Hospitality Technology Innovations

1

REPORT

HOSPITALITY TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS

Overview The hospitality industry is continuously evolving to meet the needs of modern customers, and staying ahead of technology trends can be a challenge.

With so many innovative technologies now available, it’s important for hospitality managers, investors, owners and hoteliers to keep up with the latest in hospitality technology innovations.

Matthew Stephens Managing Director

2

In this report, we showcase the most exciting ways that technology has driven new levels of convenience and personalization for guests while fueling profitability for hotels around the Globe.

Learn more about how adopting these innovative technologies can help your business succeed.

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Maximize your

revenue potential

and unleash

your pricing capabilities.

LEARN MORE

Discover the power of revenue science at ideas.com. ©2023 Integrated Decisions & Systems, Inc. (IDeaS - A SAS COMPANY) – All Rights Reserved. TJAD0143-00-EE-ID 06/2023

How to use this report The report is organised into sections that focus on specific technologies. An interactive index allows you to navigate to each section, where you’ll find a page dedicated to each industry supplier.

These pages provide insight into the supplier’s views, technology, and how they address industry challenges, which is valuable in understanding the company’s thought process, not just their sales pitch.

Key suppliers also have links to a profile page that offers information, insights, podcast episodes, webinars, online demonstrations, and an online enquiry form, which enables you to request more information, a demonstration, or a trial, depending on the provider.

Download the report, or bookmark it and share it with your colleagues, we hope you find the report of value in your technology selection.

Solutions Index Communications Cloud-based PBX Hosted PBX IP Phones / VOIP / Voice Mail Radio/Paging/SMS Video/Teleconferencing Wireless Communications Employee Communications

Consultancy

Infrastructure

31

Cloud Computing HSIA Installation and Wi-Fi Internal Infrastructure Network Management, Managed Network Services and Security Outsourced IT services

Operations Applications Activity Booking Software Housekeeping Automation Inventory Control Inventory/Purchasing Itinerary/Activities Management Linen Control Menu/Recipe Creation/Analysis Open API PMS POS Spa Management HMS

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

29

IT Outsourcing/Consulting

Document Management

4

21

40

Robotics

69

Employee Management

Robotics

Employee Benefits

Service Robots

HR, Time and Labor Management

Security

72

Engineering Management

Cybersecurity

Engineering/Equipment Management

Data/Credit Card Security

Sustainability

Door Locks

In-room Controls/HVAC/Lights/etc

115

115

Emergency Management PCI/Data Security

Guest Facing Technologies

Security Systems

Finance Management

121

Guest Business Centers

83

Kiosks/Self Serve Mobile Applications

Block Chain

Panic Buttons (Associate Safety Alert Systems)

Budgeting/Forecasting

Sustainability

Commission Processing

TV Content/Interactive TV/IPTV

Credit Card & Payment Systems

TV Equipment

Procurement Systems

Commercial Applications Booking Engines Business Intelligence/Data Warehouse Computer Reservation Systems (CRS)/ Distribution

90

Guest Management

142

Guest Management /CRM/Loyalty Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction Hotel Artificial intelligence/Chatbot

Data Analysis Data Science Global Distribution Systems (GDS) Market Intelligence Revenue/Yield Management Social Media Website Development/Design

5

FOR ALL THE RIGHT REASONS DISCOVER OUR COMPLETE IN-ROOM GUEST ENGAGEMENT SOLUTION BEING ADOPTED BY MORE AND MORE PROPERTIES EVERY DAY. Let us show you how guest room tablets help you communicate with guests, promote services, and boost performance for your hotel and brand.

Provide a 5-star experience for every guest Take room reservations, offer concierge services and answer FAQs with a guest-led voice assistant

HOTEL COMMUNICATION NET WORK TOLL-FREE: 866-797-9778 X6422 HCN-INC.COM

Find out more at https://bit.ly/polyai-hotels

Automate to reconnect.

Smarter hotel training Develop your team Delight your guests Grow your business Fill the skills gaps in your organisation and create more effective training pathways for your team.

Find out more Save time

Save money

Stay focused

CONNECT | MANAGE | ENGAGE

INTERVIEW

Frank Wolfe Chief Executive Offier Hospitality Financial & Technology Professionals How have you personally witnessed hospitality technology change and evolve over the years?

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

My first high tech was in 1991, when we used to put everybody's credentials in little envelopes and go through the envelopes, you would check into a hotel at the front desk and fill out the name address and all that kind of stuff. And of course, now you know there are some people who's even toying with facial recognition to check into the hotel. So, we've come a long way.

In some areas though, hospitality technology just lags behind. As a matter of fact, this morning in our session, someone mentioned that as far as adapting technology goes, we are even behind construction, so I think we still have a long way to go.

Well, there are lots of different opinions on the subject. For example, a topic that is covered here at HITEC this year is Why don’t the PMS companies have people who have worked at the front desk designing their systems? And the answer from the audience is because they're two diverse philosophies and disciplines, so we need to develop partnerships between the vendors and hotels to understand the requirements and painpoints better, rather than the supplier just saying this is our system and this is as best we can do. Many hotels are using systems that are not customised to their properties and their requirements and ending up, you know, five years from now with 14 disparate systems that have all been put together and then it's time to get a new kind of technology, and they are starting from scratch again.

How do you think the roles of hoteliers changed to this technological?

In some areas they've changed of course. Today we have so much more information available to us, lots of business intelligence. You know where people want to go, what kind of a demographic profile your guests have. But the problem is that we have so much information, but we really don't necessarily aggregate it well and use it as well as we possibly could.

There are so many ways that we can capture data now, with systems talking back and forth to each other, we could do all kinds of things.

We have had a lot of flight delays due to the weather, and one of our companies that's exhibiting here is from Uzbekistan, their developers are here and they don't speak English.

And of course, we don't speak Russian. So we used Google translate to explain what's going on, what we can do for them and what they need. It's so amazing that we can do that in today's world, when even 10 years ago we couldn't do anything like that.

8

So, hotelier should work with vendors that understand the industry who can provide a solution that is designed for, or better suited to our industry.

Exactly. It was also pointed out that in a lot of cases, hotels are using less than 50% of the systems’ capabilities. In many cases it's a training issue. The staff don’t use the systems property because they have not been trained to. Most of the time a team member will have a few days training to use a new system, but it takes much longer than this.

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

And So, what can hoteliers do now?

What’s the one thing hoteliers can do immediately to leverage the technology we have?

Train their staff better. Unfortunately, we do have a labour shortage and it is all the way around the world. When the industry as whole has staff that are better trained, the guests would then be able to see and experience more of hospitality, rather than somebody looking down at the computer, mumbling under their breath because it won't work, or looking at their phone trying to look something up or to call somebody to come and help them.

For you personally, what upcoming hospitality technology are you most excited about?

An integrated solution that makes a traveller’s journey smoother. Actually, I believe Singapore is actually doing some testing where when you land in the airport and you go through customs. Your booked services are alerted; your car shows up, your hotel room is checked in and your luggage is found and taken to your hotel, and you simply just walk into your hotel.

Frank Wolfe, not Frank Wolf, or Frank Wolf senior or whoever. We're not there yet, but there is a bunch of very smart people that's working on something that. The single source of truth, with all our preferences. What we like? What we don't like, where we like to go, do we do we do a massage?

Do we do an Athletic Club, all that kind of stuff? If you had a personal identifier with one profile that was accessible? Imagine, how convenient. Still a little scary but the possibility exists.

What are the risks that you think hoteliers need to look out for when implementing new solutions.

Offer things that the guest wants versus what they think the guest wants. If you see something that looks sparkly, shiny and fun. Make sure before you implement it that it truly is sparkly, shiny, and fun for your guests. I think that is one thing that some people have made a mistake with trying to implement technologies that are either on the way out or just were nice to have but really weren't going to give them a competitive edge.

And I would say the same about your staff too.

You know, we were talking about that with training. Know what your staff are comfortable using.

Do you think that would be likely done by one solution or an integration of all different solutions together?

I think that in the near far future maybe 5-10 years I believe that is a possibility. Certainly not anytime soon. There are some people working on what they call the personal identifier. So, if I book my travel, all providers will know that I am

9

About eHotelier Hotelier is a globally accessible online learning platform that supports the continuous professional development of current and aspiring hotel industry professionals.

We understand how challenging it can be for hotels to attract great teams, keep them for the long term and support them to do their job well. That’s why we created a learning ecosystem that can be used by any hotel, anywhere in the world.

Used by hotels across Europe, the Americas, Asia, the Pacific and Africa, our platform provides hotel professionals and executives with the training they need to accelerate their career goals while improving their skills in all aspects of hospitality and tourism.

Our three pillars of education ensure your team receives a comprehensive education that is valuable and recognised at all levels, from skills to executive development.

Every training module is: − Interactive and easy to understand − Created in collaboration with industry experts − Curated by academics providing educational rigour − Endorsed by industry associations − Recognised by the Institute of Hospitality

Our courses can be accessed by: − Hotels that wish to deliver clear training pathways for their team − Hospitality professionals who want to upskill independently − Educators who want to expand their teaching capabilities Make training easier and grow your business with the help of eHotelier.

10

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

FOR ALL THE RIGHT REASONS DISCOVER OUR COMPLETE IN-ROOM GUEST ENGAGEMENT SOLUTION BEING ADOPTED BY MORE AND MORE PROPERTIES EVERY DAY. Let us show you how guest room tablets help you communicate with guests, promote services, and boost performance for your hotel and brand.

Provide a 5-star experience for every guest Take room reservations, offer concierge services and answer FAQs with a guest-led voice assistant

HOTEL COMMUNICATION NET WORK TOLL-FREE: 866-797-9778 X6422 HCN-INC.COM

Find out more at https://bit.ly/polyai-hotels

Automate to reconnect.

Smarter hotel training Develop your team Delight your guests Grow your business Fill the skills gaps in your organisation and create more effective training pathways for your team.

Find out more Save time

Save money

Stay focused

INTERVIEW

Michael Levie Co-Founder KUBE Ventures How have you personally witnessed hospitality technology evolve over the past 5-10 years?

So, do you think then, that the roles of hoteliers have shifted because of technological changes?

Well, I’ve been coming to HITEC for many years and it’s actually very exciting to see that in the last couple of years, there is a lot of progress in hotel technology, and in post COVID there is a necessity for it from various angles.

No, not really. I think that we, as hoteliers need to rethink all business processes and we need to become more agile, innovative and understand the change that our guests are willing to make or are demanding. But no, I think that the role remains the same. We still need to manage the hotels, we still need to provide the services and we still need to be as efficient as possible.

Technology can do so much for us today, so, we should utilise it.

Firstly, our guests are demanding a digital journey that is meaningful to them, meaning that if you say you’re going to do touchless, it needs to include in the App room access and more.

So digital is not a nice to have anymore, it is a must have.

Secondly, I think that COVID has shown us again that hoteliers have not been looking closely enough at the services provided vs. the cost associated; and the willingness of guests to pay for those services, we have been short-changing ourselves and that comes out of our own profit margin. Technology allows you, if you have good tech architecture, to rethink your business processes and become more efficient. So, I think that there is a huge shift. There’s a huge change.

My belief is that there is technology now that allows us to move away from legacy struggles and move forward. Now the real question is are we ready to untangle the legacy workarounds and patches and be bold and move to this new era.

12

Hoteliers now need to know a little about a lot.

And a little about technology is not enough to make the right decisions. That’s where the problem starts.

What would you recommend that all hoteliers can do today to improve the decision they make on technology and the knowledge they have well.

I would say firstly they need to recognise whether they have the knowledge themselves or in house.

And if they don’t, then a lot of decisions are, you know, made based on vendor promises versus their own knowledge, whether that is exactly what they envision. Also, if they don’t have the knowledge in house, they cannot articulate what they want. Possibly CIO knowledge combined with strong CTO knowledge is required to make smart and the right decisions. In house, if possible, otherwise with consulting support. Not making decisions is keeping the current bad status quo.

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

So what upcoming technology are you most excited about? It doesn’t need to be something that’s already here.

Well, it goes back to what I was mentioning to you is that there are now technologies that allow us to respond to the digital journey that we should be able to offer our guests. And that relates back to one thing we need to have: an enriched guest profile. Imagine if you’re an Amazon user, your profile has hundreds of fields. Why? Because they know a lot about youover time. A hotel profile is usually two, maybe 3 fields. Your first name, your last name, and maybe an email address. There are now systems that can basically prevent you from having to get rid of your legacy systems and sit as middleware and they can neutralise all the other systems, they grab all the data and then they repurpose that data, so it becomes meaningful on all levels. There are top great enterprise systems today that can handle the largest hotel chains worldwide, they have the most incredible SaaS technology.

But there’s also more affordable platforms that do the same thing, that really provide the plumbing to connect everything.

What do hoteliers need to be aware of when they are looking into implementing new technology?

To untangle the spaghetti from the past. So, they have made many decisions where they have created workarounds and all kinds of situations whereby what they had to work around in the past with solutions. They need to now be untangled and put into a SaaS system that has one journey that you need to follow, instead of asking them to do bespoke work, which is expensive and silly to do. Think of how you can adjust your operations to follow the SaaS journey; and that immediately forces you to rethink how to be efficient about your own business. So, it’s a good process.

Well, Michael, I know you’re also involved in the Neon project, which looks so futuristic, can you let us know a little bit about that?

Saudi Arabia is introducing hospitality on a major scale to the country. And they have come up with six mega projects, and when I talk mega projects that each single one is gigantic. But if you look at the subsets of what they’re trying to create in those mega projects, it’s again daunting and impressive. And the goal that has been set is creating 2030 but with the vision of 2050.

So, what is the latest today, is not good enough.

We need to go way further forward and create something that is meaningful for the guests at all . They brought together the brightest of the world and they really push the envelope, creating everything anew. And let’s look at the customer expectation. Let’s look at our own vision and let’s look at how we need to get there. And yeah, it’s a privilege to be part of it.

It’s creating such a buzz at the moment and I have to ask, how do you feel about AI? Well, this morning I was part of the panel and they were talking about AI and about the threats and all the negatives and the regulation or the lack of regulation, I basically made one comment and said: don’t worry about AI in our industry because we have no clue what to do with it. Anyway, and if we would know what to do with it, then our systems would not be able to handle it, so don’t worry about it.

Unfortunately, with our tech architecture, we’re so far behind. AI has only been used maybe in call centers so far in our industry. To use AI, we need to get the basic right so it’s crawl, walk, run. And AI is beyond run. We, as an industry need to focus on crawling.

13

INTERVIEW

Matt Schwartz Co-Founder, PricingService.ai CTO, Sage Hospitality How did PricingService.ai start?

Professor Dan Zang is a professor at the Business School here in Boulder, and our kids have grown up together. He had been doing consulting work for Dede, the Amazon of China and had gotten exposure to advanced machine learning. We got to talking about ways that all that math and machine learning can be applied to hospitality.

There are a lot of sound systems out there between Duetto, IDeaS and others, and we concluded that the world didn’t need another revenue management system. Instead, what the world needed was a revenue management service, something that you didn’t need to log into, super simple to use, that could service the 90% of the independent hotels out there who don’t have a revenue management system attached to their PMS. So, we sat out and started coding from scratch, and along the way, we brought on Professor David Lee from Hong Kong.

There’s a shortage of revenue managers out there.

That’s the other problem we’re trying to solve.

What is the difference between an AI revenue management service and a traditional algorithm revenue management system?

Most RMS are rules-based engines, an if/then type engine with mathematical statements. Both systems and AI try to predict demand. The most significant difference is that our algorithms are learning over time based on the behaviors of the guests; what are people booking, what are they not booking and frequently, the negative signals are as important, if not more important, than the bookings themselves. Our clients also don’t need to rely on a revenue manager; revenue management systems were built for revenue managers. Our service is like outsourcing your revenue management; anyone can use it.

What are your recommendations for hoteliers looking to invest in a revenue management AI solution?

The biggest thing is understanding what the demand drivers for their hotel are. Other than that, the models do the rest. They’re learning based on historical and ongoing data, what’s on the books, and external factors. The biggest challenge, I think, is really for the hotelier to trust the models and release the reigns. I mean, look.

You just flew to Toronto for HITEC, and I would guess that that plane was in autopilot mode for 90% of the trip. Similarly, the hotelier can still go in and make changes, but the machine does 90% of the day-to-day work for them.

14

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

I think it will take time. The more our industry is exposed to and works with AI, the more they can be comfortable with the technology. That’s why we also have a second opinion service. We have hotels with revenue managers and revenue management systems. Still, there are blind spots, maybe a particular room type, maybe two Wednesdays from now. For whatever reason, I’m at 20% occupancy and pricing lower than a fry. It just doesn’t make logical sense, right? But once again, those systems are rules-based engines.

They’re not learning machines. So, what we do is we run a second opinion, we show them where there’s an opportunity to change price and where to maximize revenue, like a stock tip newsletter, an extra piece of information that the hotel can use to identify those blind spots.

An article compares AI-based hotel room pricing to stock index funds. Index funds outperform the vast majority of 80-90% of human-traded funds, right?

So, Taylor Swift announces a new concert date.

Well, if she announces that at 11 pm. The revenue manager is probably asleep and can’t react to that spike in demand. Well, our service updates every few hours so we can see that new event, and we can see change signals and adjust automatically.

Not only does AI work 24/7, but they also don’t have human bias. Sometimes we feel we understand the weight of certain things. For example, if a competitor hotel drops its price, I must also drop it. When we sit down with revenue managers and review which hotels our pricing correlates with, it is eye-opening to them which competitor hotels matter.

Usually, when a hotel signs up for our system, it takes them a few months to trust it. And then?

They get to a point where they just let the system do what it does.

We think our system can outperform 80-90% of the revenue managers out there. There will always be a few humans who can outperform the stock index funds and a few revenue managers who can outperform AI. But just like human traded funds, revenue managers have a much higher cost. And by nature, humans call in sick. We go on vacations, sleep, and quit; machines don’t.

15

CONNECT | MANAGE | ENGAGE

Maximize your

revenue potential

and unleash

your pricing capabilities.

LEARN MORE

Discover the power of revenue science at ideas.com. ©2023 Integrated Decisions & Systems, Inc. (IDeaS - A SAS COMPANY) – All Rights Reserved. TJAD0143-00-EE-ID 06/2023

INTERVIEW

Adam Mogelonsky Partner Hotel Mogel Consulting Ltd

How has hospitality technology involved over the last few years?

It’s evolved immensely, we see a lot of convergence on various ideas, optimizations and ways to improve business and there is a lot of consolidation within the industry. One of the things that’s happened in the past year is solving the problem of dashboard fatigue, which is when you upload a new system that doesn’t have a good UI, it isn’t fully connected. People have to still manually transfer over data from one place to the other. The system might become a zombie platform; It isn’t used, or staff are too busy to use it to its full potential. Through proper data connections, moving towards singular dashboards, we can then properly get the data in one place to start asking more complicated questions, to reveal hidden revenue losses or hidden costs or hidden revenue opportunities.

Do you think the roles of the hotelier have changed because of this advancement?

Yes, technology now pervades every single department of a hotel and every single aspect of a hotel, because now we need to operate in a more efficient, more labour-light model and guest expectations are much more sensitive and stricter, particularly in the luxury space. Now you need to have all the data in place to do any sort of operation on the labour-light model. All that said, the corporate structure of a hotel is not set up for this change, so it’s a technology problem. There’s, at this show, lots of technology issues that we see being solved, being handled by various integrations, various consolidations, various upgrades to each system. But it is also a

18

people problem, the human stack where we need to start thinking about; moving the IT Director to CIO and CTO in order to have that top level say into how technology is going to help all the other operations, growth, new silos, wellness rooms, ancillary. Technology pervades it all, and it can help in every single way.

So what is holding us back from optimising technology?

