Software Company Sees Thailand as Ideal Place for Innovative Designing Dynamic software products are changing the world. JCMR Co.Ltd., operating under its Thai registered service mark “Thai-Fi,” feels it has one that will revolutionize travel connectivity and the entire hospitality industry. Established in Bangkok in late 2003, the innovative company specializes in systems that provide a variety of converged Internet-protocol services to hotel properties. It is especially excited about its new software for mobile devices called “Fingi.” Designed in Thailand with Thai and foreign developers, the Fingi mobile software app is either loaded onto smartphones that hotels loan to their guests or downloaded to a guest’s own smartphone. The technology provides hotel brands with a mobile strategy encompassing the guest experience before, during, and after his or her stay. Before arrival, the Fingi mobile app allows guests to use smartphones to book rooms directly with hotels and communicate with concierge. During the guest’s stay, the app allows full room control from the smartphone. This includes unlocking doors, granting elevator access, and adjusting the room’s lights, air conditioning, curtains and television programming, along with consolidating all remote controls for devices such as Blu-ray players. Guests can also use the app for hotel services like ordering meals from the restaurants or scheduling spa treatments. The software gives the guest one-button access to concierge whether inside or out, thereby expanding the hotel’s services outside the four walls of the property. It also incorporates VOIP for cost-effective international calls, which are automatically billed to the hotel folio, as well as a “find me/follow me” function that forwards to the smartphone any calls made to the room so guests will not miss calls when they are out. After the guest stay, Fingi provides the hotels with analytics to better service their guests in the future. This provides an unobtrusive way for hotels to remain in contact with customers if the app is downloaded to a guest’s smartphone. Additionally, the app links to hotel loyalty programs for updates and upgrades. Brand loyalty is all about getting to know the guest’s preferences so the hotel can forge a relationship that lasts even beyond check-out, which is especially important for a chain. Fingi makes this possible as the next time a guest stays at the same franchise in another city, that hotel would already have the database of personal preferences, from how the guest likes a steak cooked to the favorite type of pillows to his or her allergies.
Carl Rubin, the company’s vice president of business development, sees Thailand as an excellent operating base. “Thailand is centrally located in Southeast Asia, a region with a strong economy and a fast-growing hospitality sector. Hotels are actively seeking a mobile strategy and we are in the right place, at the right time with the right product,” he said. Thailand’s digital future appears full of opportunity. In 2015, the 10 member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will launch the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) single market. As the AEC is to enable the free flow of people as well as goods, services and capital across the regional bloc, Rubin views this as a big chance for further enhancement of the country’s information-technology sector. “With IT talent moving more freely between borders, this could expand the talent pool in Thailand. Access to AEC talent would not take away jobs here. Instead, it will generate more jobs by helping to turn Thailand into a creative hub, as people who innovate new ideas create opportunities for more jobs,” he said. To promote Thailand’s digital advancement, the Board of Investment (BOI) classifies software development as a priority activity important to the country’s prosperity. As such, it offers maximum investment incentives to software ventures. These include exemption of import duties on equipment, corporate income tax exemption for eight years, visas for foreign experts to work in the country, and majority foreign ownership of projects. Rubin described all of the BOI incentives as very important to the company’s decision to invest in Thailand. “The tax benefits in particular are an advantage as the money saved is put into R&D efforts so we can push our software’s capability to stay at the leading edge,” he said. A Pioneer and Still the Leader Recently, Fingi received industry recognition as one of the most innovative hotel technologies of the year from HTNG, a global hotel technology industry organization. The system is also being marketed to condominium developers, serviced offices and even cruise ships. The first deployment of the revolutionary system was at the Aloft hotel, a Starwood property on Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok. The service is very popular in the hotel’s “Touch Rooms.” The Aloft supplies guests with a Fingi-powered Samsung Galaxy S II Smartphone.
After premiering at the Bangkok Aloft, the Fingi technology was next deployed during the 2012 London Olympic Games in the Holiday Inn at Olympic Park in close cooperation with Samsung, Fingi’s global alliance partner. The app featured prominently in Samsung’s launch of the Galaxy S III, the official phone of the London Olympics. Among forthcoming major projects, the system is to be implemented at a serviced office in Bangkok and will also expand to its first hotels in China.
Thai-Fi is a subsidiary of New Yorkbased Fingi Inc. In keeping its own customers happy, the company has developed a 24/7 call center in Bangkok that provides hotel technology support to its 6,000 Wi-Fi rooms on the Thai-Fi network and also supports an additional 28,000 rooms globally for a third-party international hotel technology service provider. “The call center/network monitoring group is a huge asset for us. You can’t sell technology to a big brand without a proven track record to support it,” Rubin said. Such companies are helping Thailand move to a knowledge-based digital economy. Thai-Fi began as a wireless broadband provider and was the first to deploy Wi-Fi in a large-scale installation in Thailand. That was at the Ascott Sathorn serviced apartments in 2004, when Wi-Fi was not so ubiquitous in the country. With the Fingi technology, it is also the first company to combine telephony, room controls and hotel services into a mobile handset. “We are leading the pack, and the most advanced player in a new space which we have helped to create,” Rubin said. Even so, he acknowledged that standing still is not an option. “You always have to be creating new capabilities for the app to add value for your customers,” he stressed. To stay ahead in such a kinetic and intensely competitive sector, the company aims to continue bringing onboard the brightest software developers while working with its alliance partners and hardware suppliers to make products smarter.