The Eccleston Square Hotel in London combines old-style architecture with cutting-edge technologies and is one of the most modern and highly sophisticated smart hotels in Europe.
When walking through the hotel’s outdoor and public areas, guests feel like being in another century due to the old-style architecture reminiscent of another era. The buildings date back to 1835, reflecting the classic British charm and elegance. The property was once the home of Princess Victoria, and it is near a former residence of Winston Churchill.
However, the truth is that the Eccleston Square Hotel is now a genuinely innovative, technologically advanced, multi-award-winning Central London boutique hotel located on a charming garden square.
The hotel’s high-tech rooms provide a friendly, personalized guest experience by offering high-tech amenities. Guests can use innovative technologies such as controlling the main room functions through their smartphones, special tablets that provide concierge services, and even flat TVs embedded in bathroom mirrors. That means there are TVs hidden behind the bathroom mirrors, which suddenly become visible when turned on by the guests.
Smart Room amenities
The Eccleston Square Hotel has 39 high-tech bedrooms. It combines Artificial Intelligence (AI) with cloud-based technologies to offer a slick, AI-incorporated solution for guest information, entertainment, and property management. It is one of the first smart hotels in the world to exclusively provide 4K TV content and Sonos Beam soundbars to all guests.
Guests can connect to individual high-speed internet hot spots in every room and enjoy new Samsung 49-inch TVs, where they can enjoy their personalized content. The hotel offers unlimited free local calls and an hour of free international phone calls daily, and the guests can even use smart devices provided by the Eccleston Square Hotel.
The hotel offers in-room tablets, which guests can use to order room service. They can use the same devices to access the latest newspapers electronically for free.
Guests can even cast up their favorite music and show from their smart devices via the hotel’s Google Chrome Cast. Among other things, the hotel provides secure Wi-Fi for those working remotely and supports smart technologies.
IoT experience
The Eccleston Square Hotel is a pioneer in using the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide an innovative and “smart” ecosystem in its rooms. The London-based hotel is equipped with smart devices and appliances which are connected and exchange data over the Internet.
The official hotel’s website has a tutorial video explaining how a guest can use all the smart room amenities and how to improve their living experience.
Beds are hand-crafted in Sweden and can be electronically adjusted by the remote control available within the rooms. On the top half of the remote itself, guests can raise the head, the foot of the bed, or both. There is also a massage feature located on the bottom half of the remote, which can adjust the massage’s strength, automatically turning off after 30 minutes.
The panels on each side of the bed can control almost everything in the room. They include the lights, the curtains, and the do not disturb sign. The first wall panel contains the leading lights from the door to the room and the bathroom lights. The second panel controls the reading lights and the curtains. The do not disturb button can be found on the last panel. This lets the personnel know that guests do not wish to be disturbed.
To access the wall panels, guests must insert their room key into the power slot. However, all the rooms have an extra card in the slots so guests can keep their room keys on them when they leave their rooms.
Guests can also find a temperature control on the wall, which can be used to raise and lower the room temperature and the fan’s power, which is available in 3 modes.
The in-room TVs are Smart 4K TVs with numerous features, including Room Service, Self-Check-Out, as well as a few apps like TV on demand, Spotify, YouTube, and a Wake-Up service.
All the TVs provided also have Chromecast capabilities to mirror guests’ devices from their phones or tablet. Guests can do this by following the on-screen instructions using their camera app. Guests can also use the tablet provided in the rooms to do this.
Every room comes with Bowo, a comprehensive, fully loaded tablet that functions as guests’ In-Room Concierge and also as a service catalog. Guests can use this tablet to browse local restaurants, read recommendations, and even make their online bookings directly. Apart from helping guests explore London, Bowo can also be used by guests simply to order any requests to their rooms.
Rooms’ bathrooms also have a TV embedded in bathroom mirrors, and guests can turn it on and access all the Freeview channels. The bathrooms also have a Smart Class feature controlled by a wall panel and bathroom lights. This feature provides a little privacy to guests.
Eccleston Square Hotel also has a WhatsApp group chat. Guests can participate in this chat by scanning the QR code available in the rooms with their camera app.
In addition to the Smart Room amenities it offers, the Eccleston Square Hotel has also incorporated other technological amenities such as the “smart” booking procedure. Guests can use this feature easily and quickly through the hotel’s official website with the help of chatbots. The chatbots provide information about the best available price and offer complementary services and welcome gifts to the guests who complete their online booking. This is a 24-hour AI service, and guests can ask for any information they would like to know about the hotel before or even during their stay, and the chatbots are always there to provide answers.
Data collection
Regarding guests’ data, the Eccleston Square Hotel deploys its data protection policy. The hotel collects data via its website (when users visit it and accept the cookies) or data provided by the guests when they make reservations.
To ensure that guests’ data is protected and secured, the hotel stores it on secure services. Also, the Eccleston Square Hotel is certified by Mailchimp, and as the company points out, this family of standards helps the hotel manages guests’ data and keep it secure. Moreover, the hotel has set technical and organizational measures, which include measures to deal with any suspected data breach.
All the data collected by the hotel is used for promotional purposes, such as email campaigns, although the guests retain their rights to exclude from this type of campaign or even to ask for the permanent deletion of their data from the hotel’s system.