On all fronts right now, because there’s so many different players in hotel technology, it’s made it very difficult for hoteliers to make a decision about which partner to move forward with, and the lengthens of the sales process and the acquisition process. So it’s it really frustrating on both ends. It’s frustrating for technology vendors trying to sell into the industry because they have to put more time, doing customer education for why they’re better and why they’re and why they should choose them over others, which is a large marketing expense. And then on the hotelier side is the RFP process or the before the RFI process where hoteliers, because they need, do their due diligence and they need to constantly look at so many different players, what exactly is the benefit? Where they integrate to? Do they integrate with their existing vendors? Who’s actually better? Can they work with them? What’s happening is hoteliers are tuning out. In a lot of ways, it’s a very complicated job to navigate the technology ecosystem of all the technology.

And it does create some work for consultants to help navigate this and to figure out the best path forward.

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How do you differentiate one from another? What do you need to look for?

Every hotel is slightly different. What they need to look for is, number one, what’s the technology that people are going to use and that can come down to dashboard fatigue. It can come down to the employee experience. It can come down to integrations. It’s never just one factor. Every good technology vendor is spending money on sales and marketing, but equally important to that is customer success, which is customer service. So you get a piece of technology and something breaks, you should be able to contact them at any time and they’ll be with you every step of the way.

And they’ll also help you identify opportunities to better use technology, new ideas for revenue growth, new ideas for cost savings, and all the best technology vendors that are out there have a great customer service team.

What technology are you most excited about?

I’ve always been a big fan of total revenue, I really like to integrate all the various profit centres that are within the building that we call a hotel to then identify your best customers and where loyalty is coming from.

It can be very complicated. For instance, everyone knows in one way shape or form, they have a hunch that OTA guests don’t spend as much on site as direct guests. Already you have better net revenues and reduced cost of that acquisition because you’re not paying commissions but also they might spend more on site at your lobby bar or at your spa et cetera, et cetera. OK, great.

That’s your hunch. How do you test? Then once you test and you have verified your hunch, how do you then drill down and micro segment within

that to identify where your guests who are booking direct are spending? What motivates them to spend more? How are you going to give them that one to one hyper personalised return offer to then get them back in or at least make them feel like they’re great customers so they recommend it to their friends.

You need data connections, and you need to properly align guest folios across the different silos, which is far easier said than done. It requires a lot of data integrations and it may require a third entity, be it a CRM or a BI or some form of RMS to properly get all that data into one place.

So that you can see by channel where they’re coming from and where they’re spending.

Predictive AI as the revenue management solution, how is that different to traditional automated revenue management systems?

So, AI is just adding an additional layer, likely it can be based upon machine learning. A lot of companies have been using AI to feed into their recommendations, be it on the travel intent or the rate mapping side of things, planning rate, strategy, etc. They just haven’t necessarily called it AI, which has now become a buzzword with ChatGPT, ChatGPT is yet one more evolutionist process where it’s based on a large language model, which is a little bit different and much larger. If you’re just looking at revenues, you can apply machine learning to that. And a lot of a lot of RMS systems are already doing that and applying that to give their CRO’s and revenue managers and revenue directors much better inferences into how to better optimise revenue across channels and within channel, which incentives will drive revenue. So, it’s already happened, and just now it’s become public and top of mind for everyone.

19

INTERVIEW CONTINUED

Do you think what we’re seeing now then is true AI when the machines are still being taught by people rather than learning organically?

OK, so now you’re talking about artificial general intelligence, AGI. There are two different terms here. There’s AGI which is where a machine can teach itself whatever it wants, and there’s super intelligence, which is where an AGI or a deep AI becomes smarter than humans, smarter than the collective of humans. Those are far beyond what concerns the hotel on day to day because that’s sort of singularity hypothesis of where the machines are more intelligent than us, and humans become obsolete, so that’s more of a Skynet style question.

Can we trust AI to have free reign?

It depends on the accuracy of the AI model and whether it’s accounting for known unknowns and unknown unknowns. You can start off with it giving predictive recommendations. It gives recommendations based on what the AI is finding, the patterns it’s seeing, and from the data that is being inputted. But then it is still up to the human to offer the judgement and the guidance.

That’s where we’re at right now. The CRO and the revenue manager has the final call. The next level, what you’re talking about, is pro script, where the AI is set to automate all these things and do it all on its own and we have seen where it’s gone awry in various ways. There was an incident during the pandemic. Don’t quote me on this but it was one where there was a snowstorm and a lot of homes lost power. So overnight the hotel surged price because that’s what the AI dynamic yielding

20

showed, but it was seen as price gouging during a crisis and the hotel got a lot of heat for it. It wasn’t the hotelier’s fault, and from a technology standpoint it wasn’t the technology’s fault either because that’s what it was meant to do.

These situations, they will happen, and they will keep happening, we need to keep striving to eliminate edge cases that happen every. Every technology company that’s working in AI is deeply concerned about this and is taking it seriously. So, one of the best ways that hotels can navigate this is, start off with prediction and recommendations, then move into prescription as you feel more comfortable with it. Test it and verify that the recommendations it’s giving to you are actually accurate and the direction you want it to go.

Adam, where do you think hospitality technology is going in the next few years?

While technology already pervades every department, I think we’re going to start seeing more single source of truth about guest data, Web Three will start to be implemented under the hood as a underlying layer of infrastructure.

We’re going to start to see it finally get simpler for hotels to have all this technology and make it more seamless for the front desk and the guest facing side of things, to start solving more complex problems about who they want in their hotel and who they think is best suited for their unique brand.

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

SOLUTION

COMMUNICATIONS

Fourteen IP Orlando, USA CATEGORY

Communications

SOLUTION

Cloud-based PBX

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

EVA our Human-Like Guest Led AI IVR is enabling Hotels and their associates to focus on giving spending quality time face-to-face with guests.

Typically reducing calls to hotel staff by 75%

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Fear.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We have seen all of this with individual properties and groups of hotels who have deployed EVA and the results are the same across Full Service, Select Service and Resorts.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about? well designed and implemented AI powered solutions

have a multi-year strategy with security at its core that allows any size or type of property, its staff and guests to benefit from each new solution as soon as it is deployed.

22

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Macrotech USA Inc. SanMateo, USA CATEGORY

Communications

SOLUTION

Cloud-based PBX

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Through our extensive research, we have discovered that the world’s largest telephone network still exists within the global hotel industry. To enhance and modernize this network and its infrastructure, we recognize the need for an affordable system that caters to hotels of all sizes, from small establishments to large resorts. Our goal at Macrotech is to address this need by introducing CloudExt, the world’s first Hotel Communication Platform as a Service.

This innovative solution allows for easy and cost-effective upgrades to existing systems, without the burden of significant hardware costs. within 1 year we have installed 100K+ Rooms and everyday we are installing 500+ rooms.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Financial investment is a significant factor in implementing new technologies. The cost of acquiring and integrating new systems can be a barrier for many hotels, especially smaller establishments with limited budgets.

Additionally, the issue of proprietary technology can pose challenges. Some technology providers may offer solutions that are not easily compatible or integratable with existing Property Management Systems (PMS) or operational processes. This can create obstacles for hotels looking to upgrade their technology stack while maintaining the functionality of their current systems.

Interoperability and compatibility between different systems are crucial for a seamless integration process. Open standards and APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) can help mitigate these challenges by allowing different systems to communicate and share data effectively. However, not all technology providers offer open solutions, and hotels may find themselves locked into proprietary technologies that limit their flexibility and hinder innovation.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

One important step that any hotel can take to leverage technology and build a better business is to implement a robust open API based hotel PMS.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Our cloud based hotel phone system saving average 80% of their new phone system buying cost and reducing their maintenance and phone service cost and improved guest experience with AI based guest assistant in guest room telephones.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

AI based guest communication and IOT Powered guest room technology can put hotel in to autopilot mode.

Back to index

23

Engage by Cell Brentwood, USA CATEGORY

Communications

SOLUTION

Employee Communications

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Through mobile technology we make it easy for management to train and communicate with its staff, improving safety, overall training, customer service and HR issues.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Unfamiliarity with the many technologies that are available and ready to be implemented.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Two way text messaging has made an incredible difference in improving the relationship between the employee and management.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

More creative uses of how an employee’s mobile phone can be a guide for HR, training, safety and customer service.

Be more open to exploring simple and inexpensive technology options.

24

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

GrayMatter Networks New York, USA CATEGORY

Communications

SOLUTION

Hosted PBX

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

GrayMatter Networks’ innovative technology empowers hotels and hospitality venues by providing efficient solutions to their complex telecom challenges. With a focus on cost reduction, exceptional customer support, and customizable features, our brand’s technology optimizes communication systems, enhances guest experiences, and improves overall operational efficiency for the industry.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The hospitality industry faces certain challenges that hinder the optimization of technology.

Firstly, the complexity and cost of implementing new systems can be a barrier. Secondly, the lack of proper technical support and expertise within the industry can limit progress. Finally, the resistance to change and the fear of disrupting existing operations can also impede the adoption of advanced technologies.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

One thing any hotel can do to leverage technology and build a better business in the telecom realm is to adopt advanced unified communication solutions. By integrating various communication channels like voice, video, messaging, and collaboration tools, hotels can

streamline internal operations, enhance guest interactions, and improve overall communication efficiency, resulting in improved guest satisfaction and increased operational productivity.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

I have personally witnessed how advanced telecom technology, similar to what GrayMatter Networks offers, has greatly improved efficiency, experience, and profits for hotels and venues.

For example, by implementing a software-based PBX solution, a hotel was able to streamline their communication infrastructure, leading to faster guest service, seamless interdepartmental collaboration, and ultimately increased customer satisfaction and revenue.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

There are several upcoming technology solutions that are generating excitement. These include artificial intelligence-powered chatbots for personalized guest interactions, Internet of Things (IoT) devices for smart room automation, and advanced data analytics platforms for better understanding guest preferences and behavior. These innovations have the potential to revolutionize guest experiences and drive operational efficiency in the hospitality sector.

Back to index

25

Shenzhen Dinstar Co.Ltd. Shenzhen, China

CATEGORY

Communications

SOLUTION

IP Phones / VOIP / Voice Mail

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

When thinking about migrating to state-ofart VoIP telephony solutions, hotel owners feel headaches. There are already many special hotel analog phones in their guest rooms, most of them used to be customized to fit their businesses and services which can only be cultivated in years.

Usually, it is impossible to find IP Phones in the market so proper for their distinct services, their customers may not want a change as well. The most important part may also be, replacing all these phones would cost too much. Which make things worse, more and more hotels are providing internet services to guest rooms via Wi-Fi, which is obviously more convenient and better for customers’ needs;When there are no internet cables in each room, it is unlikely to deploy IP Phones as most of them need wired internet connections. DINSTAR high-density FXS VoIP Gateway DAG series make all these no more obstacles.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Efficient and cost-effective communication system

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Not yet

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about? communication system

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology? cost of investment

26

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Relay Raleigh, USA CATEGORY

Communications

SOLUTION

Radio/Paging/SMS

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Many hotels & venues remain stuck using traditional radios, which are bulky, brittle, expensive, & disconnected from the cloud & other devices (ie - radio users vs. smartphones). Relay’s cloud-connected device solves this problem while also helping employees stay safe by serving as a panic button.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Software has changed the world, but, not for frontline hospitality workers, many of whom remain disconnected from the Cloud as they are stuck using analog radios as their primary comms device. Getting every worker connected to the cloud is the key to unlocking the power of technology for them.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

I’ve personally witnessed our customers get more done with fewer people than larger teams, thanks to modernizing how they communicate and locate their colleagues in real-time. And achieve this greater efficiency while also saving 5 to 6 figures in cost as well.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

We’re excited for Relay’s product roadmap ahead, which will include improvements to our communications (such as live language translation) and safety (faster and smarter incident responses) experiences, operational data insights/ analytics, and our next generation devices & accessories.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Every hotel could benefit from improved comms and coordination. Any hotel can unlock & achieve that by connecting all their employees to the cloud and to each other. For example, radio users should be able to access info from the cloud and comm directly with their smartphone user peers and managers.

Back to index

27

SOLUTION

CONSULTANCY

Info-Tech Research Group Las Vegas, USA

CATEGORY

Consultancy

SOLUTION

IT Outsourcing/Consulting

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We help venues understand which technologies that impact the business, which to select and how to implement them.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

It appears the hospitality industry is turning a corner and recognizing the impact a solid IT strategy can have on the bottom line.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Buyers are different now. Leveraging technology to get their attention and move them through a cycle is paramount to compete.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Break down digital into five growth categories to devise improvement initiatives: Digital Strategy, New Customer Frontiers, Continuous Innovation, Workforce of the Future, and Resilient Operations.

Ensure the technologies they’re selecting are prioritized. Solution implementation can be costly and time consuming.

Back to index

29

SOLUTION

INFRASTRUCTURE

QNAP Toronto, Canada CATEGORY

Infrastructure

SOLUTION

Cloud Computing

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

The Network Attached Storage (NAS) solutions from QNAP assist hotels with surveillance systems. Also, voice reservation of hotel rooms and facilities. Our QNAP Video surveillance systems provide businesses with an effective way to deter and combat crime while securing the premises. They help track people’s presence and activity within your facility, safeguard clients, and authenticate employees while also limiting liability.

Guests visiting leisure resorts or hotels expect high-quality services and homelike hospitality.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Smart marketing can help hotels attract customers so they can then deliver on their promise of a smart guest experience. Smart technology’s data prospects give hotels a more complete image of their visitors than ever before. In spite of rising competition from market, hotels that make use of data insight will continue to prosper. The management of back-office operations in the hospitality sector has undergone a transformation thanks to cloud computing. Cloud-based systems provide centralized access to data, enabling real-time collaboration and information sharing amongst numerous departments.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Electronic kiosks, online check-in and checkout, online payments, and other self-service options eliminate the need for huge lineups and wait periods. With today’s technology, visitors can enter their rooms immediately by using their smartphones as the room key.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

By enabling guests to plan their stay, rapidly seek assistance, and be more independent (for example, while checking in and leaving), modern technological solutions, especially those intended to be guest-facing, can significantly improve the guest experience. The productivity of hotel workers and employees will increase with the use of technology. They are no longer required to perform the timeconsuming, arduous daily responsibilities of the front desk.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Technology may improve the hotel sector in a variety of ways. Robotics, for instance, can reduce staff workload and costs while artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots can enhance the visitor experience. Mobile ordering can also increase efficiency. IoT for building smart hotels and restaurants, mobile technologies for convenient and effective ordering and payment systems, cloud-based technologies for data storage, and AI and ML for personalizing the visitor experience and automating chores

Back to index

31

Velocity Holland, USA CATEGORY

Infrastructure

SOLUTION

Network Management, Managed Network Services and Security

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our solutions aim to provide hoteliers and venues with turn-key solutions for all their technological needs whether its Internet connectivity, voice, television services, Wi-Fi, support, management, and much, much more.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Implementing new technology systems and infrastructure can be expensive for hospitality businesses, especially for small and independent establishments with limited budgets. Additionally, many established hotels still rely on legacy, fragmented, systems and outdated technology that may not be compatible with newer solutions.

A lack of awareness and expertise regarding the latest technological advances makes it harder for hoteliers to understand how technology can benefit their organization.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

The implementation of a comprehensive and userfriendly mobile application for guests would allow them to enhance the overall guest experience, streamline operations, and increase customer satisfaction. Including features such as mobile check-in, real-time updates, personalization, and integration with other systems would allow hoteliers to engage with their guests beyond front-desk operations.

32

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Hoteliers who embrace some of the latest technologies including VoIP, Wi-Fi 6, cloud-based PBX systems, the latest FTG (TV) interfaces, and cloud-based property management systems (PMS) have reduced expenses, streamlined operations, reduced headaches, and improved the guest experience such that guests are unencumbered during their stays thereby creating a home away from home and keeps the guests coming back.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in the guest experience and hotel operations will not only improve operational efficiency but improve the guest experience by providing personalized recommendations and support for every guest. Combined with Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensors in guestrooms these technologies will help present the guest with a consistent experience across properties while improving resource management.

Back to index

DanMagi Copenhagen, Denmark CATEGORY

Infrastructure

SOLUTION

HSIA Installation and Wi-Fi

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Removes the need of additional hardware, significantly improves the guest experience, removes the need for support caused by confusion and reduces the cost for the hotel.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Choice based on the correct technology for the hotel at the right cost for the operation. Future proofing. Also, corruption - too many individuals in key positions eating cake.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Yes but there are also too many technologies trying to squeeze in and take an extra bit, especially in APPs and data. Hotels should work with experience providers where the people advising are not on a commission and can help you.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Not AI, hospitality is about comfort and the human touch. If I am looking for a completely AL digital interface, then I might as well sleep on the floor in a budget airline check-in area.

Look at your operational costs. Do not just select the cheapest as that usually means you will incur a cost elsewhere either in your own time, guest compensation or vendor extras. Make sure you know all costs involved including the extras and what they are for.

Back to index

33

Nomadix Woodland Hills, USA CATEGORY

Infrastructure

SOLUTION

HSIA Installation and Wi-Fi

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Nomadix enables hotels to connect, manage and engage in ways that redefine digital guest experiences, help make better business decisions and increase customer lifetime value. For 25+ years, we’ve been a trusted vendor to deliver powerful, personalized connectivity and digital engagement solutions.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

While we have seen the dramatic recovery of the travel industry, there is still some reluctance of hoteliers to spend the necessary resources (i.e., adequate budget, product planning cycles, flag testing). The fear of an economic recession is keeping some technology budgets out of reach.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

One global brand is using Nomadix Passpoint to drive loyalty app usage. Once enrolled, guests no longer need to manually register for Wi-Fi use every time they enter the brand’s hotels. The result is better guest acceptance, reduced staff workload, and improved guest satisfaction scores.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The major hotel flags are finally realizing the value of Passpoint (aka Hotspot 2.0). This global Wi-Fi standard allows the Brands to enable automatic Wi-Fi connectivity at any brand location. The convenience, secure access and actionable data provided to hoteliers makes Passpoint a win-win.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Technology can help solve many challenges, such as staffing shortages, guest engagement and satisfaction, loyalty, safety, and growing flag requirements. All of these rely on reliable Wi-Fi connectivity. This should be on top of the list.

34

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Bodhi Software Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA CATEGORY

Infrastructure

SOLUTION

Internal Infrastructure

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Bodhi puts the entire property on one systemagnostic platform. Managers & guests get simple centralized control & automation of HVAC, lights, locks, shades, AV, leaks, floods, humidity & more plus up to 45% energy savings in guestrooms, 10% in amenity spaces, saves time & builds satisfaction.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The large and confusing array of technology needed on any property and the lack of a simple way for management, staff and guests to take advantage of it.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Bodhi was developed over a ten-year period at the 5-star Albany Resort in the Bahamas. John Engler, Albany’s Vice President of Operations, told us, There’s no way we’d be able to maintain the level of satisfaction that we do without it.ù

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

New LoRaWAN connectivity gives Bodhi the ability to manage devices beyond the range of Wi-Fi or without electrical connections, including sprinklers, water meters and shutoff valves, grounds and parking lot lighting. (LoRaWAN has a reliable range of about 2 kilometers and yearslong battery life.)

Centralize control and management of all technology on a single platform, purpose-built for hospitality, simple enough to control without the help of integrators, and enhanced with an installation-free guest app.

Back to index

35

Aphy Voorschoten, Netherlands CATEGORY

Infrastructure

SOLUTION

Outsourced IT services

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We make advanced process automation technology affordable to hotels. They can benefit of automation prowesses in saving time and money, without a huge and risky investment upfront.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Massive fragmentation from both the demand (hoteliers) and the supply (hotel tech vendors).

As an industry we are not able to get together and establish technical standards to resolve this.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Increase the level of IT skills. More and more hotel groups hire CIOs or Head of IT with a background in other industries and software development.

A better business requires hotels to own a bigger share of their tech stack.

