Crave Interactive, the European market leader in in-room tablet and App technology for high-quality hotels, has been exploring the region around its own home base as part of a recent signing.
The company, which is based at Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, provides guest-facing tablet solutions to top-end hotels all over the UK, as well as to various prestigious properties in the US and Caribbean. Now it has added a hotel just a short drive from its own office to the impressive Crave client list.
Amongst the properties to have recently signed with Crave is the Wyboston Lakes Hotel near St Neots in Bedfordshire.
“Crave’s remotely operated, Cloud-based system means that in practical terms geographical distance is irrelevant,” said Crave Commercial Director Tim Butterworth. “Our headquarters are in Milton Keynes, our development centre is in the Netherlands, and our in-room tablets are installed in hotels everywhere from California to the Scottish Highlands. We are able to offer 24-hour support and instant updates anywhere in the world. Nonetheless, it’s very nice for once to be working with a property that we can pop across to from the office for lunch!”
The Wyboston Lakes Hotel is set alongside the lakes which flank the River Ouse at Wyboston, and features the acclaimed Y Spa, an award-winning restaurant, and a golf course. Rooms at the hotel will feature Crave’s exclusive custom-made tablets, the first in the world designed specifically for use in hotel rooms. Crave’s in-room tablets come preloaded with the company’s unique proprietary software platform, Crave Cloud, and allow for instant in-room food and beverage ordering, spa bookings, instantly updateable digital directories and menus, and limitless scope for additional sales and tailored in-room advertising.
The tablets also typically feature Crave’s trademark bespoke travel guides to the area around a property, researched and written by professional travel writers, and as part of the installation at Wyboston, the Crave team has put together an in-depth digital guide to the myriad attractions that stud the countryside of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
According to Crave’s Chief Editor, Tim Hannigan, it has been a refreshing change to work on destinations close to home. “We’ve put together in-depth guides to everywhere from London to Las Vegas as part of Crave’s in-room tablet installations. We also work with a lot of country house hotels and rural spa resorts in the UK, but they tend to be in places like the Cotswolds, so it’s been brilliant to be able to focus on the area immediately surrounding the Crave home base for once,” he said, adding that working on the guide had highlighted just how much Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire have to offer.
“Of course, we’ve covered well-known attractions like Bletchley Park and Woburn, but we’ve also found all sorts of lesser known gems, like Houghton House, Wrest Park, and Claydon House. There’s a huge amount to explore if you’re staying at Wyboston Lakes, and we’ve covered it all,” he said.
Louisa Watson, Marketing Director at Wyboston Lakes, said that the hotel management had been delighted with the content Crave had provided, and impressed with how readily guests had embraced the new technology.
“We looked at in-room technology and thought hard before going ahead. Crave were a comfortable choice for us, with the ability to integrate to our PMS system, the attention to detail and the training and support offered, they have made the whole process almost pain-free. We were surprised at the early stage of launch how many guests comfortably used and ordered from both Food and Beverage and Housekeeping. It seems to be a popular communication platform and one that we hope will add to our additional guest spend,” she said.
