Rotana Corporate Sustainability Report 2014

45 “Technology is an essential part of the industry evolution and many new trends have emerged based on the customer needs and expectations. However, it is important to note that the purpose of investing in technology is to bring added services to the guest and enhance his experience” Samir Abi Frem Corporate Vice President - Information Technology UAE National Day Rotana UAE hotels celebrate the annual National Day of the UAE union with a variety of events, festivities and shows for the whole family around the emirates. Rotana Egypt On World Heritage Day, Coral Beach Rotana Resort - Hurghada organised an exhibition on ancient Egyptian Pharaonic civilisation set to music of Opera Verdi “Egyptian International Opera” to educate hotel guests about Egyptian civilisation. In this day and age, the ability to be dynamic and adapt to a changing environment is the only means of survival, and an entity that cannot adapt fast enough will become obsolete immediately. At Rotana, we are constantly pushing for innovation and development in all departments and we strongly believe in meeting guests’ evolving needs. This requires keeping the hotel owners aware of the continuous need for renovation on all levels in order to ensure the guest’s expectations are exceeded. In the past two years, we have put a lot of emphasis on technology and have implemented several guest focussed technology initiatives including launch of Rotana Mobile App on iOS, Android, Blackberry World and Windows Store. Mobile platform: With the mobile and smartphones evolution a few years back, we decided not to focus on a specific product or solution but to keep our clients digitally engaged and connected with us. Hence we deployed a mobile platform that integrates with hotels’ key application in order to extend value added services to our client via the various available smart devices. The objective was to increase hotel revenue, improve our hotels’ efficiency and enhance our guests experience. Online check-in: Rotana embraced the smart technology service model even further by introducing online check-in service, allowing our guests the option to speed up their check-in experience at the hotel by completing their check-in online using either rotana.com, Rotana App or an html link. The Rotana online check-in ensures that our colleagues at the front desk focus Innovation and Technology 100% on a genuine personal welcome and interaction with our guests.