36

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Automation certainly helps fulfil those goals.

Investment in know-how to connect systems, for example through Google’s Apigee also brings massive returns on investment. A bit less tech but investing time in designing the customer journey is also very valuable.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

It is hard to avoid AI in this conversation.

However, we think the best tech is the best tech with regards to the problem it solves. We see a lot of tech for the sake of tech in our industry.

At Aphy we use AI and other buzz tech to deliver solutions. AI is not the solution, it helps us build better solutions.

Find out more

Back to index

Chetu Sunrise, USA CATEGORY

Infrastructure

SOLUTION

Outsourced IT services

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We are custom software developers with 23 years of experience Developing solutions for the hospitality industry.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Companies often lack the internal resources to fully leverage new trends in the industry like Ai, we offer an affordable alternative to hiring additional developers themselves.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Ai booking engines and Chatbots have improved the guest experience while at the same time reducing labor costs.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

As and Ai developer we look forward to helping create a better guest experience while also improving profitability.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Current trends in Ai allow hotels to optimize the guest experience while also increasing profitability and efficiency.

Back to index

37

RobosizeME Olomouc, Czech Republic CATEGORY

Infrastructure

SOLUTION

Outsourced IT services

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

RobosizeME offers Automation as a Service (AaaS) solutions that automate mundane, repetitive and time-consuming manual tasks, allowing hotel staff more time to focus on other operationally vital parts of their job.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The complicated combination of legacy systems and new generation technology in the hospitality industry makes implementing integrations and other technical solutions both expensive and timeconsuming for hotels, many of which do not have a dedicated IT Department on property.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

RobosizeME has successfully automated and optimized numerous hotel processes from different departments, saving a lot of man hours and revenue, improving accuracy and efficiency and most importantly - allowing management to maximize the potential of their staff and improve guest satisfaction.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

At RobosizeME we are convinced that the application of AI powered Computer Vision, where applied to hotel multimedia content, will ensure consistent, high quality imagery across guest facing distribution channels.

Any hotel can come up with a list of processes that are mundane, repetitive and require a lot of manual effort and time to complete, making them the perfect candidate for automation. When it comes to implementing AaaS at your property, we at RobosizeME have discovered that starting with a couple of automations and expanding gradually is the best way to go!

38

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Positron Access Solutions Corp.

Montreal, Canada CATEGORY

Infrastructure

SOLUTION

Network Management, Managed Network Services and Security

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Positron’s G.hn GAM technology enhances the guest experience by repurposing the coax infrastructure into a converged Gigabit Ethernet network without rewiring cost or disruption.

This enables high speed Wi-Fi & IPTV delivery to the back of the guest TV with no downtime.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Lack of awareness of field proven G.hn technology and how it turns coax into a converged network for all guestroom requirements. This causes IT teams to rewire the hotel with fiber, which is disruptive, costly & time consuming. G.hn enables Gigabit to every guest without rewiring or downtime.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

IHG’s Crowne Plaza Ravina’s uptime connectivity for IHG Studio was barely 47%. By installing Positron’s G,hn GAM, over the existing coax, the uptime immediately rose to 97%. Minor coax repairs increased this to 100% uptime. This saved 75% over the cost of disruptive rewiring.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Enhanced guest experience. HSIA Gigabit speeds for each guest over the existing coax cabling is achieved at 20% of the cost without rewiring disruption or service downtime using Positron’s award-winning G.hn GAM technology. Proven at major hotel chains and carriers. Free trials available.

Hotels can leverage their coax cabling by turning it into a converged Gigabit Ethernet network with G.hn technology delivering Gigabit Wi-Fi and IPTV to the back of each guest TV. This increases the hotel’s competitiveness with an enhanced guest experience without rewiring disruption and its cost.

Back to index

39

SOLUTION

OPERATIONS APPLICATIONS

Milano Software Richmond Hill, Canada CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Spa Management

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

There is a tight coupling between the Hotel PMS and the Spa booking engine including bidirectional processing whereby guest profiles are automatically available in the Spa when a guest makes a reservation or booking at the hotel and the hotel guest folio may be updated with Spa charges. Guest may book Spa services and reserve any activities online, pay for the services and complete any required waivers prior to their visit to the spa to allow a flawless check-in process for the guest.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Status Quo is the biggest obstacle, decision makers tend to select solutions that are common or that they have heard of rather than evaluating the solutions based on its merits;they are not receptive to new an innovative solutions.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Have an open mind to technology and embrace change, give innovators a chance to compete.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

A chain of Nordic Spas connected to hotels were using 3 different software solutions to manage the operations, a booking software for guest appointments, a second software for resource scheduling and an excel sheet for locker assignment. This process involved 3 staff members. They implemented a single solution that managed the guests and resources with automatic appointment confirmations and reminders which required a single staff.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Klickbook is an Unrivalled Cloud Booking Platform that provides a bi-directional integration to the Hotel PMS to facilitate the management of the guest experience through automation from confirmations and reminders and proactive marketing to promote Spa services prior to the guest arrival at the property. What sets Klickbook apart from the other solutions is our innovations not found in ANY other solutions such as Smart Flow, Wallboard and Queue Management, Staff Workspaces, Staff Targets, Group Booking, Dynamic Pricing, Rate Plans ì Published and Unpublished pricing options, Folio Management, Memberships, KPI Dashboards, Guest Intake Forms, Multi Language Correspondence, Inventory, Product Variances, Loyalty, Staff Planner, Locker and Resource Management, Multiview Scheduler, Intelligent Waiting List, Klickbook utilizes a modern and effective user interface to manage these complex processes to streamline Spa Operations.

Back to index

41

Sabre Southlake, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Activity Booking Software

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We understand the challenges put in front of hoteliers in the ever-changing landscape and provide solutions that enable hoteliers to confidently create, distribute, and deliver tailored experiences to meet guest expectations.

Our philosophy behind hospitality retailing goes beyond attribute-based selling. It’s about enabling consumer choice to accelerate revenue.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Today’s hoteliers consider RevPar the main metric to measure success, but this measurement is limited to occupancy and rates. To generate greater revenue and increase guest satisfaction, hoteliers need to focus on TRevPAR. With this mindset, hoteliers can consider the total income obtained by the guest including the room, on-property restaurant, additional services, and ancillaries.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Through retailing, hoteliers can present unique property features in a way that strengthens their value proposition. Early adopters of retailing solutions have seen great success with ancillary offers including valet parking, wine packages, airport transfers, breakfast, late checkout, and a variety of room view selections at the time of booking.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

SynXis Retail Studio gives hoteliers the ability to leverage ancillary offers with a room reservation with future capabilities to Go Beyond the room offering ancillaries without a room reservation. By leveraging machine learning they can convert shoppers into bookers within a single booking flow.

Find out more

A successful retailing strategy enables hoteliers to generate additional revenue per guest by offering an endless array of ancillaries as amenities, empowering guests to choose what they want.

Today’s retailing solutions are PMS-centric and integrate with booking engines, voice applications, and task management solutions for a seamless guest experience.

42

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Factura.ai Toronto, Canada CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Document Management

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our technology is the only accounts payable automation software designed for multi-entity and multi-location hotels. We digitally transform the accounts payable process by leveraging AI and RPA technology to automate manual data entry and the workflow approval process. This helps hotels become more efficient to allow them to scale, have the right controls, have accurate financial data and pay their vendors on time.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Our accounts payable technology solution really helps hotels scale. It allows them to grow their location count without having to add additional staff. We provide them with a very efficient accounts payable process that helps manage and streamline their current hotel operations while allowing them to scale.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Fear of change is daunting from having to manage the changeover, implement new processes, training, change management, and rationalize the cost to do it.

I am biased, but Factura.ai. Most accounts payable solutions are veiled in an offshore outsourcing team manually entering the invoice data whereas our solution is pure technology. Factura.ai can extract and code an invoice in 30 seconds, manage the entire approval process, push the data into the client’s accounting system and pay their vendors.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Change their point of view of technology as a complementary tool to help your staff become more productive. If people are the greatest assets of any company, you want them to perform tasks that create the most value for your organization.

The only way to optimize their time in value is to give them the right tools.

Back to index

43

IRECKONU Amsterdam, Netherlands CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

HMS

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our guest experience framework helps hoteliers tackle the complexity of data and empowers them with advanced tools to create personalized and seamless guest experiences. This begins with Systems Integration using middleware that cleans and normalizes data in a central data lake where two-way communication takes place and innovation becomes possible.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Many legacy systems are not guest centric, they are reservation/room centric, and this creates challenges around effective systems integration, being adaptable, more independent, and API friendly which originate from data silos, unreliable integrations, legacy systems limitations, and operational inefficiencies.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We saw one luxury hotel brand we work with increase revenue significantly by using a guest centric data strategy to create new opportunities with their loyalty program. Because of this approach, they were able segment their loyalty members and offer them more meaningful rewards, when and where it mattered most.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Our CDP, IKnowU, has matured and become very productive. Working with our partners to co-create value for their portfolios, has taught us much about feature productization for the entire hospitality industry. Now we are excited to offer IKnowU to help more hoteliers innovate personalized and seamless experiences for their guests.

Shift from reservation/room centric systems to guest centric systems in a framework that leverages operational data and effectively transforms it for use in activation channels such as websites, loyalty programs, social media, and more.

44

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Oracle Hospitality Austin, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

HMS

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Oracle Hospitality brings more than 45 years of experience in providing technology solutions to independent hoteliers, global and regional chains, and more. Our cloud-based, mobileenabled hardware, software, and services enable customers to act on rich data insights to personalize experiences, maximize profitability, and encourage loyalty.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Hotels need evolve by investing in proven technology and away from rigid siloed business models. New cloud-based solutions that remove barriers and friction between departments, can increase operational and staff efficiency, maximize revenue, and provide the agility hotels need to meet changing guest expectations of a high-value, low-touch experience.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Every guest touch point that’s connected to a PMS provides an opportunity to enhance their stay and present an upsell opportunity. A mobile app experience, for example, can put the power to make dinner reservations, book an event, and reserve a bungalow at the pool in the guest’s hands, increasing guest convenience and hotel profits.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The new Oracle OPERA Cloud Central provides a unified experience across distribution, loyalty, central sales, contact center, and enterprise-wide data consolidation and management. Together with OPERA Cloud PMS and Sales and Events Management, hotels have real time access to comprehensive insights helping to streamline decision-making, create operational and cost efficiencies, and elevate the guest experience.

Hoteliers who successfully integrate and leverage their data through the use of AI will be best positioned to provide unparalleled guest experiences. For example, predictive AI can better help hotels determine what attributes a guest values most, at what price, and at which point in their journey they are most likely to upgrade or request services.

Back to index

45

ResNexus Salem, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

HMS

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

ResNexus is a cloud-based property management system that helps hotels and hospitality venues increase direct bookings, handle large group reservations, streamline guest and staff onsite communication, connect to OTAs and collect payments.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Primarily staff adoption and training. Any new technology comes with a learning curve. If the new technology has too many steps or is not simple to use, then people hesitate to use it and develop work arounds. The breadth of new technology is expansive and can be overwhelming, keeping it simple and in one central platform helps.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Focus on the guest and staff experience first.

Does the new technology make life easier or just have a lot of features that confuse the experience.

For example, if using a phone to unlock the door takes 30 seconds versus a key card that takes 2 seconds. That might be problematic.

46

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

No one likes playing battleship when looking for the availability dates for a room. One of the best examples I have seen of improved guest experience is a hotel that showed online room inventory first (without any date or how many guest questions) and then let the guest click on the units to select and see the unit availability.

It’s a small thing, but many online booking marketplaces force dates first. But that’s not how most people organically shop. So having that date flexibility on the direct booking site is a real plus.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

I would have to say AI and its ability to provide smarter assistance to field commonly asked questions or requests. It should save a lot of staff time and resources no matter the size of hotelìideally without sacrificing the guest experience.

Back to index

Hub OS Blanes, Spain CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Housekeeping Automation

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Hub OS revolutionizes hotels with streamlined operations, personalized guest engagement, real-time analytics, seamless integrations, mobile convenience, and sustainability features, enhancing guest experiences and optimizing efficiency.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Technology has streamlined operations, enhanced guest experiences, and provided datadriven insights that have improved efficiency, satisfaction, and profits for hotels and venues.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Limited budgets, outdated legacy systems, and resistance to change are key obstacles preventing the hospitality industry from fully optimizing technology.

Emerging technologies such as AI, IoT, and contactless solutions have the potential to revolutionize guest interactions and improve operational efficiency.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

One thing any hotel can do to leverage technology and build a better business is to implement a robust customer relationship management (CRM) system. A CRM system allows hotels to effectively manage guest interactions, collect valuable guest data, and personalize guest experiences.

Back to index

47

Lodgistics Raleigh, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Housekeeping Automation

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Ensuring that Preventative Maintenance is completed and tracked (Work Orders, Checklists, & PMs)

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Adoption and Usage by the team itself.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Lean in. Don’t be afraid of new technology. If you can get your team to use the tools that are out there, you’ll run a smoother operation and provide a better guest experience.

48

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

I’ve seen Lodgistics dramatically change operations at multiple hotels for the better. GM’s don’t have a good report on the success of their maintenance teams. Once they do, it can be an eye opening on who is getting work done and who is just taking up resources.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Preventative Maintenance software.

Back to index

Optii Solutions Austin, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Housekeeping Automation

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Optii’s technology streamlines housekeeping operations in hotels and hospitality venues, improving efficiency, guest satisfaction, and overall productivity through intelligent task assignment and real-time communication.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Through Optii’s technology, I have personally witnessed hotels improve efficiency and guest satisfaction by optimizing their housekeeping operations, enabling intelligent task assignment, real-time communication, and streamlined workflows, resulting in enhanced operational efficiency and profitability.

The hospitality industry’s resistance to change and limited investment in technology infrastructure are major obstacles preventing the full optimization of technology, hindering innovation and progress.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

We are particularly excited about the development of artificial intelligence-powered chatbots and voice assistants tailored for the hospitality industry, which have the potential to revolutionize guest interactions, deliver personalized services, and streamline operations.

Implementing a comprehensive guest relationship management system that utilizes technology to personalize guest experiences, track preferences, and provide targeted recommendations can significantly enhance a hotel’s overall business performance.

Back to index

49

Clear Sky Software Charlotte, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Inventory Control

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Save time, reduce costs, improve efficiency and accuracy.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The old idea of throwing bodies at a business problem. However, in a post-pandemic world, many hospitality venues still struggle to reach pre-pandemic staffing levels. Therefore, hiring a problem away no longer works. Accept that your staffing levels may be smaller than in the past. To counter this, increase IT budgets and embrace new technology. This can improve a host of business processes and allow you to do more with less.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

The implementation of barcode scanning systems for reducing the time and labor it takes to manage inventory.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

A focus on back-of-the-house inventory management for multiple departments.

Historically F&B has been active in technology but pushing this idea out to any department that orders, receives and manages inventory will only make the entire organization stronger and more profitable.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Keep your staff trained and educated on emerging technologies. What a waste of precious budget money when systems are implemented only to see those systems go unused when staff turnover occurs and new hires aren’t properly trained.

50

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

RealTime Reservation Uniondale, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Inventory Control

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

RealTime Reservation offers customized, integrated solutions that help properties and brands within the hospitality industry increase ancillary revenue, optimize operations, and improve the overall guest experience.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Technology education and awareness is required to help individuals embrace change within the industry. Many hotels have been operating with the same inefficiencies (for example noncompliant credit card processes, disconnected inventory management), while not realizing there are already amazing solutions and integrations out there to take advantage of, that can quickly improve their overall operation.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Hotels should integrate their core operations (POS, PMS, etc.) with inventory management solutions that collect and connect monetary information in one place ì we refer to this as total revenue management. This insight allows management to identify what’s working in real time, and immediately make data-driven decisions about what to do more of (and what to do less of) to drive revenue.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We like to talk about the impact that customization and personalization has when applied to the customer experience. For example, an urban hotel can take advantage of its location and give its guests easy access to nearby events and entertainment such as concerts, wine pairing dinners, tours, etc. When the right tools are in place to manage inventory and make these experiences bookable, the profitability follows along with an improved guest experience that builds memories and loyalty.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

We’re excited to introduce new tools in the form of custom enterprise reporting that will allow hotels to educate themselves against their competition. This technology empowers properties to take a general data sample from public listings of hotel services (for example cabana rentals), review their average pricing, and adjust their own ancillary offerings based on validated industry trends.

Back to index

51

Yellow Dog Software Norfolk, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Inventory/Purchasing

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Yellow Dog Software is your full back office solution, providing inventory management and back-office workflows. With barcode scanning, purchasing, receiving, and reporting features, it improves control over inventory, reduces costs, minimizes waste, and enhances operational efficiency. Real-time visibility and accurate data lead to better organization, cost savings, and improved profitability.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Resistance to change, lack of technological literacy, high implementation costs, concerns about job security, and the challenge of maintaining personalized guest experiences while relying on technology are some factors holding back the hospitality industry from fully optimizing technology.

52

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Implementing a full technology stack that includes inventory management can allow hotels tot streamlines operations, centralizes data, automates tasks, and enhances guest experiences can significantly improve efficiency, communication, and overall business performance.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Back to index

UrVenue Las Vegas, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Itinerary/Activities Management

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

UrVenue launched the industry’s first PXMS (property experience management system), UV Enterprise in October 2022. This new technology drives commerce, manages operations, and elevates the guest experience with unified booking and itinerary management for a property’s non-room, experience-based inventory.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

We don’t believe the hospitality industry is being held back from optimising technology. Innovation is driven from the belief that you can do better and be better, and that is everywhere in our industry.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

I’ve worked in the hospitality industry for over 30 years including executive leadership roles for iconic hotel groups, and technology has always been the foundation to any innovation around efficiency, guest experience or increasing revenues.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The industry is bursting with innovation from AI to unified booking! We are getting so close to actually having the fully connected trip!

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

We don’t believe there is just one thing as it really depends upon the goal of the property from driving incremental revenues to enhancing the guest experience to driving efficiencies and so on.

Back to index

53

Stayntouch Bethesda, MD, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

PMS

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We leverage a flexible and intuitive mobile platform to unburden hotel ownership, empower staff, and elevate the guest experience. With our cloud-native PMS and guest-centric technology suite, hotels can drive revenue, streamline operations, scale their business, and delight their guests.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Many hoteliers still believe that mobile tech must always preclude high-touch service. What they miss, is how technology can elevate service by freeing staff from the front desk and giving them a suite of easy-to-use tools to instantly address guest requests, without getting lost in their screens.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

I recently stayed at a hotel that was utilizing a self-service check-in kiosk. Although the hotel was very busy, the agent was free to roam the lobby and had the bandwidth to personally show me their business center which was otherwise difficult to find. It was a very pleasant experience!

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The industry is moving towards holistic datadriven solutions that leverage guests’ preferences, purchasing patterns, etc. to drive revenue and guest satisfaction. Hoteliers will increasingly leverage AI to personalize and monetize all touchpoints of the hotel (rooms, cabanas, VIP, catering, etc).

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Removing payment friction by adopting the mobile payment methods guests use and leveraging merchant-initiated transactions to enable single-click payments will drive conversions and streamline the guest experience.

54

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Datamars Textile-ID Temple, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Linen Control

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our technology is RFID tags and systems. The tech allows hotel management to keep a close eye on inventory so that they are able to take a proactive approach to occupancy demands as well as par level management. It can additionally allow for a closer look at linen durability to ensure that the linens that are purchased, hold up to manufacturer claims.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The hospitality industry faces challenges in optimizing technology primarily due to resistance to change and outdated infrastructure. Many businesses within the industry are hesitant to adopt new technologies due to concerns about disruption, costs, or the learning curve associated with implementing and integrating new systems.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

One thing that any hotel can do to leverage technology and build a better business is to implement a robust and user-friendly online booking system. An efficient and intuitive online booking system can bring several advantages.

