Wingate Inn

Consultant

Helping take the “warrior” out of Road Warrior

SITUATION

Wingate Inns was a non-destination hotel with a primary footprint in B markets.  Their primary target audience was “road warrior” salespeople lugging laptops.  While Wingate was in the process of being sold by Cendant Hotels to the Wyndham Hotels Group in 1999, the management team was looking to re-focus their brand experience to help make guests as productive away from the office as they were at the office.  This included providing key business tools, like high-speed Internet access, a full business center, two-line phones with fax, and Internet on TV.  Hoping to differentiate their brand with technology, Wingate contacted IBM to glean strategic insights and find ways to package IBM technologies into brandable business services as part of the Wingate experience, pre-stay, mid-stay, and after-stay.

Unfortunately, IBM’s traditional CIO-oriented approach, featuring expert-after-expert presenting a complete study package of detailed requirements, systems analyses, and systems architecture specifications had left the Wingate CEO bleary-eyed and confused.  Although he knew he needed a plan, he was uncomfortable proceeding with one he could not embrace.

While he had a vision for a brand-differentiating technology strategy, he needed a way to make it “less technical” so his staff, his franchisees, and even the media, could easily understand it.  Without the complicated techno-speak, he wanted to be able to articulate and illustrate for his people how the strategy could work and how it would affect each of them.

OPPORTUNITY

Present the “experience-of-the-future” technology recommendations in a relevant, real world way, that people could both visualize and use to evaluate, test and develop the business operations requirements to actually implement it.

SOLUTION

Mike Wittenstein felt that if employees and franchisees could tangibly see and “feel” the Wingate-of-the-future, they’d quickly grasp what the new tools and technologies could mean to them and to their customers. So to simplify the high-tech vision, Mike recommended a decidedly low-tech solution.

With the help of the multimedia group at IBM, Mike produced a seven-minute movie, complete with professional acting team in a real Wingate Inn. This included a  superimposed screen and mocked-up technologies “in place”.  The video literally dramatized a customer’s check-in to checkout experience at the hotel.  The fictitious business executive:

• Used a kiosk to circumvent a long check-in line
• Enjoyed in-room technology services, including high-tech telephone and high-speed Internet connectivity (that all worked at the same time, a big deal in 1999!)
• Utilized the Business Services Center to get herself prepared for a big pitch the next day.

Within two weeks – and at a fraction of the budget the IBM execs had originally proposed – the management team, its employees and franchisees had a crystal-clear picture of what their hotel of the future would look like.

RESULTS

The project was so successful it generated significant media attention at the Hotel Technologies Show the following week.  It was also the driving force behind usually persnickety franchisees readily agreeing to invest an extra $1 million to pay for the technology, design and implementation.  And, it saved corporate $1 million, while reducing time-to-market by nine months.