With DigiValet a single touch can revolutionise your stay in hotels. Shibaji Roychoudhury tells you more
Ever wondered how it’ll be if you had one controller to switch on/off the light in your room, to control the TV set, to operate the shower with hot or cold waterIJ That would be cool, wouldn’t itIJ No, this isn’t the remote from Adam Sandler’s movie —Click nor is it a product from Steven Spielberg next Sci-fi film, rather, this gadget is for real and is already in use at various prominent hotels across the globe.
“DigiValet is an iPad based one stop solution for hotels which allows guests to control all in-room facilities with the ease of a touch screen. With just one touch of a screen, guests can control room lights, adjust air conditioning temperature, open and close multi layered drapes, operate the television and easily browse multiple channels, order food from room service, access movies and music on demand from current and classic hits,” Rahul Salgia, creator and developer of DigiValet says.
There are several other facilities also available that can be accessed on the tab — international radio stations, one can surf YouTube and stream the videos onto the TV screen, access a host of international newspapers from over 90 countries, communicate with hotel services such as housekeeping, Surf the internet on TV and many more things.
“It is already quite popular among our in-hotel guests who use the DigiValet to check who is at the door on the device and unlock the door via the electronic devise itself.They feel safe and secure that way. Guests can also check the billing status at any point of time, check out from the hotel and pay the bill, set up a wake-up call, browse the spa menu and book treatments etc,” Salgia tells you proudly.
How it works is simple. There is an intelligent or smart box set up in the room which is synced to command boxes in every department of the hotel. There are different softwares which again are synced to the intelligent box which communicates with the box and receives the commands sent from the different boxes of different rooms.
“The iPad is always talking to this smart box through an invisible encrypted wi-fi technology which processes commands. While the software processes the commands given from the iPad to different departments in the hotel, there hardware commands, like switching on the lights or working the TV set are carried through cables. Hence there are different encrypted protocols which the box operates either through software or through engineered cables,” Chandan Roy, head of engineering and IT solutions, ITC Maurya tells you.
The technology also simplifies a lot of confusion that is otherwise created. For instance, a hotel like ITC Maurya which has about 400 rooms and usually on high occupancy, manually placing, lets say a breakfast order can be a time consuming and complex activity.
“Previously, if a customer orders for a continental breakfast, it would ideally take him 15-20 minutes to place the order. From choosing the kind of flakes: wheat, corn or puffs, to the options in milk: skimmed or full cream, to the juices and to the side orders.
“Moreover, a customer also gets confused with so many different options and takes time to decide. However, with this new gadget, customers can easily look at the pictures and options and decide as per his convenience. Once the order is placed, the kitchen gets a command note following which the customer gets his breakfast within the next 30 minutes, without any complexities or confusion,” Roy adds.
This technology not only elevates guest experience, but also includes a host of invaluable benefits for hoteliers such as, saving energy on un-rented rooms, analysing TV channel viewership to tailor a better channel mix and auto report equipment failures.
Well, if DigiValet seems like a revolutionising product, the company is also coming up with a similar product for household solutions later this year. “We’ll be coming out with another product which will be targeted for the residential market. It’ll have a larger automation system. However, it’ll be a lot more complex to set it up, because, the hardware, be it the tube light or the fan, have to be products from high-end companies which will be technology enabled and are capable to being synced with an intelligent box,” Salgia concludes.