After that, a smart guest experience platform or mobile app can offer numerous benefits for both the hotel and its guests.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Naturally I’m biased but yes, I’ve seen how an automated tracking system can help hotels manage their linen inventory. It removes the challenges and labor expenses of manually counting. Manually counting is a frustrating process that is somewhat labor intensive. This being the case, it is usually neglected until a shortage presents itself. RFID, when utilized effectively, is able to prevent shortages while also preventing surprise budget busting orders to maintain linens and by extension, a positive customer experience.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about? honestly, I’m most excited for the new software options for RFID management. We make the best tag in the market in terms of durability and accuracy, however the real magic happens at the software level. There are a couple that are in development that are almost ready to be released and they are going to be game changers for rooms directors, CFO’s, and hotel management in general.

Back to index

55

My Menu Dubai, Global CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Menu/Recipe Creation/Analysis

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our all-in-one digital menu platform upsells your signature items increasing your average check value by 30%. Our platform also helps collect customer details in the most non-intrusive way and help increase repeat footfall by 20% through of personalised SMS & WhatsApp messaging solution

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Lack of manning at critical positions, although hotels do want to adopt new technology, currently, we have entrusted too many responssibilities to one position. I believe hotel companies like Accor under the leadership of Floor Bleeker have taken the right approach, with positions such as Global VP of Guest Technology & Innovation ensuring focus is on optimising technology.

56

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Create more touch points via technology, giving the same or better guest service while reducing manning (which is our biggest challenge today)

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Yes, most of our clients have seen an immediate increase in revenue/profits by 20% - 30% and increased efficiency.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Facial recognition (without violating privacy) and the use of AI to enhance guest service

Back to index

Hapi (Data Travel, LLC) Celebration, FL, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Open API

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Hapi enables hotel companies to adopt modern technology and innovate faster using actionable data. It integrates diverse in and above property data sources seamlessly, to improve operational efficiency, enhance guest experiences, and facilitate scalable, data-driven initiatives at the individual hotel and corporate level.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Access to data in a scalable fasion. Legacy systems, data silos, and lack of budget or technical expertise all add to the challenge.

Point-to-point integrations are costly, time consuming and does not scale. Knowledge and experience in hospitality system integrations and modern data storage solutions is scarce.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Hoteliers should view data integration platforms as a utility, rather than building them from scratch. Their focus should be on leveraging data to enhance business, drive innovation, improve guest experiences, and provide employees with the data to accomlish their goals. Treating data as a utility accelerates innovation and maximizes operational cost.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Hapi helped Hyatt improve efficiency and guest experience by centralizing data to enhance their guest’s digital key experience. By intergating a real-time PMS data feed, important updates and notifications were sent to to the digital key in the mobile wallet app. Hapi allowed for Hyatt to have access to critical PMS data without extensive development work.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Newly built in the Amazon AWS environment, the Hapi Data Platform can provide data from technology systems at rest,ù or in storage, that hotel companies can access quicker. Now, hotel brands can connect directly to a stream of data or consume the data on their terms. Hapi Guest Focus serves front-desk agents with aboveproperty guest profile and preference information in a side-by-side window within their current PMS interface. This empowers front office teams to provide more personalized guest check-in experiences.

Back to index

57

Jonas Hospitality Toronto, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

PMS

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Jonas Hospitality helps hotels and hotel brands streamline hotel operations, digital marketing, and content distribution. We are a family of technology companies with a shared vision that new, innovative solutions improve hotel’s bottom line, staff retention and guest satisfaction.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Out-of-date understanding of the cost and requirements to switch to new technology, as well as bad experiences with the customer service provided by some technology companies.

New and flashy solutions that distract without the expertise to drive them.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Cloud and mobile solutions make staff who were previously tied to a desk much happier and more efficient. For example, a housekeeping manager who’s able to make the boards for the day at home before coming into the office.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Jonas Hospitality is continuing to bring together our solutions through an innovative integration platform. This system will bring together customer data across divergent platforms into a central hub that powers better experiences for guests and staff.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Talk to your team about how satisfied they are with the systems you have in place. Take a thorough look at the market of options available outside what you are currently using. Involve a wide variety of internal stakeholders in assessing new technology.

58

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Cloudbeds San Diego, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

PMS

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Cloudbeds is the platform that powers hospitality, enabling tens of thousands of lodging businesses in more than 150 countries worldwide to grow and thrive. The Cloudbeds platform is unified, modern, intuitive and is enhanced by a comprehensive marketplace of third-party integrations. It streamlines operations, optimizes revenue, delights guests, and provides valuable insights for independent hoteliers.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Switching costs for new technologies can be high few hoteliers can afford significant disruptions to their business, whether it’s from migrating data to new systems or training staff on new processes.

Often the solution is to simply remain with the status quo, but in today’s macroeconomic environment, waiting will only put your business further behind.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

One Barcelona accommodation group uses Cloudbeds with Checkin to create a completely virtual check-in process. Doing this saves 16 hours of reception work per week. The receptionist position has now been changed to that of guest experience manager,ù who is responsible for communicating with guests and personalizing their stays.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Cloudbeds Data Insights is a new integrated reporting tool that allows hoteliers to create customized reports from their system data, in addition to standardized reports. This means that hoteliers have complete flexibility over their reporting and can easily create, save and automate reports without the need for a separate tool.

Find out more

Automate as many workflows as you can with technology to reduce time spent on manual or administrative tasks. That could mean a tighter integration between your payment processor and PMS so that payments automatically sync to your guest folio and reconciliation is made much easier.

Or perhaps implementing an RMS that would be able to automate pricing alerts and instantly update prices for you.

Back to index

59

Solonis San Diego, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

PMS

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our brand (Solonis) helps hotels and the hospitality industry work leaner and smarter.

Changing to a more optimized technology can be a daunting prospect ì but the tools, support, and resources we provide help properties of any size transition into a better way of doing business. With the ability to report on and analyze guest data, our clients can unlock new detailed insights and leverage that information for data monetization. The resources we provide also help keep teams trained and up to date. At the highest level, our brand helps properties operate more efficiently, drive more revenue through increased bookings, and empower staff to provide an excellent guest experience.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Fear of change and resources. Switching technology is a monumental lift and often requires businesses to reevaluate their current practices and processes ì all of which are often viewed as luxuriesù that current time and resources cannot afford. Optimizing technology requires dedicated process-minded resources. It’s not all doom and gloom though ì with the right technology partners, much of the lift can be taken on by suppliers.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

The one thing hotels can do right now is to ensure that their guest communication is on point. Any hospitality platform will have tools for creating a great guest experience built-in ì and operational communications are an easy and quick way to instantly improve your business.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

The impact of a well-implemented hospitality technology system can be the difference between night and day when it comes to improving operations and revenue at a property. From streamlining internal operations with advanced reporting and insights to driving return revenue with loyalty programs and easy check-in and out processes ì I’ve seen technology take businesses from the brink of closure to operating with a profit. Technology, when carefully selected and properly implemented, can make or break a business.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

We’re excited to see how new advanced data analytics and AI tools, when used in conjunction with your hospitality platform, will improve how properties operate. From rapid improvements in operational efficiency to empowering guests to self-serve and own their experience on property, we’re on the cusp of some really exciting times in hospitality technology.

60

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

LS Retail, an Aptos Company Alpharetta, GA, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

PMS

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We enable hotels and hospitality venues to run their entire business - rooms, dining, spa services, and other amenities - using just one platform.

This way employees can get clear visibility over guests, and the business, and give exceptional service without needing to access multiple software solutions.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

We often encounter a we’ve always done it that wayù attitude, which can be a challenge to innovation. But guests have completely different requirements than they did 20, 10, or five years ago - and operators must be ready to adopt innovative technology which requires a new way of working, and thinking.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Our customers are seeing huge benefits in moving to one platform where all services link to the guest. Staff at the reception can see at a glance what a guest has booked, and suggest to reserve a table for dinner or a spa treatment, providing better service and increasing cross-selling.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Moving from traditional PMS to platforms that centralize and unify customer data. Hotels can serve returning guests better, as they already know their preferences. They can also send ad-hoc offers based on past consumption, encouraging guests to book again, and to add on more amenities.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Adopt technology that is simple to use, and doesn’t require extensive training, and you can focus on hiring people who can deliver fun and memorable experiences, instead of having to look for someone who is friendly, engaging, and good at doing invoices and using multiple software solutions.

Back to index

61

Maestro PMS Markham, Canada CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

PMS

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

How does technology help hotels and hospitality venues? Technology, including property management systems like Maestro All-InOne, offers numerous benefits to hotels and hospitality venues: a. Streamlined Operations: PMS software automates and centralizes various tasks such as reservations, check-ins/check-outs, billing, housekeeping, and reporting. This streamlines operations, reduces manual errors, and enhances efficiency. b. Improved Guest Experience: With technology, hotels can offer online booking capabilities, self-service check-ins, mobile room keys, personalized guest preferences, and seamless communication. These enhance the guest experience and promote customer satisfaction. c. Data and Analytics: PMS systems gather valuable data on guest preferences, booking patterns, revenue, and more. Analyzing this data helps hotels make data-driven decisions, improve marketing strategies, and personalize guest interactions.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Challenges holding the hospitality industry back from optimizing technology: a. Cost: Implementing and maintaining technology solutions can be expensive, especially for smaller hotels or those with limited budgets. b. Fragmented Systems: Some hotels may have outdated legacy systems that are not easily compatible with new technologies. Integrating various systems can be challenging and timeconsuming. c. Staff Training and Resistance: Adopting new technology requires training staff and overcoming resistance to change. Some employees may be hesitant to embrace new systems or lack the necessary digital skills. d. Data Security Concerns: With the increasing reliance on technology, ensuring the security of guest data and protecting against cyber threats becomes a significant concern for hotels.

d. Integration with Other Systems: PMS technology can integrate with other hotel systems like point-of-sale, revenue management, and online distribution channels. This integration enables real-time inventory and rate management, enhances revenue optimization, and improves overall operational efficiency.

62

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Implementing a robust property management system, like Maestro All-In-One, can significantly benefit any hotel. This type of technology centralizes operations, automates processes, and provides valuable data insights. By leveraging a comprehensive PMS, hotels can streamline operations, enhance guest experiences, and make informed business decisions.

Upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions: several emerging technologies are likely to have an impact on the hospitality industry:

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Technology has been widely reported to have positive impacts on hotels. For example, implementing a PMS has helped hotels automate manual tasks, reduce paperwork, and improve operational efficiency. By streamlining processes, hotels can allocate resources more effectively and provide better experiences for guests. Technology can also enhance revenue management, optimize pricing strategies, and improve overall profitability.

a. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML): AI and ML can be used to personalize guest experiences, automate tasks, optimize pricing, and improve operational efficiency. b. Internet of Things (IoT): IoT enables the connection of various devices, allowing hotels to create a seamless and personalized guest experience. For example, IoT can control room temperature, lighting, and entertainment systems based on guest preferences. c. Voice-enabled Technology: Voice assistants and voice-activated devices are becoming increasingly popular in hotels, allowing guests to control various aspects of their stay through voice commands. d. Contactless Technology: In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, contactless technologies, such as mobile check-ins, digital keys, and touchless payments, have gained prominence and are likely to continue.

Find out more

Back to index

63

BirchStreet Systems Las Vegas, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Inventory/Purchasing

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Uniquely designed for hospitality, BirchStreet’s solutions are born from deep collaboration and relationships with our customers. These solutions are established according to the unique and complex business needs of our customers in the hospitality industry, including hotels, casinos, restaurants, and food manufacturing.

This collaboration drives actionable visibility and control into direct materials spend, risk of loss, and workflow efficiencies.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Yes, BirchStreet Pay. www.birchstreetsystems.com/products/ birchstreet-pay/

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

BirchStreet Business Intelligence.

Manual processes.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Consolidate their ePro strategy with a complete P2P solution set paid for by cash-back through supplier ePayments. www.birchstreetsystems.com/products/ birchstreet-pay/

64

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Shiji Group ATLANTA, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

PMS

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Shiji’s solutions help hotels by upgrading operations’ tech, and thus enhancing guest experiences. Our comprehensive solutions cover the entire guest journey from booking with distribution solutions, to check-in’s and onproperty with PMS, POS, Guest Communications, to post-stay with surveys, reputation management, analytics, and more.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Challenges in hospitality technology are very much based on legacy systems and limited IT infrastructure. Hotels want the best for their guests but are held back by old technology.

Overcoming that requires strong partnerships, investment in new tech, and superior support and service from vendors.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Leveraging data analytics from guest feedback and hotel operations. By analyzing insights, hotels can find the most important next step in their technology to rebuild. Build the business around the guest experiences and needs and not around the technology that is available or the latest fad.

Listen to the guests.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

After coming in from a long flight, receiving my digital key in the cab, and then be able to walk straight to my room before my meetings to get ready for the day. Later, I went to the front desk to get some food recommendations. The tech made it easy for me to get to my room and it made it easier for the front desk to have time to advise me when I was ready.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The next generation of hotel “PMS” systems.

The PMS becomes a catalyst for innovation and new technology rather than the friction point.

These systems like, Shiji Enterprise Platform, are a lot more than a PMS because they act like a real platform for the hotels and they welcome add-on solutions. In the end, it drives more innovation and ideas rather than becoming a hurdle for innovation since hoteliers know the core connectivity will be a problem.

Back to index

65

Agilysys Alpharetta, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

PMS

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Actionable data and systems that reveal it enable hotels to transform remarkable service into memorable hospitality. Robust guest profiles, smart property management systems that can access guest preferences across locations and amenities, and analysis systems that coalesce guests’ behaviours with financial returns can inform employees’ actions in real-time, guiding them to provide just the right touch at the right time.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Integration challenges are one of the more prevalent reasons why hospitality properties choose not to invest in the latest technology solutions for their business. That is why selecting solution partners that offer an APIbased architecture that provides freedom of choice between native ancillary solutions or third party products can best maximize return on experience across every guest and staff hospitality touchpoint.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

With Point-Of-Sale, properties that have chosen to adopt best-of-breed hospitality technology solutions, such as self-service kiosks for Food and Beverage, have seen a significant increase in net sales and total checks over those that did not adopt such kiosks. With Property Management Systems, properties that are deploying flexible, configurable, integrated systems are seeing their guests do more and spend more $ on property.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The application of AI-based technologies to provide new guest service opportunities and help optimize increasingly scarce staff resources.

AI-enabled F&B kiosks are a prime example of frictionless guest self-service for checkout at grab-n-go sites, cafeterias and other property outlets where packaged items are offered.

Similarly, AI can learn from guest preferences built up over prior stays combined with an analysis of the preferences of similar guest types to craft unique, targeted offers and activities at booking.

Once a property has made the decision to invest in best-of-breed hospitality technology solutions, the next step, after ensuring staff has been adequately trained, is to make certain that employees are empowered to create experiences beyond those dictated by typical service protocols. When hotel employees are equipped with robust guest profiles and real-time systems, they can confidently spot hospitality momentsù perfect for creating memorable experiences, plus they have the discernment to understand when adding something extra will benefit both guests and the property.

66

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Xn Global Systems Miami, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

POS

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

By leveraging guest self service and mobile applications we help hotels reduce their labor costs.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Legacy technology and the inability to easily connect applications.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Move their tech stack to the cloud.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

The use of mobile POS and payments technology reduces server journeys to and from fixed workstations saving labor costs and freeing up server time to focus more on guest interaction and upselling.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

We are planning to launch xnPOS BI, our new F&B focused BI and analytics platform at HITEC. This will give users of our POS system powerful and actionable information on any device which is accessible by the internet.

Back to index

67

Allseated California, USA CATEGORY

Operations Applications

SOLUTION

Event Planning

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Founded in 2011, Allseated is an industry-leading platform for the events sector that allows for venues to create 3D òdigital twins’, making it even easier to plan and sell events to clients. Through innovative technology, clients can feel as though they’re at an actual event venue, no matter where they are in the world or what device they are using. Allseated also provides solutions that have been proven to keep all stakeholders updated throughout the event planning process, helping to increase efficiency and productivity within teams.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Event planners often face challenges when it comes to adopting technology and digital twins for event planning. One of the main reasons is the complexity of integrating various technologies and data sources. Event venues typically have disparate systems for seating, lighting, HVAC, and security, making it difficult to create a unified digital twin. There may also be a lack of awareness and understanding of the potential benefits of digital twins, leading to hesitation in adopting these innovative solutions. However, as the industry becomes more aware of the advantages and advancements made, these challenges can be overcome, paving the way for the widespread adoption of digital twins and technology in event planning.

68

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

During a time when providing a personalized solution to a problem is the key to winning over customer loyalty and keeping clients returning, hotels need to look at innovative solutions that enable this personalization. One simple tool that hotels can leverage is the use of òdigital twins’ that can be created to show the true potential of an event and will ensure that hotels are overdelivering on their clients’ expectations.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We know that the event planning industry is exceptionally stressful. Our mission is to tackle this challenge and create virtual environments that can save our partners’ customers time, as well as increase customer satisfaction. We have already seen huge success, with our partners reporting that they have increased their events business by 30%.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

There are a lot of innovative solutions, but the ones that will truly excite everyone are the tools that will simplify everyone’s days! Whether that be an integrated tool that allows clients to connect directly with the venue no matter where they are in the world, or visit the event space at any time with anyone. Watch this space for some exciting news from Allseated coming soon!

Back to index

SOLUTION

ROBOTICS

Piaggio Fast Forward Boston, USA CATEGORY

Robotics

SOLUTION

Robotics

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We focus on robots as helpers, not replacements, for humans. Robots working with humans to augment and enhance, as well as address mobility concerns, offer huge potential to have a positive impact on staff, as well as the guest experience.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Technology often requires an investment in time and learning that hotels don’t easily quantify returns. Change can be difficult and has cause the hotel experience to lag behind what their own customers experience at home.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Scalable infrastructure is key to future-proofing your property. As technology is constantly evolving and having a bigger impact, hotels need to just be ready to start from where they currently are and take incremental steps to ensure relevance, as well as place them in a position where they can take advantage of the increased benefits of techology.

70

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Technology for the sake of technology is rarely successful in the long run. Hotels technology must always either lower costs, improve efficiency, or positively impact the guest experience in a way that drives rate or revenue.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Clearly, we see big potential benefits from robotics. In addition to that, I think that technology that makes the guest journey more personal, eliminates friction with the hotel and between systems, and that works seamlessly with current processes and systems are all important parts of tech making an impact on guests, staff, and owners.

Back to index

ROBOTIS Lake Forest, USA CATEGORY

Robotics

SOLUTION

Service Robots

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Adding service robots helps organizations maximize service volume and quality for guests without requiring an increase in staffing. Service robots can take care of many routine hospitality tasks like room service deliveries, freeing up staff to attend to more complicated and pressing tasks.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Many veterans of the hospitality industry are hesitant to accept service robots into their toolset, insisting that a “human touch” is required for maximum guest satisfaction. However, in many cases, guests actually prefer the consistency, contactless nature, and privacy of automated hospitality service.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Automating routine and repetitive tasks such as security patrols and small goods delivery can free up limited staffing for more significant tasks, as well as enabling the provision of 24/7 uninterrupted service of .

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Switching to room service robots results in a direct increase in room service orders at most hotels. In addition to allowing hotels to provide 27/7 room service at no extra cost to themselves, many guests are more likely to place an order when they believe that it will be delivered by a service robot.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

ROBOTIS is debuting it’s GAEMI service robot platform to the North American market at this year’s HITEC event. GAEMI is designed to provide the best intra-facility service and small goods delivery to guests with minimum cost and complexity. In South Korea and Japan, major hotel chains such as Courtyard by Marriott, Mayfield Hotel & Resort, Kensington Hotels & Resorts, Novotel, and Ibis Styles have already experienced an increase in service related revenue thanks to the GAEMI service robot’s ability to provide reliable around-the-clock food and beverage delivery, hospitality, and room service.

