How to enrich travel and hospitality experiences with Telefónica Open Gateway

The travel and hospitality industry has evolved significantly with the push for remote working and new post-pandemic lifestyles. Today, travel extends far beyond the traditional holiday, intertwining with the work of everyday professional life. Not only has remote working allowed people to redefine their work-life balance, but has also opened doors to new opportunities for the travel and hospitality industry. However, both users and businesses can face challenges to the proper development of these experiences. 
  
In this context, Telefónica Open Gateway offers solutions that facilitate good travel and consumer experiences through its standardised Telco APIs. In this article, we will explore possible challenging scenarios in the Travel and Hospitality industry, and how these APIs serve as an effective means to overcome them.  

In the dynamic world of hospitality, hotels are constantly challenged to provide high quality connectivity services, especially during busy events. This is where the QoD Mobile API comes into play, transforming the experience for both guests and event organisers. When major events are organised in a hotel, hundreds of attendees try to connect to the web to share the moment on social media or to make live broadcasts. In these situations, networks can become saturated and quality of service can decrease. This API offers a solution to this problem, facilitating that live broadcasts and other key means of communications remain smoother and with fewer interruptions, even in the most demanding scenarios.  
  
Another exciting scenario is using QoD Mobile for multilingual conferences and events. In a globalised world, hotel events often require simultaneous translation services in several languages. The API facilitates real-time audio and video streaming, ensuring that participants receive clear translations without delay, regardless of the number of languages or the volume of traffic on the network.  
  
This is not the only Telefónica Open Gateway API that improves the day-to-day management of hotel services. Through the Device Location Verification API, hotels can verify the geographic location of a given SIM-based device and validate whether it is within a requested area, in this case, inside the building. This allows for improved management of cleaning services, because you can check which guests are in their rooms and which have already left. This way, the staff in charge can establish a more efficient working route, while ensuring the guests' privacy. 
  
This API also allows hotels to make personalised communications, that encourage guests to make use of additional services offered. For example, if you find a person is still in their room and has not booked breakfast, you can send a message encouraging them to go down to the buffet that you have prepared. On the other hand, if the person is out, the hotel can send its restaurant’s dinner menu so that person can consider eating at the establishment in the evening. In addition, the Device Location API not only improves the visitor experience, but also opens up new business opportunities for hotels. 

In our interconnected world, modern travellers are looking for tailor-made experiences that combine convenience and personalisation, particularly during their international travels. This emerging trend represents an opportunity for the hotel industry to differentiate itself and raise its service standards. This is where the implementation of advanced technologies, such as the Device Status API, enables this result to be enhanced, as it identifies whether the user is roaming via their SIM-based device. This tool is not just a technological enhancement, but represents a reinvention of how hotels interact with and meet the needs of their global guests.  
  
When a guest arrives in a new country, a system enabled with this API can automatically detect their presence at the destination. This allows hotels to send personalised greetings and provide important information, including details about their stay, services available, and local safety tips. For example, a welcome message might include instructions on how to get from the airport or recommendations for the first day.  
  
Beyond basic alerts, this technology enables hotels to deliver personalised experiences and offers based on the guest's location. For example, if a guest lands in Paris, the hotel could send offers for a romantic dinner at a nearby restaurant or a special tour of the Louvre. This personalisation not only enhances the guest’s experience, but also encourages more spending on hotel services and local partners.  

Consumer data is a very powerful tool for companies to make decisions, such as improving their products or more personalised communication. By understanding how a consumer explores the different places they travel to, companies can observe usage patterns and emerging trends, learn and leverage them to make better decisions. This leads to better product development, the introduction of new options in the local market or simply getting to know the customer a little better for future strategic and business decisions. 
  
Companies can now collect this data more easily and quickly, no matter where the user is located, thanks to Telefónica Open Gateway's Device Status and Device Location Verification APIs. By verifying the roaming and geographic location of the SIM-based device, APIs can reveal valuable information to a business, such as popular destinations, peak activity times, preferences for services or applications, and even discrepancies in usage between different regions. Understanding these aspects can lead to considerable competitive advantage.  

With the APIs mentioned above and more, Telefónica Open Gateway not only seeks to improve travel and hospitality experiences, but also helps companies and institutions leverage network capabilities and jointly build a new generation of services that offer better user experiences. One of the ways to be part of this initiative is to join the Telefónica Open Gateway Partner Program. The programme benefits include full access to our API portfolio, technical and commercial advice during the implementation process, the possibility to work together with other partners, documentation and priority access to new APIs and use cases developed in the Developer Hub. To start being part of it, sign up here.   
  
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