Hilton's Newest App Feature Ups the Game in Guest Personalization
Skift Take
Minority Report meets hotels. It was inevitable. It’ll be interesting to see how this tech evolves, and how hotels walk the fine line between being serviceable and just pushing ads into guests’ phones.
Hilton Worldwide is testing out a new mobile app feature that brings Minority Report to life.
Relying on Wi-Fi, beacon technology, and GPS, this new feature on the Hilton HHonors app, called Fun Finder, was designed to act like a guest’s personal travel guide. It provides guests with detailed maps and wayfinding capabilities, information about on-property events, and notifies them of special offers and hotel features suited to their specific preferences, not unlike the customized advertisements seen in the 2002 film Minority Report.
“The whole idea was to build a personalized experience for the guest that was based on three different key elements — guest preference, place of the guest, and time,” said Rich DiStefano, senior director of mobile products for Hilton Worldwide. “We can make the experience different for you based on where you are and the time of day; it’s about giving guests the right information at the right time.”
Here’s how it works: To be able to access this feature, a guest has to be a Hilton HHonors loyalty member, book direct, and have downloaded the Hilton HHonors mobile app. Once a guest books a stay at one of the two pilot hotels (Hilton Hawaiian V