Back to index

71

SOLUTION

SECURITY

Cybertek Pensacola, USA

CATEGORY

Security

SOLUTION

Cybersecurity

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Dedicated Hospitality IT Services.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Ability to define OPEX vs CAPEX for services that used to be hosted locally that are now hosted in the cloud or hybrid.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Money

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Hotels need to create a solutions for internal and external guests to provide best in class services.

You can only do this by providing 24/7 devices for technology solutions in hybrid technology environments with multiple communications platforms.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Cloud based PMS and POS solutions that remove the old interface model and inserts new App Store style interface solutions. While staying true to PCI and GDPR.

Back to index

73

Operto Guest Technologies Vancouver, Canada CATEGORY

Security

SOLUTION

Door Locks

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Operto Connect is a comprehensive platform that streamlines the management of vacation rentals, hotels, multi-family, and other lodging businesses.

It offers a range of tools, including access control, noise and occupancy monitoring, guest messaging, and housekeeping and maintenance scheduling. Operto Connect integrates with leading PMS providers, making it easy for property managers to manage their reservations and solutions from one place. The platform is designed to enhance the guest experience, improve operational efficiency, protect the property, and increase revenue.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

We believe that several factors are holding the hospitality industry back from optimizing technology. While advancements in technology have the potential to revolutionize the guest experience and streamline operations, there are challenges that hinder its full adoption.

The hospitality industry comprises numerous players, including hotels, vacation rentals, and property management companies. Each entity may have its own legacy systems and software, leading to a fragmented technology landscape.

Integrating various systems and platforms becomes a complex task, resulting in inefficiencies and reluctance to embrace new technologies.

Implementing new tech often requires significant upfront investments, which can be a deterrent for many hospitality businesses, especially small and independent ones. The perceived high cost and uncertainty about the return on investment make it challenging for them to prioritize technology optimization. Not to mention that 74

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

each business has unique requirements and workflows. Finding technology solutions that can be customized to their specific needs while seamlessly integrating with existing systems can be a significant challenge. Lack of interoperability and compatibility between different software and hardware solutions can hinder the optimization of technology in the industry.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Staff training and adoption: Introducing new technologies often requires staff training and changes to existing workflows. Resistance to change, lack of technological literacy, and inadequate training resources can impede the adoption of new technology solutions.

Hospitality businesses need to invest in comprehensive training programs to ensure successful implementation and maximize the benefits of technology.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Through numerous customer feedback! operto.com/prague-residences/

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Our Boost product not only increases the life of existing locks, it directly impacts millions of potential doors and locks entering the landfill each year. Being able to innovate and actively play a role in sustainable stays is exciting and rewarding.

Back to index

ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions Richardson, USA CATEGORY

Security

SOLUTION

Door Locks

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our solutions are designed to maximize both guest and staff security while providing opportunities for hotels to enhance operational efficiency, guest convenience and the quality of hotel stay experiences. Our solution range extends from electronic door locks equipped with Mobile Access, to cloud-based access management systems and advanced locationbased technologies.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Hotels tend to stick with what works as a means of keeping costs down and because they may not yet fully understand the advantages that newer technologies represent. However, by staying upto-date on such trends, hoteliers can discover that such investments often result in lower operating costs and higher profits.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions customers consistently demonstrate the advantages that technology can have on streamlining operations and ensuring a higher quality guest experience.

Our solutions such as cloud-based access management frequently showcase how properties can overcome staffing shortages while still ensuring heightened security and more responsive guest services.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Cloud-based technologies continue to present new and exciting possibilities as solutions that are flexible and capable of evolving alongside changing hotel business needs. Location-based technologies such as real-time asset management likewise represent additional opportunities to enhance operational efficiency, reduce costs and tailor experiences to the unique preferences of individual guests.

Hoteliers need to leverage technology to meet modern guest demands for faster, safer, more convenient and personalized service. Meeting these increasing expectations is what is driving the industry towards newer approaches to managing daily operations and services, including cloud-based technologies, digital key services and IoT-enabled devices and systems.

Back to index

75

Eigen Development Vancouver, Canada CATEGORY

Security

SOLUTION

Data/Credit Card Security

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Eigen helps by automating payments at the front desk and F&B outlets, streamlining reconciliation, increasing secure means of handling card data as well as offering digital tools with a track record of improving guest experience, to name a few.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Staying focused on the challenges you are trying to resolve. Two main reasons for implementing new technology is to improve guest experience or improve hotel staff quality of work. Knowing when and where digital tools will achieve these goals can be difficult in a market overrun with options.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Yes, in the payment space we have seen many properties find success through automation.

It greatly reduces human error, offers more convenience to guests and eliminates the need for daily mundane tasks.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Omni-channel solutions are an absolute must in the hotel space. Eigen’s robust hospitality tools allow for merchants to utilize unique guest tokens across OTAs & booking sites through to guest check out and incidentals.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Stop worrying about the latest and greatest technology. There will always be something newer and flashier. Choose specific areas to focus on and ensure you have a means to measure your success or failure. Let your success drive further innovation.

76

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

dormakaba Indianapolis, USA CATEGORY

Security

SOLUTION

Door Locks

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

At dormakaba, we believe our lock is more than a lock. It’s the keystone of your tech stack and the way a guest experiences their stay. In partnership with EMS systems, our locks facilitate the latest in energy ROI and door management.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

When we talk to owners, we hear that Market demand and return on investment are crucial pieces that must be in place to move forward with technology upgrades. Once planned and purchased, hotel staff must have access continual tech stack training and tech stack onboarding in order to optimize long term use. At dormakaba, we’ve invested in a Customer Success Team to support hotels in having the best return on investment through continuous education based on a variety of touch points.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

As a frequent traveler, I see how my guest experience is impacted by my guest room lock. I love to check in via phone app, enter the room with my phone, and free myself from the need to keep track of a key. I love to see lock integration with energy management in my room.

I know my room is safer and more comfortable than other guest rooms.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

I’m most excited to see hotel guests drive adoption in mobile key with features like keys across devices. It creates a seamless entry for all guests.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Invest in an integrated lock solution. Online locking provides alerts for life safety issues that could arise on property. Additionally, online locks integrated with EMS systems can help hotels find a quicker path to their return on investment.

Back to index

77

Goki Sydney, Australia CATEGORY

Security

SOLUTION

Door Locks

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our technology empowers hotels and other accommodation providers to elevate guest experiences with seamless mobile access, streamlined operations, and personalised services.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The industry faces challenges with outdated systems, lack of interoperability, and resistance to change, impeding the optimisation of technology in hospitality.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Personally, I’ve witnessed technology improve efficiency, enhance guest experiences, and drive profits in hotels through the implementation of smart room controls and data-driven insights.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

We eagerly anticipate upcoming advancements in artificial intelligence, data analytics, and contactless technologies that will redefine the hospitality industry, delivering even more exceptional guest experiences and operational efficiency.

By embracing a robust property management system that integrates with guest-facing apps and automation tools, any hotel can leverage technology to enhance their business and exceed guest expectations.

78

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

React Mobile Seattle, USA CATEGORY

Security

SOLUTION

Emergency Management

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our staff safety solutions help hotels and hospitality venues maintain a safe workplace.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

A reluctance to change is a big reason why some people in the hospitality industry take more time to optimize technology. Being able to clearly show the benefits of the technology, and Implementing technology that is extremely easy to use is key in situations where some individuals are hesitant to make a change.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

One is example is entertainment, like an in-room TV package. This type of technology helps market their on-property amenities to bring them more incremental revenue.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

At React Mobile, we are most excited about our new wearable employee safety device. It’s lighter than our previous devices, it’s comfortable to wear, and it’s perfect for hospitality professionals who spend a lot of time moving throughout their property.

Technology is beneficial because it can help hotels reduce costs, protect your staff and guests, increase efficiencies, and help to lower staff workload.

Back to index

79

VENZA Pensacola, USA CATEGORY

Security

SOLUTION

PCI/Data Security

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

In a world of quickly-evolving IT threats, hoteliers cannot afford to wait until an incident occursthey must proactively manage risk. Data protection, privacy stewardship, and regulatory compliance tools make vulnerabilities visible and guide the industry toward mitigation.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Many roles within hospitality, especially at the onproperty level, are filled by people with somewhat limited technical training. Optimization requires proficiency with the tools and an appreciation of acceptable use as well as potential risks that accompany misuse.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

You can’t protect things that you don’t know you have, and you can’t value things that haven’t been appraised. Business decisions should be grounded in visibility and be driven by data. Hotels can achieve this by leveraging tools with unified, comprehensive reporting to avoid data silos.

80

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Smart devices and automation improve business efficiency and customer convenience, but also pose unprecedented challenges for privacy protection and consumer trust. To harness their upside and mitigate their downsides, hoteliers must prepare, train, and establish practices to make them secure.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

VENZA is debuting amazing new solutions.

AI-driven Pen Testing turns the tools of criminals against them to shut down vulnerabilities networkwide. This complements our new VENZA System. Unifying VENZA’s proprietary technologies as well as those of our partners, it creates a single pane of glass to your entire security posture.

Back to index

Verkada San Mateo, USA CATEGORY

Security

SOLUTION

Security Systems

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

1. Simplify security management and protect multiple sites from a single cloud platform 2. Proactively respond to incidents to keep people and property safe.

3. Improve customer experience with data-driven insights such as occupancy trends, heatmaps and overcrowding alerts.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

1. Legacy infrastructure, uncertain ROI & costs.

The upfront cost of a rip-and-replace can be a deterrent. Long-term budgetary must also factor in hidden costs (maintenance and overhead).

2. Data security: Cybersecurity and data privacy threats with cloud-based solutions can deter companies from adopting new technologies, and continue to opt for closed systems instead.”

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

AI analytics like real-time alerts accelerate response to security issues. This includes Door Forced Open or tailgating events, sudden changes in air quality (vaping), and proactive prevention of damage to property. Person of Interest alerts can detect bad actors or VIP customers to respectively take action or provide a catered experience.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

1. The ability to integrate air quality and environmental sensor technology into HVAC systems.

2. More integrations with physical security systems (such as cameras, access control, alarms, sensors, intercom and workplace management solutions).

3. Improving edge processing capabilities that deliver advanced computer vision features, such as occupancy trends.”

Protect customers, guests and facilities at scale with a cloud-based building security system.

This can help drive efficiency across teams, while improving safety across any number of locations. Incidents can be addressed quickly and efficiently, instead of having to jump across disparate systems.

Back to index

81

FLEXIPASS Intelligent Digital Keys Los Angeles, USA

CATEGORY

Security

SOLUTION

Door Locks

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Open doors now even without an APP. FLEXIPASS helps innovative hotels deliver stunning keyless guest experiences combined with Digital Keys.

Benefits are limitless. Upsell, Online CheckIn, Payments, Digital Keys and WebKeys, Guest Communication and Guest Surveys + more

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Hotels are challenges with labor shortage and increasing guests demands. Therefore the move to implement time saving + enhanced guest experience technology can only help.

But Hoteliers need to make this a priority and separate from daily activities.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Yes all the time. Imagine as a guest receiving curated pre arrival messages, online checkin with upsell options, get your Digital Key or WebKey when you room is ready, connect with the hotel to enables additional services and leave stunning reviews. Who can afford not to earn more + deliver stunning keyless guest experiences?

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

FLEXIPASS WebKeys. Guests can now open doors without the need to download an APP.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Implement Digital Keys or Webkeys with FLEXIPASS to start saving time + deliver better keyless guest experiences.

82

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

SOLUTION

FINANCE MANAGEMENT

ReactorNet San Antonio, USA CATEGORY

Finance Management

SOLUTION

Procurement Systems

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

ReactorNet provides hospitality venues with a suite of cloud-based products that streamline the corporate spending process ultimately leading to lowered operational costs and an increased competitive advantage.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Like many industries, it’s often the status quo that holds companies back technologically. This is driven by the fact that most technology is disruptive in nature, thus creating a general sense of fear backed by a perceived lack of resources.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Any hotel can immediately cut costs and create a more profitable business operation by leveraging technology that requires little upfront investment.

The key is to find the right technology partner that understands your goals and works around the limited resources that small businesses have.

84

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Hotel operators are often surprised at how quickly they realize a return on their investment when it comes to Spend Management technology. The adage If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage itù never rings truer than it does with spend management. We have seen savings in the most obscure places of hotel operation that were never fully visible prior to technologically driven procurement and accounting processes.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The inclusion of AI into hospitality technology solutions is without a doubt what excites us the most. There are so many moving pieces in the hospitality industry, from customer facing to supply chain to operations, including employee staffing and training. So many of these moving pieces directly impact one another. For this reason alone, there is no doubt that AI can help streamline all the technological pieces at play.

Back to index

Buk Technology Delaware, USA CATEGORY

Finance Management

SOLUTION

Block Chain

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Blockchain based distribution of hotel inventory adds transparency, visibility and control of hotel rooms, even beyond primary sale. Adding tradability adds a new revenue stream for hotels and stand to improve RevPAR by 3-5%.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Hotels using revenue management solutions are standing to improving revenue projections and margins by atleast 5-10%

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Resistance to change. lack of ownership of technology. Seeing technology as a enabler rather than a value creator.

Blockchain technology has the potential to change the way the industry distributes. AI has the ability to change the way data is analysing.

Finally the large troves of data consolidated by the industry gets put into use.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Be open. Test small – Implement big. Insist usage of data for decision making. NOt just capturing, but using the data for every decision to be made.

Back to index

85

Fairmas Montreal, Canada CATEGORY

Finance Management

SOLUTION

Budgeting/Forecasting

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Fairmas’ technology offers a range of innovative solutions specifically designed to help hotels and hospitality venues optimize their financial planning and analysis. With years of hospitality experience, hotel enthusiasts joined Fairmas and created technology-forward solutions tailor-made for the future of the global hospitality industry.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

We believe the hospitality industry is behind other industries, specifically in terms of digitalization.

One reason for this is because hospitality has always been a people-centric business that values real human experience over virtual solutions. Another reason is that there is a lack of hospitality-specific solutions in the market.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Hotels need to be more open-minded in being receptive to technology. The one thing that any hotel can do to leverage technology is that hotels can automate and streamline various processes, enhance guest experiences, and gain a competitive edge in the industry, especially in the financial planning & analysis of a hotel.

86

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Yes, our solutions are designed by hotel experts, for hotel experts. Most of our employees come from a hospitality background and that is where the idea of our solutions came into place. Having years of hospitality experience, we have not only witnessed technology helping a hotel improve efficiency, experience and profit, we made sure to give back to the industry we are so proudly a part of and make tailor-made solutions for the industry.

We have witnessed our tools helping 5000+ small family owned & large international hotel chains increase their profit by streamlining their financial planning & analysis through the help of Fairmas.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

We are excited about Fairmas’ payroll planning feature, which is a great supplement to our existing and innovative modules. FairPayroll allows you to plan salary & wage costs based on the manning guide with automatic calculation of non-wage labour costs, productivity calculation and bonus calculation.

Find out more

Back to index

Edenred Pay Bonita Springs, FL, USA CATEGORY

Finance Management

SOLUTION

Credit Card & Payment Systems

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Edenred Pay’s automated invoice-to-pay platform helps Accounts Payable departments streamline supplier enablement, digitize invoice capture, streamline supplier payments, automate reconciliation/reporting, and monetize the invoice-to-pay lifecycle for all accounting teams.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Hospitality groups readily embrace “guestfacing” or operations related technology to grow profitability, however they can be reluctant to invest in back-of-house technologies that can drive enhanced cashflow due to legacy processes which seem difficult to change. Thisi s where automation can help!

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

In prior roles, I’ve lead the deployment of invoice automation systems that digitally capture invoices, auto code expenses, submit for approval approval, and initiate vendor payments. These platforms save labor hours, greatly reduce dataentry errors, and speed up processing time.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The utilization of AI and machine learning will continue to enhance technologies to be more adaptive and beneficial to platforms that can deploy them effectively.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Hotel organizations should evaluate the pain points within their existing workflows, or repetitive processes, to identify where technology can alleviate time and/or reduce expense.

Back to index

87

Onyx CenterSource Dallas, USA CATEGORY

Finance Management

SOLUTION

Commission Processing

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Onyx’s technology streamlines the way hoteliers pay commissions, and agencies and planners receive them. Onyx maximizes efficiency, removes administrative burden and speeds the payment delivery process, and enables payments to be delivered in a currency of the clients’ choosing.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Lack of standardized data sets, lack of disruption, lack of standardization in documentation and processing (ie VAT and invoicing) across different global regions

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Hotels are definitely becoming more and more tech-savvy, everything from keyless room entry to commission processing. These innovations drive efficiency, experience and profit when applied the right way.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Onyx’s M&E commission solution, GroupPay, is like a commission automation magic wand for hoteliers to ensure their agency and planner partners get paid for room block commissions quickly and easily.

Partner with organizations and purchase solutions that can make small teams more efficient and free them up to focus on guests.

88

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Sertifi Chicago, USA

CATEGORY

Finance Management

SOLUTION

Credit Card & Payment Systems

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

As the only complete agreements platform designed for hospitality and travel, Sertifi helps businesses bring e-signature, payment, and credit card authorization workflows into a single solution. By streamlining the agreements process, businesses can increase efficiency and security, reduce payment costs and fraud, maximize convenience for guests, and close business faster.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Oftentimes, it seems a hesitancy for change and fear of the unknown slows down technology adoption. There’s a comfortability with the status quo.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Technology can be a seamless extension of your team, which is especially critical in today’s climate of hoteliers having to manage an influx of business with a smaller staff. Automating administrative tasks, such as collecting authorization forms or signing event contracts, is a low-cost, low-effort way to increase efficiency and security. These small tasks add up to a lot of time that can be used in more meaningful ways and for tasks harder to hand off to technology.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We see hoteliers finalizing business faster every day thanks to digitalization.For example, traditional paper-based methods to signing event contracts and collecting a deposit often takes weeks. By automating that process with technology - and more importantly, making it easier for guests - hoteliers can finalize business in minutes. We’ve also seen technology result in hundreds to thousands of savings in chargebacks.

Digitizing your paper authorization forms doesn’t just make you PCI compliant;it gives you instant access to fraud prevention and card verification methods, such as CVV, AVS, 3-D Secure, and ID verification.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Sertifi’s excited to announce our next-generation agreements platform. Our reimagined user experience makes it easier than ever to sign documents, make payments, and send credit card authorizations ì all wrapped up in a modern design tailor-made for hospitality and travel users. By spending less time on manual tasks, chasing down business, and onboarding new team members, businesses have more time to focus on what matters most: their guests. We can’t wait for our 17,500+ customers to see and use the new experience.

Find out more

Back to index

89

SOLUTION

COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS

P3 Hotel Software Boulder, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Booking Engines

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our technology solutions help hotels maintain a reliable source for bookings, reducing dependency and costs on OTAs. Additionally, they offer automation for specific services, thereby reducing the administrative workload on hotel staff and allowing them to focus on more valuable interactions with guests.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

While technology aims to simplify workflows, they are occasionally seen as disruptive to established operations, leading to resistance towards change.

Concerns about privacy and customer data handling also exist. And finally, we must know how to implement technology that works in harmony with human interactions.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

One of our luxury hotel brand clients now relies entirely on reservations made through their direct booking engine. They eliminated their dependence on OTAs after developing a fully customized, user-friendly guest journey that reflects the essence of their brand from browsing, booking, to checking out.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

We’re excited about implementing personalization throughout the booking experience. By capturing more information about the guest through the booking engine hotels can deliver tailored services online and anticipate guests’ needs resulting in enhanced guest experiences.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Working with expert companies that understand how to deliver a truly integrated technology ecosystem, hotels can achieve higher levels of customization throughout their entire e-commerce operation. By utilizing cloud-based systems, they can benefit from quick, easy, and affordable upgrades.

