights gradually fading in. The deployment has been incredibly successful with a guest usage rate of 98% since inception.
Raffles Singapore was in a dilemma, fearing the introduction of technology to the guest room would not be welcome by its guests who come to embrace the old world charm.With over 90% guests using DigiValet iPad every day, this is no longer a concern. In fact, Raffles Singapore now charms the Millennials as much as it does its loyal customers.
