The utterly complicated procedure for acquiring a bottle of water at a hotel

Last night I wanted a bottle of sparkling water (I like the bubbles). I went down to the Hotel bar to get one — and I documented the ridiculously complicated experience in the context of today’s connected environment. This is something I discussed (well, at least, alluded to) in my presentation at this week’s The Big M conference: Seamless transaction management.

In order to make a purchase at the bar, I had to show a flimsy piece of paper with my name on it. Then I had to wait whilst the guy put some more flimsy paper into the bar till. He then proceeded to sod about pressing buttons on the till for a few moments before printing out my bill. He looked up my room number on the hotel directory — so that he could manually write in my name on the bill (as I was charging the water to my room account). I then had to sign the bit of paper.

You can watch the whole thing happen ‘live’ thanks to the video I took using the new SocialCam app from Justin.tv.