Back to index

91

Yipy Salt Lake City, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Business Intelligence/Data Warehouse

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our technology allows organizations to define their standards, inspect their performance against those standards, and analyze this data to gain actionable insights as to where improvements can be made and where an organization is shining bright ì from the individual property to the global brand level.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Hospitality is a well-established industry that has remained relatively unchanged over its long history, leading many to think, the system isn’t broken so why fix it?ù While the main problems we solve remain the same, we as hoteliers need to recognize that the expectations of our guests and the tools at our disposal have changed dramatically.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Hotels need to identify the largest problem they are facing. What is costing the most time and money in your business? What technology exists that can help you overcome that one issue?

Don’t try to solve all the problems at once, take it one bite at a time.

92

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

I have watched many hotels move from paper processes to digital solutions. At first, it feels like paying for a new system that was freeù before.

But they quickly realize the paper processes were actually quite expensive, requiring lots of time and effort from senior employees. As the technology takes effect, managers find their time freed to engage in more meaningful work to streamline processes, improve guest satisfaction, and ultimately increase profits.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

I’m most excited by the work we’re doing at Yipy to revolutionize the way hospitality does standards testing! By bringing all your organization’s standardsbrand service safety maintenance etc.into a digital platform we enable you to get a clear picture of what your expectations are and how the various parts of your organization are performing against them.

The actionable insights we provide help you focus trainings improve guest experiences and ultimately improve your bottom line.

Back to index

Aptech Pittsburgh, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Business Intelligence/Data Warehouse

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Aptech provides a cohesive suite of web-based applications to help with back office financial management. Our tools help clients to track financial performance, plan for the future and analyze the various hospitality metrics.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Embracing change can be the biggest technology hurdle many organizations face. Technology can require some changes to standard operating procedures that will ultimately yield results with buy in from the entire organization.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Any time a process can be achieved leveraging technology/automation to redeploy human capital to other areas of the business would be an area to focus on. Technology can replace many mundane tasks that can require a lot of time and effort from the staff.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We have personally witnessed technology being deployed within the finance space on the accounts payable side. Using technology to streamline the accounts payable process helped to remove mundane data-entry tasks for the accounting team allowing them to optimize their time more efficiently. This resulted in more work getting completed in less time.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Introducing artificial intelligence to the data mining process to help pinpoint information that may have been overlooked. I also think this will assist with predicative analytics to highlight trends and aid in the financial planning process.

Back to index

93

SkyPoint Cloud Beaverton, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Business Intelligence/Data Warehouse

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

SkyPoint Cloud empowers the hospitality industry to leverage the data you already have, to drive more meaningful interactions, while advancing your internal data maturity. We do this by extracting and unifying data from leading hospitality solutions, creating self-service analysis with any data visualization tool, then we activate and enrich data down your chain of needs to scale revenue, privacy, personalization, and more.

With unified data, you can predict needs, increase repeat stays/purchases, and maintain a balance between privacy and personalization.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Limited data infrastructure, legacy systems, resistance to change, and lack of technological expertise or partners. Additionally, concerns about data security, high implementation costs, and the need for seamless integration with existing operations pose challenges in adopting and leveraging emerging technologies to their fullest potential. Lastly, everyone wants to leverage AI, but there are numerous challenges to this emerging technology that requires a serious look at the underlying dataset in order to harness its full potential.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Implement a comprehensive guest data management system that integrates data from various systems, such as reservations, check-ins, and guest interactions, enabling personalized experiences and targeted marketing campaigns.

By leveraging unified data to understand and cater to guest preferences, hotels can enhance guest satisfaction, loyalty, and ultimately build a better business.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

By integrating data from various hotel systems into a unified data platform, hotels can more quickly and easily provide personalized experiences at scale. For example, by integrating your room service ordering systems with AI, you can have your guest’s favorite cocktail waiting in their room when they arrive. It’s not possible at scale unless your data and systems are unified and speaking the same language – enabling tools like AI to perform predictive analysis to create unsurpassed guest experiences.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Getting back to the data basics. You can’t innovate with technology without first having your data house in order. AI has a long way to go, but we’re excited about the potential that Generative AI has to relieve those mundane tasks and revolutionize the way personalized experiences in hospitality can be created and executed at scale.

94

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Above Property Naples, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Computer Reservation Systems (CRS)/Distribution

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

APS’s technology increases revenue and makes hotel operations more efficient. The all-in-one platform eliminates the friction that is often created by fragmented systems and multiple on-property vendors.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Yes, APS has multiple examples of increased revenues and efficiency for hotels that are open to change.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Hotels currently struggle with vendor dependency around data stewardship and contract cycles.

While the quick answer is AI, it is the ability to quickly service the AI suggestion/itinerary and facilitate a revenue-generating transaction that we are most excited about.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Embrace “Continuous Pricing” that allows for the optimization of inventory and revenue.

This is a benefit of an all-in-one platform.

Back to index

95

Professional Accounting Solutions, Inc Dripping Springs, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Business Intelligence/Data Warehouse

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

PAS deploys financial and analytical solutions.

When managed properly, the Finance teams are advisors to Operations, providing the necessary data to optimally run their organizations. Its critical to be looking forward in today’s environment, not over your shoulder. Technology that enables that is critical to assist businesses to thrive.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

We find that hospitality is typically focused on guest service, and the technology that improves that. What is often overlooked is the technology that empowers both people and systems that enable the industry to provide better service.

For example, installing a system that monitors your major equipment for anomalies may enable you to address issues before they become major repair that impacts both the guest experience AND the cash flow.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

ALL businesses need a solid business intelligence solution. Don’t just gather data, ensure you can analyze it. Data only holds value when its measured, reviewed and acted on. Adding in predictive modelling, leveraging AI, anything you can to improve the automation of the analysis and call out anomalies, trends, anything that enables you to turn the dials and adjust your operation, these are all necessary. Start small if you must, but start. Don’t ignore the non-guest areas, that data is just as critical as your Rate, Occ and RevPAR.

96

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We have been fortunate over the years to watch and participate as hospitality has moved forward in automation, be it delivery of data, products or services. We have watched as hotels have turned Night Audit and then Income Audit from full time positions to fully automated processes that remove both the payroll affiliated with the positions as well as the human error. We have watched the close process go from 10 business days down to 2 or 3, enabling Finance to become a predictive partner and not a lecturer of what you did wrong 4 weeks ago that cannot be changed.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

At PAS we are a team of Hospitality Financial and Technology professionals that love the technology, creating and delivering solutions that improve performance and make jobs easier, that’s fun for us. We are currently looking at new predictive modelling, forecasting accuracy and how to leverage AI in this process. Proper use of AI is truly the future. I can only imagine how this could have affected some of my hotels in my prior life, the returns that could have been generated and how much easier economic downturns could have been handled.

Find out more

Back to index

Zucchetti North America/Vertical Booking Hillsboro, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Computer Reservation Systems (CRS)/Distribution

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Your reservations management processes can be updated significantly by implementing an innovative CRS solution with integrated booking engine functionality and upselling and conversion features, that supports the entire booking cycle, to drive more direct bookings and boost revenue.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Overall, I think vendors aren’t doing enough to communicate the value of their solutions in ways that genuinely speak to hoteliers and encourage action, which leaves hoteliers without a real understanding about how and why each solution is necessary, and a sense of overwhelm when comparing different vendor options.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Personally, I have never seen technology not help a hotel to work more effectively and/or increase profits, unless it was not properly implemented or integrated. There is so much ROI to be had from adopting technology, including saving time, getting more done with less staff and maximizing revenue opportunities.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

I think integrations between internal operational solutions are one of the biggest and most costly problems facing the hotel industry today. I am very excited for all types of solutions to prioritize implementing quick, easy and cost-effective integration methods, such as open-source APIs, to facilitate more widespread technology adoption.

Drive direct bookings by updating your booking engine to provide potential guests with the best check-out experience possible. Integrate upselling and conversion tools to convert more bookings, decrease the cost of acquisition and maximize revenue. A strong, consistent revenue management and marketing strategy will support your efforts and maximize ROI.

Back to index

97

PAUL Tech AG Mannheim, Germany CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Data Analysis

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We develop intelligent solutions that help save energy every day and make buildings climateneutral with a great deal of passion, innovative strength and pioneering spirit. PAUL is changing the hospitality industry by leveraging the power of hydraulic balancing and AI-monitored IoT sensors. Our brand seeks to support hotel owners and developers in their effort towards climateneutral operations

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Implementation of new technologies isn’t as straightforward when considering the many hotel ownership models out there. For instance, independent hotel owners/operators could face a lack of funding while franchise hotels would have to deal with logistical issues and longer implementation periods. We consider another reason to be how frameworks for the development of commercial energy-efficiency differ across state markets. The procurement and adoption process requires considerable time and financial investments that some hotels cannot afford.

technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Some hotels have integrated smart technology into guest rooms, allowing guests to control various aspects like lighting, temperature, and entertainment systems through in-room tablets or mobile apps. This automation enhances guest convenience, customization, and energy efficiency.

We believe that the best cases of technology implementation in hospitality have one thing in common: they elevate the customer experience.

Although not commonplace yet smart rooms and other smart facilities have improved guest experience and operational efficiencies.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

PAUL’s technology solution saves hotels and buildings up to 40% on energy and CO2 emissions by AI algorithms, resulting in proper hydraulic balancing. With a $0 investment, properties start their savings immediately.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Thanks to digitalization, even the smallest of independent hotels should be able to streamline and integrate their booking processes through proprietary or third-party methods. A seamless booking experience can be paired with a well-built website, social media presence, and a CRM system to empower their marketing.

How have you personally witnessed 98

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Cogwheel Analytics Hanover, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Data Analysis

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

I built Cogwheel Analytics to be an easy to understand marketing BI (Business Intelligence)† tool and solve the problem for management companies spending a lot of time and resources aggregating data. Cogwheel Analytics can aggregate data from 20+ sources,†including channel mix, brand.com, paid media and social media (Build in progress-OTAs, Reviews, SEO).

Providing both rollup portfolio reports and hotel level data.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Time and resources to hone in on all the digital resources available.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Utilize marketing analytics from all digital tools to enhance and personalize the guest experience and generate direct bookings.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

When Sales, Marketing and Revenue Management proactively work together to strategize marketing analytics to decrease any friction preventing guests from booking. Cogwheel Analytics was designed to help hotel management companies spend more time analyzing and strategizing and less time aggregating marketing data from multiple platforms and distributing to multiple properties.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The increased level of convenience and streamlined communication available to hotels for guests to utilize digital tools on and off property and the available data it creates for hotels to enhance the guest booking experience and build loyalty.

Find out more

Back to index

99

Thynk Brussels & New York, Global

CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Data Science

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Thynk provides hoteliers with next-gen hotel CRM technology that makes data actionable through streamlined and integrated processes. This maximizes sales team efficiency by helping them work better, faster and more collaboratively, while eliminating data siloes and driving higher margins.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Many hotel organizations still rely on legacy systems, due to the cost, complexity, and time commitment required to make the change.

However, upgrading to a modern, centralized database enables hotels to streamline processes, reduce manual tasks, maintain data integrity and drive revenues.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

One Dutch hotel chain had a goal to break down siloes and increase visibility across the guest journey, so they needed to ensure that customer data was visible across disparate systems. Today, they utilize a centralized revenue dashboard to focus their sales & support teams on areas of high demand.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The use of artificial intelligence and AI-powered hotel technologies has the potential to streamline operational efficiency, as well as sales processes.

This automation will reduce the need for manual labor, enabling staff to spend more time on other important tasks, such as personal guest service.

Leveraging customer data to create more personalized experiences is key to the success of any hotel organization. Ensuring the availability of accurate, actionable data that is aligned with specific business goals can provide a holistic picture of guests throughout the customer relationship cycle.

100

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Groups360 Brentwood, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Global Distribution Systems (GDS)

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

GroupSync reduces group booking friction between hoteliers and event organizers through greater transparency, a quicker/more efficient selling of group inventory, and real-time instant booking via a secure transaction platform.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Resistance to change and legacy systems are the most significant challenges. Innovation requires adaptability and the desire to operate in new ways using more efficient tools.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Launching with GroupSync Marketplace, enabled one leading hotel brand to retain a client who demanded that the brand make its inventory available within GroupSync or lose revenue and market share.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

We are most excited to see the rollout of Accor, Choice, IHG, and Wyndham’s real-time group inventory on the GroupSync Marketplace later this year.

One change a hotel can make to leverage its technology is to connect its real-time group inventory and rates to the GroupSync Marketplace distribution channel and expand revenue potential.

Back to index

101

SendSites Vail, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Website Development/Design

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues? helps the venues stand out from others in the sales process. sales agents can create marketing quality materials instead of sales quality

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Marketing tools are really difficult to learn - ie photoshop, inDesign. Many hospitality professionals, especially sales, seem to have little patience to learn new technology. They are PEOPLE people. not computer oriented.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

“Sonnenalp Hotel moved from scatted word and powerpoint templates to a single place to login to start all sales proposals. This increased efficiency with quicker turnaround time, as well as, provided key tracking data” – Patricia McNamara DOS

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

SendSites has developed a proposal editor that gives sales agents ability to make marketing quality sales materials with easy.

find technology that is easy to learn so that it is widely adopted through the whole team. OR hire a 3rd party to help onboard with new technology.

102

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

CENDYN BOCA RATON, FLORIDA, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Website Development/Design

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Cendyn help hotels drive profitability and guest loyalty through an integrated technology platform that aligns revenue, eCommerce, distribution, marketing, and sales teams with centralized data, applications, and analytics, so they can capture more demand and accelerate profitable growth

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Hoteliers are trying to do more with less as many face staff shortages across the globe. Many are also constrained by budgets so are stuck with antiquated technology systems that don’t allow for automation or streamlining of simple day-today tasks

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

At the core of many issues hoteliers face is their data. By looking in detail at their tech stack and how data passes between each system and is executed on by different teams will allow them to identify where the gaps are and what solutions they need to help them provide the solution

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

As a powerful first-party data source, connected CRM and Website can supercharge conversions via the direct booking channel at the most critical conversion points in the guest journey.† By leveraging real-time guest data, hoteliers can personalize the online experience, increase conversions, and create a more engaging guest experience in their hotel website

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Integrating hotel website and booking engine is critical to creating the personalized and seamless booking experience that today’s travelers want.

Cendyn offers industry-leading technology that turns lookers into bookers, including content personalization, upsell/cross-sell opportunities designed to increase ancillary revenue, and superior merchandising for specials and offers, simplifying the user experience

Find out more

Back to index

103

HotStats Houston, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Market Intelligence

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

HotStats, a global data benchmarking company, offers specialized performance analysis and a benchmarking tool with financial and operational data from hotels globally. Hotel owners and investors gain valuable insights into the financial performance of their properties against their competition to help weigh options and evaluate investment opportunities.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Hoteliers who use our profit tool gained valuable insights, allowing them to compare their performance against industry standards and identify areas for improvement. This leads to improved efficiency, enhanced guest experiences, and increased profits.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Striking a balance between technology and maintaining personalized guest experiences remains a challenge for the industry. The initial investment, coupled with a reluctance to disrupt existing processes, hinders technology adoption.

HotStats will soon be offering a seamless and intuitive analytics module platform. It will provide a centralized location to consolidate P&L data, along with actionable insights that drive revenue growth and enhance profitability. With it, hoteliers will embark on a path to profitability.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Find out more

One way is to implement operational benchmarking and analytics tools. Hotels can collect and analyze vast amounts of data, allowing them to identify areas for improvement, and optimize efficiency. Operational benchmarking enables hotels to compare their performance against industry standards, identifying performance gaps and setting strategic goals.

104

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Duetto San Francisco, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Revenue/Yield Management

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Duetto is a revenue management system; it helps hotels and casinos increase profitability by creating advanced pricing strategies from real-time data analysis. The platform ingests and analyzes various data streams to provide competitive rates based on demand. Duetto also drives efficiencies by automating timeconsuming tasks, including manual data collection and reporting.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Hotels can improve efficiency and profits with the adoption of revenue management technology.

In the last few months, a small boutique hotel increased ADR almost 40% using room-type pricing strategies, and a resort increased its average supplement 25% using dynamic room pricing.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Creating an ecosystem of different tools that work together to enable a business can be overwhelming and take a long time. It can also be challenging to quantify the value of each tool in driving business outcomes (saves time, increases revenue, etc).

In an industry-first, Duetto Advance combines pacing, as well as unique market and event data from Expedia and Predict HQ, with real-time streaming analytics and artificial intelligence for continuous, dynamic optimization to ensure immediate response to these changes.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Find out more

Hotels need to leverage technology to optimize profitability. Revenue management technology uses data and analytics to optimally price room types, distribution channels, customer segments, and stay dates independently of each other to maximize revenue without closing any booking opportunities.

Back to index

105

IDeaS Revenue Solutions Minneapolis, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Revenue/Yield Management

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

IDeaS revenue management systems equip clients with superior analytics and expertise, which, as a result, provides insights and decisions. The IDeaS RMS calculates optimal pricing and inventory controls for the hotel rooms based on a variety of factors. Ultimately, to maximize revenue.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

An abundance of information creates the challenge of no central repository. Additionally, some hotels may not think that the investment in revenue technology is cost-effective, particularly where human labor is cheap. This could be changed by successes stories from similar-sized businesses.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Outdated pricing systems or manual spreadsheets should be upgraded to take advantage of integrated solutions and industry knowledge.

Technology improves operational efficiency and reduces human error. This one upgrade step would help hoteliers price competitively roundthe-clock and drive incremental revenues.

106

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Using IDeaS G3 RMS, Salamander Hotels and Resorts was able to capture growing leisure demand at optimal rates. By automating their pricing and inventory control processes, they were able to attain an annual RevPAR increase of 40%.

The holistic approach enabled them to optimize revenues for their rooms and more.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Our industry-first solution for Independent and Linked Products. The flexible pricing options allow users to price multiple base rates including any rates linked to them such as advanced purchases, and packages. This enables smarter pricing, boost incremental revenues, and achieve a superior rate strategy.

Find out more

Back to index

Demand Calendar AB Stockholm, Sweden CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Revenue/Yield Management

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Integrating various siloed systems in a hotel, collecting and consolidating data into a centralized data warehouse. This offers a unified view of the hotel’s operations and revenue streams, enabling effective analysis, decisionmaking, and execution.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Excessive focus on day-to-day operations and a lack of long-term strategy are critical hurdles to tech optimization in the hospitality industry.

Hotels must recognize technology’s pivotal role in strategic planning, efficiency, and guest experience, prioritizing investments that align with long-term objectives for sustainable value.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Every hotel must prioritize data management to leverage technology effectively. Accurate and consistent data forms the backbone for strategic decision-making, and it’s crucial for optimizing advanced technologies like Revenue Management Systems or AI-driven tools to enhance profitability.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

I have seen a hotel group deploy a centralized data management platform to break down data silos across properties. This gave them a consolidated view of their performance, improved decision-making, and aligned strategies across properties, leading to increased efficiency and profitability.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Exciting advancements in Demand Calendar lie in optimizing Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and comprehensive revenue forecasting.

Accurate CAC calculation allows for costeffective marketing strategies while forecasting all revenue streams provides a complete picture of profitability, revolutionizing hotel operations and decision-making.

Find out more

Back to index

107

PricingService.ai Boulder, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Revenue/Yield Management

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

There’s a shortage of qualified Revenue Managers and Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to not only fill this gap but to raise the bar on optimized hotel room pricing.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Three items: 1. Cost: with rising labor expenses, it’s hard to justify many technology purchases unless those purchases directly reduce or replace labor; 2. Complexity: we already have too many technology systems that often don’t integrate well with other technology systems; and 3. Competing Priorities: technology enables operations and operational demands may not leave sufficient capacity (i.e., time, money, people) to pursue new technologies.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Guest check-in kiosks: when kiosks are intuitive they have the power to improve efficiency, create a welcoming experience, and reduce labor expense.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

PricingService.ai offers a fully autonomous hotel room pricing service based on the latest AI/ML techniques. With PricingService.ai, hoteliers can leverage the power of AI to automate revenue management, allowing them to focus less time on pricing and more time on creating amazing guest experiences.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Simplify: evaluate all of the systems you have running and find one to consolidate or retire.

