60 seconds with… Steve Dalton, Country Manager – Singa

How was the re-opening of your business and how was it carried out in line with safety procedures put in place to allow social distancing?

Parties of 6 could still be entertained in a room and being able to song request from mobile, and host can refresh rooms from the cloud really helped. Digital ads on screens instead of paper menus all helped.

We were ultimately fortunate to have both B2C and B2B sides to our business and we could balance the business based on demand and opportunity 

What role has technology played in supporting your re-opening plan? 

Empower a venue to accelerate safe and hassle-free entertainment is key, technology has really helped this accelerate. Deploy a cost-effective solution across small- and large-scale operations is something we focus on and these features include and will become more popular in general, include:

- Venue remote management services – host can manage entertainment remotely and safely, managing the needs of the room via a back-end management system. The host can reset a room in seconds.

- Mobile song requests – BYOD style mobile song requests so guests can browse, request and sing with only having to touch the microphone itself (cleaned by venue in-between bookings) – all done by connecting the user’s mobile device to the venues

- Guest check-in facilities – guests can start, check-in and manage their experience through a complete touchless environment. Through the app and on-screen guidance, guests will not need to engage physically with the space in order to

What market trends are you seeing since re-opening?

Being a Saas based business, we've not actually shut down, simply working with our customers, many of which only just re-opening themselves. We've seen the use of private spaces as a form of driving pre-booked revenue grow. Less seats equals less space which means an opportunity to drive potential pre-book revenue. Fantastic way to forecast business and increase spend per head. Technology that supports a touch-less experience - handsfree mobile requests, management of queues, click and collect and contactless payments for example are also on the increase. 

What techniques have you used to build sales and re-engage customer?

Firstly, we worked with our B2B customers - we didn’t ignore their concerns and, in many cases, reconfigured agreements. Being there now means we’ll have our customers when they return to normal

We saw the growth of quarantine karaoke, all of a sudden everyone wanted to continue singing but at home, we saw 700% increase in downloads over the summer and as a result we ran a “support your local” which gave money back to our venues during difficult times

We focused on other sectors - we donated our systems to Care Homes and did Careoke - we invested in those needed us the most. Only now are working more directly with our core business, many of which paused over the summer.

What positive lessons do we need to learn from what the industry has been through?

We've learned that our appetite to socialise won’t change, we’ve learnt that very quickly. But it’s also clear the hospitality industry will have to adopt safe and regimented ways to manage people - those that get it right and make it fun will do well. Less people/space = a great opportunity to upsell an overall experience, using technology along the way to help