108

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

ROOMDEX Bethesda, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Revenue/Yield Management

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our Attribute-based Selling (ABS) for upselling which enables two big things: − New Revenue: Besides improving conversion on standard room upgrades~ hotels now use ABS sell upgrades WITHIN the same room type. − Personalization: Guests now can configure their stay – so instead of guessing what your guests want – ABS tells you directly.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The most important tech innovations will be ones that tackle cross-departmental challenges. For example, the monetization of early arrivals or the selling of specific room numbers both impact multiple departments. To enable this technology, you need someone who has cross-departmental authority AND a competitive commercial vision for the hotel.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

When we released ABS earlier this year, the most interesting observation was the volume of revenue generated from upgrades within the same room type. For example, the most popular feature being sold is a “high floor” room location. ABS is generating additional room revenue that simply didn’t exist before.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

We think the intelligence behind Attribute-based Selling will be the catalyst for dramatic change in the way hotel rooms are merchandised across almost every channel. Look for ROOMDEX ABS intelligence soon powering a variety of distribution and guest engagement touch points in the near future.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Free trial new technology. Unlike 20 years ago, when everything had to go through a monolithic on-premise tech stack and change was slow, today you can try a new technology this afternoon for free for a month. It provides incredible opportunity at zero risk.

Back to index

109

M3 Lawrenceville, USA CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Revenue/Yield Management

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

M3 allows hotel owners, management teams, and general managers access to an accurate snapshot across multiple properties, improving efficiency and visibility to drive hotel financial performance.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Cost: Implementing and maintaining technology systems can involve significant upfront and ongoing costs, including hardware, software licenses, staff training, and technical support.

These expenses may be prohibitive for smaller hotels or those with limited budgets.

Resistance to Change: The hospitality industry traditionally relies on manual processes and faceto-face interactions. Some hoteliers and staff may resist adopting new technologies due to a fear of job displacement, unfamiliarity with technology, or a preference for traditional methods.

Fragmented Systems: The hospitality industry often has a complex technology landscape with multiple systems not integrated effectively. Legacy systems and incompatible software can hinder the seamless data flow and create inefficiencies.

Staff Training and Skill Gaps: Introducing new technology requires adequate staff training to use the systems effectively.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

By converting to hotel-specific accounting software. Streamlined Financial Management: A hotel-specific accounting software is designed to meet the financial needs of the hospitality industry. It can automate and streamline financial processes such as accounts receivable, accounts payable, and general ledger management. By reducing manual errors and improving efficiency. Cost Control and Expense Management: With dedicated accounting software, you can closely monitor expenses, track costs, and identify areas where operational efficiency can be improved. Financial Analysis and Reporting: Hotel accounting software often includes robust reporting capabilities, allowing you to generate financial statements, profit and loss reports, cash flow statements, and other critical financial analyses.

Integration with Other Systems: A hotel-specific accounting software can integrate with other hotel systems, such as property management systems (PMS), point of sale (POS) systems, and revenue management systems (RMS).

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

M3 Core Select – Streamline Your Accounting.

Elevate Your Hospitality.

Enhance operational efficiency and empower employees by implementing user-friendly systems in the back-office, freeing them from unnecessary burdens so they can get back to what is essential – guests!

110

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

N2Pricing by Revenue Analytics Atlanta, Georgia, USA

CATEGORY

Commercial Applications

SOLUTION

Revenue/Yield Management

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our N2Pricing Revenue Management System provides above-property pricing and RM analytics to help hotel groups manage a portfolio of hotels with automation and efficiency. We create value by generating an average of 3% RevPAR uplift, and saving revenue teams 50 hours per week through efficiency.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Many hoteliers have the mindset of investing in front-of-the-house to improve customer experience, but not back-of-house. They often don’t realize the impact and ROI that the right technology investment can provide.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We have observed N2Pricing driving over a 3% RevPAR uplift for a hotelier by delivering over 3,000 pricing changes per hotel, per day. It also drove efficiency by allowing the revenue team to grow their portfolio of hotels managed without adding additional headcount.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

There is a great opportunity to use technology to automate more tactical commercial decisions, like group pricing, promotions, and personalized offers. We will keep N2Pricing at the forefront of pricing automation for all hotel types.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Use dynamic pricing across all transient rate plans and room types. It requires technology for automation, but drives significant revenue and profit uplift.

Back to index

111

SOLUTION

EMPLOYEE MANAGEMENT

eTip San Francisco, USA CATEGORY

Employee Management

SOLUTION

Employee Benefits

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues? eTip is establishing a new normal in the hospitality and service industries with an end-to-end, robust, and secure digital tipping solution that helps workers to increase their hourly wages and managers to lower worker turnover costs and foster empowering work environments.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The increasingly cashless society we live in has lowered earnings for hospitality and service workers ($6.7B in lost income in 2021 alone) and made attracting, retaining, and motivating reliable staff so much harder for managers.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Definitely investments in hourly staff on whose labor the industry relies: digital tipping and other technology that facilitates flexible benefits.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Unpredictable staff shortages continue to put existing staff under additional stress, causing a slippery slope for even more turnover. Given the massive effect of financial wellness on employee retention, it’s due time for the service industry’s comprehensive payments solution, and eTip is poised to execute on this mission.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Any technology that motivates employees to perform better and increase retention is helpful for a business and positive in helping hotels facilitate healthier working environments.

Back to index

113

Hireology Chicago, USA CATEGORY

Employee Management

SOLUTION

HR, Time and Labor Management

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Hireology is the leading all-in-one hiring and HR platform built for decentralized businesses like hotels. The platform includes everything you need to hire better talent faster empowering you to fill more rooms, provide better guest experiences, and ultimately drive bottom line impact.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Many hoteliers are held back by a this is how we’ve always done itù mindset. But on top of that, much of today’s hospitality technology comes with very little human support, which makes it difficult for teams to adopt tools and drive any real value from new software.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Hireology helped a multi-location hotel streamline their entire hiring process, reducing their time to hire from 12 to 5 days. By filling these roles faster, they now have first pick at top talent on the market, which has increased retention, built brand awareness, and cut hiring costs in half.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

We’re most excited about bringing AI into the recruiting and hiring process. For example, Hireology’s in-app virtual assistant leverages ChatGPT to write quality, SEO-friendly job descriptions in a matter of seconds saving your team time and helping you get in front of top talent faster.

Embrace tools that automate and centralize recruiting, hiring, and people management tasks. The success of your hotel hinges on hiring and retaining top talent. But you can’t attract great candidates, quickly onboard new hires, and retain your team by relying on manual, disparate processes.

114

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

SOLUTION

ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT

pergolaroom.ca

Pergola ROOM

York, Canada CATEGORY

Engineering Management

SOLUTION

Engineering/Equipment Management

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our pergola and louver solutions give opportunities to hotels to host more people in better naturel habitat. They provide sunshine, fresh weather, and warm enviroment uner one roof. They are all motorized systems by remote controls.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology? people in the sector do not follow the technology very updated. very busy with their operational works and have no motivation for technologic solutions.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

I am a personally customer for hotels, I observe that hotels which apply latest technology to their service are way ahead from the others.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about? that experiencing the whole technologies in hospitality sector will give me great vision adn understanding and needs of the hotels.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business? follow-up the updates and innovations in sector.

116

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Axxess Industries Kelowna, Canada CATEGORY

Engineering Management

SOLUTION

In-room Controls/HVAC/Lights/etc

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

There are so many benefits from introducing technology to a hospitality space. Sensors and automation are great for energy savings;cloudbased dashboards can improve efficiency and reduce stress on staff;in-room controls improve guest experience. Overall, tech can elevate the hospitality industry.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Technology is so fast moving. You can fit a hotel with technology that ends up outdated in a few years. It’s important for suppliers to have a long-term plan like easy installation/retrofitting.

Secondly, some hoteliers get nervous about tech not being design-savvy enough for customers to appreciate it, or not getting enough support from suppliers after installation.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Guests love to see technology in hotels, especially when it’s used in a new and unique way, elevating their experience. As a bonus, tech can be unique AND improve efficiency. Guests love being able to set their room to do-not-disturb and staff gets an easy overview of which rooms don’t need service.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Smart guestroom automation is being adopted in more and more hotels. From controlling lights to automated curtains and blinds, plus occupancy sensors and energy saving programs. At Axxess, we create systems that do all this and more, and we couldn’t be more excited to be part of this rising trend.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Digitize more processes. Email instead of paper statements, electronic do-not-disturb instead of paper door hangers, in-room tablets instead of binders of menus and guides. It helps the hotel reduce their waste while also impressing guests.

Back to index

117

Piera Systems Inc. Mississauga, Canada CATEGORY

Engineering Management

SOLUTION

In-room Controls/HVAC/Lights/etc

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Canāree air quality monitors (AQMs) are accurate due to patented particle counting technology. Using AI/ML, Canāree can identify pollutants like vape and smoke in real-time, thereby ensuring a clean environment for future guests.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The initial cost of technology and ongoing monitoring fees.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Yes.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Low-cost vape and smoke detection will allow the hospitality industry to ensure there is a clean, safe environment for future guests. In addition, they can get an ROI when deploying.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Pilot the technology on a limited basis for a short period of time to ensure it meets their long-term goals and objectives.

118

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Jule Toronto, Canada CATEGORY

Engineering Management

SOLUTION

Sustainability

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Jule’s technology revolutionizes EV charging infrastructure for hotels and hospitality venues.

By leveraging battery-backed fast charging, Jule’s solution efficiently allocates power, eliminating the need for costly grid upgrades. Hotels can offer EV charging as an amenity, attract guests, generate revenue, and position themselves as leaders in the electrification of the hospitality industry.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The hospitality industry faces challenges in optimizing technology due to the limited capacity in the electrical infrastructure that exists today.

EV drivers face limited availability of fast-charging options and the need for costly grid upgrades from businesses like hotels hinder the industry’s progress. Coupled with an enormous growth rate of EVs sold that are now increasingly on the road, the need for technologically feasible solutions is pressing.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

One thing that any hotel can do to leverage technology and build a better business is to implement a battery-backed fast charging solution. This would allow hotels to offer EV charging as an amenity, attract guests, generate additional revenue, and enhance their overall business operations by lowering their utility bill.

Such a technology-driven approach positions hotels as forward-thinking establishments and provides a competitive edge in the industry.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

I’ve witnessed battery-backed EV charging technology overcome power limitations and completely bypass very costly utility upgrades for several hotels along Florida’s interstate corridors. This allowed these hotels to install EV fast charging where they otherwise couldn’t, as easily as plugging in a regular appliance such as a dishwasher. Today, these hotels appear on EV charging network maps (on apps and websites) and attract EV driving guests from across the country, generating additional revenue.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The solution I am most excited about is Jule’s 220 kWh Hub. The battery is small enough to be able to accommodate any type of hospitality installation, as well as unlock up to 300 kW of EV fast charging speed. On top of that, Jule’s Hub is also compatible with solar installations, enabling it capture and store energy from the sun. This means that hotels with such an application will not require to use as much electricity from the grid, and thus generate further utility cost savings and energy efficiency.

Back to index

119

GE Appliances Louisville, USA CATEGORY

Engineering Management

SOLUTION

In-room Controls/HVAC/Lights/etc

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

SmartHQ Pro leverages IoT technology and appliance controls to provide: 1. Real-time Diagnostic Reporting 2. Service Alerts 3. Maintenance Task Management 4. Remote Auxiliary Controls. SmartHQ Pro’s technology leads to improved operational efficiency, reduced downtime, and enhanced guest satisfaction.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Cost and return on investment (ROI) are primary concerns, as implementing new technology often involves substantial financial investments.

Demonstrating the tangible benefits and longterm cost savings of technology solutions is crucial to overcoming this hurdle. Legacy systems and integration pose another challenge. Many hospitality establishments still rely on outdated systems that may not be compatible with modern technologies.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Smart appliance maintenance systems utilize real-time diagnostic reporting and service alerts to identify and address maintenance needs proactively. By receiving automated alerts and actionable insights, hotel staff can efficiently manage maintenance tasks, prioritize repairs, and ensure timely resolution of issues. This technology minimizes the risk of appliance malfunctions, enhances operational efficiency, and improves guest satisfaction.

120

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

One notable example was implementing a cloud-based property management system (PMS). Integrating appliance management allows seamless monitoring, diagnostics, and maintenance of hotel appliances within the existing PMS infrastructure. This centralization streamlines operations, reduces the need for separate software or manual processes, and provides a comprehensive view of both guest and appliance data. The benefits include optimized maintenance workflows, reduced downtime, improved energy management, enhanced guest comfort, and cost savings through proactive repairs.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Several upcoming technology solutions in the hospitality industry include advancements in contactless technologies, such as touchless check-in/out processes, voice-activated controls, and virtual concierge services. Additionally, innovations in artificial intelligence and machine learning offer opportunities for personalized guest experiences, predictive analytics for demand forecasting, and intelligent automation for various operations. The adoption of smart room technology, IoT integration, and data-driven decision-making are also trends that hold great promise for enhancing operational efficiency and guest satisfaction in the hospitality industry.

Back to index

SOLUTION

GUEST FACING TECHNOLOGIES

ePRINTit Willowbrook, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

Guest Business Centers

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Provides the ability for guests to securely print without the use of a guest office, utilizing new Cloud SaaS technology enabling printers to communicate with a guest’s personal device.

Provides almost unlimited translation services including accessibility for the visually impaired.

Allows payment for print utilizing new mobile micro payment technology.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Product knowledge, awareness of liability in storing customer data, understanding the software as a service model that involves document storage, safe crypto technologies that store data.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Yes, with recent technologies guests can reduce touch points, remove expensive hardware, reduce maintenance and cleaning expenses, reduce liability and staff intervention. With new translation capabilities we can now provide full accessibility for the visually impaired and cater to all guests from all countries providing instant translation with text to speech or OCR in 165 languages.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Movement towards more Web APP capabilities without downloading any APP’s. I want to be able to have all the features of an APP, but I want it instantly to know me when I arrive in a hotel.

Apple knows when I walk into any store anywhere.

Why shouldn’t my hotel.

Modernize guest use technology by enabling guests to use their own devices for everything to check-in, check-out, use TV’s, lights, door access, order external trusted services and transportation, access hotel menus and services, room cleaning services, utilizing Web App’s instead of mobile applications. Simply scan the QR code to access a personal Concierge for this hotel!

122

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

The Aggressive Good Ottawa, Canada CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

Kiosks/Self Serve

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Hotels and hospitality venues are being driven to reduce single use plastics in all aspects of their business from supply chain to their guests by ESG compliance and customer concerns for the environment. Waste reduction based, supply chain optimization solutions allow them to improve ESG compliance while improving guest experience profitability.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The hospitality industry is highly margin sensitive and technology solutions tend to be siloed without a clear view of how they can be rolled out and integrated with a focus on profitability. This leads to problematic, complex deployments which can deter the adaption of solutions due to fear of failure and impacting margin.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Traveling extensively shows me all aspects of the guest experience and I am impressed with app based, seamless mobile checkin coupled with guest service, snack and activity access on my mobile. This is true technology integration and provides for excellent guest experience and increased profits due to labor and other efficiencies.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The TAG SnackPod is an ESG driven, fully integrated supply chain solution that optimizes bulk food delivery for guests, hotels and suppliers.

By eliminating single-use packaging, matching real-time demand with supply and providing exact plastic waste reduction data, hotels increase profitability and drive ESG Compliance while delighting guests.

A clear focus on guest experience in terms of seamless integration from checkin to room access and the consumption of goods and services. This includes integrating their desire for socially and environmentally conscious solutions that enable the guest experience to be first class while being good for the planet.

Back to index

123

CardFree Sausalito, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

Kiosks/Self Serve

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

CardFree’s Hotel Services suite enables frictionless digital orders and payments for F&B outlets, tailored to deliver a superior guest experience while taking the strain off of employees.

Our tech boosts order growth, improves efficiency, mitigates labor issues, and enhances the guest experience.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

In a relationship-focused industry, operators have been reluctant to adopt tech for fear of disrupting that high-touch service approach. Hotels also tend to have large, disjointed tech stacks, and until recently, there has been a lack of API-driven tech that integrates with all necessary platforms.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

One of our hotel clients adopted mobile order-toroom tech and saw room service orders jump by more than 60%. Another client had to manually relay orders from their POS to their KDS – by implementing API-driven ordering tech, the hotel was able drastically increase efficiency and save valuable time.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

CardFree’s suite of integrated omni-channel order/ pay solutions enable F&B service anywhere onsite, on-demand amenities, mobile POS tableside ordering, kiosk solutions, mobile tipping, event management, and more. We’re also working on a project in the AI space that we’re very excited about.

Restaurants have proven that allowing guests to be self-directed can drive sales and decrease frustration simultaneously ì all leading to a better experience and a reason to visit again.

Hotels can follow suit by adopting mobile tech that streamlines guest services, orders, and/or payments.

124

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Virdee Austin, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

Kiosks/Self Serve

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We help hotels address two of the most important issues: staffing and guest experience. Streamlining the guest experience through technology and giving guests the option to interact contactlessly with the property allows for more flexibility with staffing and an increase in the guest experience.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

One word: risk. There is always a risk in deploying new technology, from room-cleaning robots to self-check-in. However, we, as an industry, can minimize the risk by looking outward at other industries that are successfully leveraging similar new technologies.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

I’ve enjoyed the ability to use CLEAR identity technology at sports venues to get through lines faster. This has been a huge time save. Similar to faster check-ins, anything that helps reduce the time spent standing in line to authenticateù oneself, the better.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

I’m excited to see where else software is going.

I’ve seen indoor maps, food ordering, checkin all on apps. What else can we automate and provide guests with more options to interact on their terms? Virdee’s partnership with CLEAR is getting us ever closer to a one-click check-in.

Look at off-the-shelf software solutions. If you can deploy it without up-front fees and without hardware costs, the risk is reduced, and the speed to deploy is much faster. Start small and expand from there to minimize risk while proving upside.

Back to index

125

Aavgo San Mateo, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

Kiosks/Self Serve

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Aavgo’s aims to assist hotels in streamlining daily operations and enhancing the guest experience. By leveraging our human-assisted and self-service capabilities, our Smart Reception kiosk allows guests to check in and check out seamlessly, reducing reliance on traditional front desk processes. This has been shown to improve operational efficiency, as hotel staff can focus on other critical tasks instead of being occupied with check-in procedures particularly for guests who desire a contactless experience.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The hospitality industry is just now beginning to see technology’s immense potential for driving operational efficiency and enhancing guest experiences. Some perceived barriers to technology adoption include: 1. Cost-Effectiveness 2. Seamless Integration 3. Security and Compliance 4. Training and Support 5. Demonstrated Success.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

One thing that any hotel can do to leverage technology and build a better business is to implement a comprehensive guest engagement platform, enabling hotels to enhance guest experiences and streamline operations through digital communication and personalized services.

This provides Seamless Communication,

126

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Personalized Services, Streamlined Operations, Real-Time Feedback, Data Analytics and Insights, empowering hotels to deliver personalized services, communicate seamlessly, gather valuable feedback, and harness data-driven insights for continuous improvement and success.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

In my travels, I’ve stayed at some hotels that implemented an advanced room automation system. Each room was equipped with sensors and smart devices. This technology enhanced the guest experience and optimized the hotel’s operational efficiency. When guests entered the room, the sensors detected their presence and automatically adjusted the temperature, lighting, and window blinds to their preferred settings, creating a personalized and comfortable environment.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

So much of today’s technology is focused on improving the guest experience, but recently we are seeing more and more tools capable of improving the hotel employee experience.

Automation has been used to reduce the number and volume of daily mundane, repetitive tasks hotel workers must perform while allowing them to focus on the most rewarding aspects of hospitality. Also, the volume of integrations across the hospitality industry continues to increase, meaning the hotels of tomorrow will have access to even more impactful tools for improving both the guest experience and hotel operations.

Back to index

InnSpire Stockholm & Washington DC, Global CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

Mobile Applications

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

InnSpire elevates hotel technology to allow hoteliers to stay ahead. Our comprehensive suite of fully customized and modular digital guest journey solutions are designed to allow hotel properties to enhance the guest experience, while driving ancillary revenue.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Following the pandemic, many properties experienced lagging occupancy and ADR, compounded by staff shortages. As our industry is stabilizing, now is an ideal time to implement newer technologies that allow guests to manage all aspects of their stay, while generating revenue for the property.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

As an avid user of remote check-in and digital key access solutions, I have witnessed the efficiency and convenience that technology provides. Like many guests, I love engaging with knowledgeable staff while on property, but I prefer to manage the administrative part of the stay on my phone.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

It is exciting to see our industry embracing AIbased technology to drive increased efficiency.

InnSpire recently rolled out InnSpire.ONE, an AI-powered hub that integrates all of a property’s guest-facing hotel solutions into one place, neatly organized, analyzed and ready to be acted upon.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Hotel organizations can succeed by focusing on technology that is customized, as today’s guests are not looking for cookie-cutter travel experiences. Hoteliers should implement a digital guest experience that enhances the hotel’s brand identity, while optimizing convenience for the guest.

Back to index

127

GettinLocal Chicago, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

Mobile Applications

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Powered by GettinLocal’s branded and licensed discovery guide mobile application can benefit hotels and hospitality venues through Local Recommendations, Increased Guest Engagement, Direct Bookings and Reservations, Real-Time Updates, Customer Feedback and Reviews, Brand Loyalty and Marketing. A mobile application helps enhance guest experiences, increase engagement and revenue, and strengthen their brand identity and customer loyalty.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Technology has advanced the hospitality industry, but several obstacles still impede mass adoption and implementation. Common challenges: 1. Disintegrated Technology 2. Change is Hard 3. Preferences and Expectations of Guests 4. Security and Privacy 5. Implementation Costs 6. Integration Issues. As technology advances, becomes more affordable, and industryspecific solutions emerge, the industry will adopt and optimize technology to improve operations, enhance visitor experiences, and stay competitive.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

TRAIN.TRAIN.TRAIN. Training is CRITICAL when implementing new technology in a hotel because it enables staff members to familiarize themselves with the system, utilize it effectively, improve operational efficiency, enhance the guest experience, and adapt to future changes. Ultimately, welltrained employees become the key drivers of successful technology implementation.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We’ve all witnessed technology improving the industry, regardless of whether we knew it, from advancements in booking technology, mobile check-in/out, revenue management and data analytics, smart room technology, the dreaded automated mini-bar, task management solution, and digital discovery guide solutions.

The continual advancements in technology hold tremendous potential for further enhancements in these areas, shaping the future of hotel and venue operations.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

We are most excited about new technology solutions that enhance the guests’ stay at the property AND expand into the space where the technology offered elevates the guests’ experience in the destination.

128

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

INTELITY Los Angeles, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

Mobile Applications

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our brand unites the mobile guest experience, inroom tech, and back-of-house tools into one fullyintegrated platform. We connect your team and your tech stack to your guests, providing them with the modern, interactive stay they demand.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Today’s hoteliers are expected to do more with less including fewer team members. With a digital guest experience platform in place, hoteliers can operate more efficiently, even with a lean team. Hoteliers can devote more time to guests who prefer face-to-face interactions while streamlining service for guests who prefer the digital experience.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Pick your vendors wisely and revisit their functionality for guests often. Ensure your tech vendors have a dedicated team for integrations and a product roadmap that demonstrates an ongoing commitment to innovation.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Hospitality technology should improve staff efficiency, increase guest experience, and increase the property’s profits. With digital guest experience technology, your staff’s tasks are streamlined, and transactional tasks are automated, freeing them up to provide more high-touch service for guests. A hotel mobile app or smart-room tablet empowers your guests to have the digital access and communication they need to better enjoy their stay. As a result, we have seen hotels’ F&B revenue skyrocket by just offering digital dining.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

As technology expands in other industries, we’re seeing more widespread acceptance and adoption of technology in hospitality. We are excited to see how AI can play a vital role in helping hoteliers provide an even more seamless experience for both guests and team members.

Back to index

129

Tip&Go Québec, Canada CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

Mobile Applications

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

The number one worldwide issue in the Hospitality Industry is staff shortage. Staff turnover in hotels is 87%. In addition, nearly 80% of current hotel workers say they would be more likely to stay with their current employer if their earnings were increased. Providing customers with a mobile payment option like Tip&Go can increase earnings by up to 30% (or $5.00 more per hour), therefore encouraging employees to stay in the trade.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Two things: first, the fear of change. People are more comfortable staying put then having to adapt to new ways of doing things. Second, hotels have many complex systems. However, with Tip&Go, there is no need to integrate in those systems. In addition, guests have no app to download. They just scan a QR code on the employee’s easel card, chose the amount that they want to give and it’s done. Tip&Go is always free for hotels. We take care of everything.

130

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

By allowing guests to tip hotel staff easily and at no cost using Tip&Go, hotels are ensuring that their employees have better pay, which motivates them to perform better. The result is happier staff and guests. A clear win-win situation.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Tip&Go is easy to use and free for guests. It’s also free for hotels who can simply enjoy the benefits of our solution. Employees (our clients) experience a significant increase in pay.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

KISS cashless tipping solutions like Tip &Go

Back to index

ZAPLOX Chicago, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

Mobile Applications

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Zaplox is a complement to hospitality. We extend the guest experience to a digital experience and let hoteliers all over the world welcome their guest in a new way – providing the digital option to manage their stay from time of reservation to time of departure ì from the comfort of wherever they are.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Complexity, cost and resources.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Support the check-in process with a digital option. The Checkin process is resource heavy and cost money. Make the guests handle that part them selves and let available resources focus on revenue generating activities.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Many of our customers confirms that cues during check in and checkout times are shorter, guest appreciate being able to manage their room key in the phone (mobile key), through the app get the opportunity to communicate with the staff without the need to visit front desk. A simpel thing as having the hotel compendium digitally in the hotel app, saves both time and money for any hotelier no matter size.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Digital/Mobile Keys i Google Wallet and Apple Wallet

Find out more

Back to index

131

IRIS London, United Kingdom CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

Mobile Applications

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

IRIS empowers Hotels and F&B leaders to drive revenue, save resources and enhance the guest experience through digital F&B ordering, guest directory and concierge solutions. Our flexible hospitality platform enables hotels and restaurants to provide a truly digital ordering experience to their guests, making it easier and faster for guests to browse, order and pay for items and services across multiple outlets.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Taking the time to step back, review operations and implement changes when they’re already so busy and challenged with labour shortages.

As costs are being scrutinised (and cut back in some areas), it’s crucial to prove the return on investment and the revenue/time-saving benefits.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Automate the mundane and pass on transactional processes to guests. Not only do guests like managing their orders, payments and service requests online (they have the flexibility to browse and order whenever they like, from wherever they are, from their own device) but it also free up staff’s time, saves resources (no more expensive menu or directory re-prints) and enables staff to enjoy their jobs more, spend more time focussing on the delighting the guests rather than uploading manual tasks.

132

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

When a client of ours extended their online F&B ordering platform (for in-room dining) to their pool deck. They added QR codes on over 500 lounge chairs, providing guests with practical and direct access to the digital menus. Sales at the pools doubled year on year thanks to their ability to reach more guests and serve more covers than ever before ì they did over 800 covers on one day last year which has never been done before mobile dining. Also, with orders being sent direct to the kitchen, guests’ wait time is reduced by 1015 minutes, so they receive their orders in a more timely fashion.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Advance ordering - where guests can pre-order groceries and toiletries in advance of their stay.

This enables operators to drive ancillary revenue ahead of a guest’s arrival. Perfect for self-catering guests to stock up on their villa or to order flowers and champagne for the honeymoon suite.

This feature can also be implemented across departments to include catering or IT requests such as AV equipment or projectors for large conferences and the MICE market.

Find out more

Back to index

HaloSOS Washingto DC, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

Panic Buttons (Associate Safety Alert Systems)

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Collaboration and inter-team communication is key to ensuring smooth guest experiences particularly in times of labor shortages. Hotels need to ensure they are driving the most value through any new project. HaloSOS delivers multiple solutions across a single platform and helps sweat existing IT assets to deliver efficiencies and compliance.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Looking at technology in isolation to solve a single problem is always going to result in additional costs. In the case of staff alert solutions there is now an opportunity to classify vendor technology into either a cost or an investment based decision.

Hotels have start asking “what else can we do with this technology?” ....and theres lots of things,let your imagination run wild and talk to smart vendors to see what else can be done

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We were privildeged that our wearable technology was used by an associate who was the subject of an attempted assault. The staff member created the alert, the responding team were notified in milliseconds and the exact location of the attempted assault was delivered to the team The result was that the staff member went home safely to her family and the suspect was arrested.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

HaloSOS currently supplies personal safety and crisis event modules through it’s platform. The launch of our intuitive inter-team communications module improves staff productivity by allowing team members instantly communicate with supervisory teams. An investment in smart technology unlocks the potential for additional features including, Bluetooth staff keys for door opening, digital tipping and the leveraging of existing infrastuture to put hotels at the front of the smart building revolution.

If I invest in this vendors technology, what else can I do with it? Can their platform be leveraged to adress other issues? Is the vendor capable of delivering more off the same infrastructure?

Back to index

133

Nespresso Professional (EVS Canada) Toronto, Canada CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

Sustainability

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our coffee systems ensure consistent quality and taste. The brewing technology, combined with a wide range of coffee varieties and flavors, allows hotels to meet the diverse preferences of their guests. Moreover, our machines are designed to be user-friendly and efficient, enabling staff to serve coffee quickly and effortlessly.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

One significant factor is the cost of acquiring and implementing new technology solutions.

Hotels and hospitality venues often operate on tight budgets and limited resources, making it challenging to allocate funds for the latest technologies to improve operations and enhance guest experiences. Another important consideration is the training and skill development required to successfully adopt new technology. The implementation of new technology systems can be complex and disruptive. Finally, there is also the critical consideration of privacy and data security.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

The Marriott Hotel Vancouver provides staff and guests with the right tools to create their own ideal coffee experience, contributing to an environment of the highest quality, and ensuring that guests can enjoy an exceptional cup of coffee wherever they are on the premises. This surprise element delights guests and creates a memorable experience that often leads to a strong emotional connection and loyalty.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The latest machines enable the user to navigate through an intuitive touchscreen interface, allowing for an easy selection of their preferred coffee options. The machine’s capsule reading technology ensures precise extraction and consistent taste, ensuring every cup of coffee is of the highest quality. The inclusion of QR code scanning functionality brings convenience and personalization to the coffee brewing process. Scan the QR code on your phone for touchless brewing.

Save time on tasks so you can focus on the bigger, more important things, like building better relationships with clients, partners, and staff. Provide consistent, high-quality coffee with the touch of a button. Allowing guests to serve themselves and enjoy being their own barista enhances the overall guest experience and exceeds expectations.

134

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Vecima Networks Inc. Victoria, Canada CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

TV Equipment

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Vecima’s technology helps hotels ensure they have the latest and highest quality TV viewing and internet connectivity experience.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Through the deployment of higher speed internet.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Adoption of Vecima technology faster.

Vecima Terrace IQ

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Create a more frictionless and higher quality hotel stay experience.

Back to index

135

TELEVES Miami, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

TV Content/Interactive TV/IPTV

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We offer a more efficient and economical infrastructure based on the concept of Fiber to the room taking advantage of the benefits of fiber optics as a network infrastructure.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

To get out of the comfort zone by betting on new network architectures and technologies that stand out from the traditional infrastructure.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Take advantage of technology to approach the new consumption habits of customers that have changed radically in recent years to make them feel as if they were at home with better room intertaintment features.

136

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Listening to customer needs and trying to adapt our solutions to those requirements that favor synergies between manufacturer and customer.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

GPON developed specifically for the hotel sector and IPTV and casting solutions that favor the integration of technology with the new consumption habits of guests. Televes has the first OLT GPON conceived and manufactured from 0 oriented to the hotel sector. More than 700 projects support us.

Back to index

Nonius Orlando, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

TV Content/Interactive TV/IPTV

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Nonius provides the most complete Guest Technology solutions portfolio for a complete Digital Guest Journey, comprising Mobile App, Interactive TV, Cast, Digital Signage, Voice, High-speed Internet and Networks. Our solutions empower hotels to enhance guest satisfaction, streamline operations, save costs, and stay ahead in the competitive hospitality industry.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Some challenges are the limited budgets for technology investments, legacy systems that are difficult to integrate with new technologies, concerns about data security and privacy, resistance to change among staff, and the need for comprehensive staff training. Overcoming these obstacles requires strategic planning, demonstrating the value of technology and addressing security and integration concerns.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We have this client that deployed a complete digital guest journey, resulting in more than £14K annual savings on printed collateral, annual reduction of £3.5K in replacement plastic keycards, 51% of guests placing F&B orders through the mobile app, 44% performed online check-in successfully and 30% using the app for room door access.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

We are excited to introduce Advanced Nonius Cast Monitoring and Troubleshooting Tools, revolutionizing monitoring while improving the guest experience. Additionally, our enhanced Nonius Cloud Signage Solution empowers hotels to create stunning visual experiences effortlessly.

These innovations provide hotels with greater control, improved efficiency, and enhanced guest satisfaction.

Find out more

One notable example is the implementation of automated check-in and check-out processes in hotels. By leveraging technology such as selfservice kiosks or mobile check-in apps, hotels have improved operational efficiency, reduced wait times, and enhanced the overall guest experience. These advancements allowed hotels to reallocate staff resources, resulting in cost savings and potentially higher profits.

Back to index

137

MCOMS New York, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

TV Content/Interactive TV/IPTV

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

MCOMS’s HOTstream suite delivers state-ofthe-art in-room technology, digital content, connectivity and interactive services to hotel guests on multiple devices via one centralized platform. Its IPTV, Video on Demand, Cast, Mobile, Signage and Internet solutions are completely integrated and commerce-ready. The benefits are many, primarily engaging user experiences that increase guest satisfaction.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Hotels that want to attract and retain guests, especially tech-savvy Millennials, must up the ante on technology. Hotels should provide at least the same level of technology and, preferably, better as guests enjoy at home. So getting the right technology in hotel rooms is a fast moving target to hit.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

In-room technology adds value to the guest stay. Mobile devices, for example, enable guests to perform a variety of tasks, from scheduling laundry pick-up to checking out. Smart TVs allow guests to go way beyond channel surfing to access weather apps, flight information, as well as get up-to-date information on hotel events and services.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

HOTstream Cast, MCOMS’s leading-edge solution, allows guests to cast from their personal devices to in-room TVs. During Hitec 2023, MCOMS will demonstrate its patented HOTstream Media Casting solution, supporting Netflix and all other popular apps.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Today guests not only live in òconnected’ homes but also travel with their laptops, smartphones and digital content. They are particularly interested in casting, the ability to stream their own cloud-based subscription content as well as locally stored content, such as photos and videos, directly onto the guest room television.

138

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Philips Charlotte, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

TV Content/Interactive TV/IPTV

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Philips’ technology focuses on the guest entertainment experience, which helps hotels increase guest satisfaction scores. The average hotel guest subscribes to at least 4 streaming services. If the in-room TV has casting built-in, the guest can cast what they want to watch right from their device. No extra dongles, boxes, or recurring monthly fees - which helps the hotel in terms of cost and efficiency.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

I believe it is twofold – number one is obviously cost. There are many things hotels are investing in post-pandemic, new cleaning features, staff training, refurbishment, etc and the cost is always a factor. The second is uncertainty. Technology changes quickly, it is always evolving. Hotel owners and stakeholders want to be sure the technology they choose will be relevant for years to come. They want to research and compare all the options, which takes time. Luckily, many options today are available with updates and upgrades as technology changes, giving owners peace of mind.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

The one thing is to do the research. Don’t just jump in on the big, new trendy tech. Look at how if you were to implement that technology, how would affect various parts of your business.

Consider the staff benefits, the benefits to your infrastructure, and of course the benefits to your guests.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Absolutely. One of the properties we worked with was able to reduce calls to staff, reduce man hours in servicing their current hardware and save on monthly recurring costs into peripheral hardware, The Beach Haus has also significantly reduced its monthly outgoings, no longer having to pay monthly subscriptions to provide a comparable list of channels and services to guests, because casting solved that issue.

Making a technology switch resulted in instant time and cost efficiencies, valued at more than $10,000 a year to this property.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

I am most excited about helping owners embrace technology that was actually designed for the hotel industry, like Philips MediaSuite. These 4K TVs- are the ONLY hospitality TV available that has Chromecast built-in, allowing your guests to cast content directly from the apps on their device to the TV. Simple and intuitive it eliminates the hassle/cost of subscribing to multiple services.

Running on the ever-updating Android TV OS, updates are easily made to the TV as they roll out. Philips MediaSuite also features Netflix-ready functionality, embedded on the TV, allowing guests to immediately pick up shows and movies exactly where they left off on their accounts. It integrates with the PMS, so it is secure and wipes all the logins when the guest checks out – one less thing for hotels to worry about.

Back to index

139

Atmosphere TV AUSTIN, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

TV Content/Interactive TV/IPTV

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We are a free streaming TV service that enhances the guest experience in hotels and hospitality venues. We provide a variety of channels, including news, sports, and entertainment, to keep guests entertained and informed during their stay.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The hospitality industry is a large and complex industry, and it can be difficult for some to adopt the latest technology innovations due to cost, complexity, or a lack of understanding of the benefits. As the hospitality industry continues to evolve, it’s important for businesses to embrace new technology in order to remain competitive, improve efficiency, and provide a better customer experience.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

During many personal hotel and restaurant visits, I’ve witnessed businesses improve efficiency, brand awareness, customer experience and profits by providing an engaging, and informative TV experience for their guests.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Atmosphere TV is a free streaming TV service made just for businesses. It offers a variety of channels and customizable content that help businesses improve their guest experience, reduce costs, increase brand awareness and attract new customers!

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Hotels can provide guests with an engaging, positive and informative TV experiences in their common areas such as Lobbies, Restaurants and Gyms, which can help to improve guest satisfaction and loyalty.

140

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

World Cinema Houston, USA CATEGORY

Guest Facing Technologies

SOLUTION

TV Content/Interactive TV/IPTV

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We are their trusted technology advisor. We are bringing innovative solutions to properties that will benefit them for 20 years down the road instead of every 5 years they are having to get new contracts, partners, and products. We partner with the best technology products being an ecosystem of TV, cameras, wifi, private 5G, and more. We listen to the customer’s needs and wants, and provide them with our suggestions of a property technology ecosystem from the foundation to in the hotel room.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Understanding the foundation of technology longevity and cost.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Our Worldvue streaming application is something that has enabled properties to generate additional ROI through on-screen advertising. This could be showing a happy hour or event at the property and encouraging guests to come shop/dine with them, it could be a profit share with a local business that the property promotes as well.

This also increases guest satisfaction and guest experience because the property is bringing ideas and opportunities straight to the guest.

For vacation towns and hotels, this is a bit hit.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

EV chargers are going to be big in the hotel space as the states start to mandate it as well as the pressure from the car companies to go fully electric within the next 15 years.

Invest in their infrastructure. By building a foundation for all future technologies, businesses are allowing themselves a breather when it comes to upgrading or adding new products to their ecosystem.

Back to index

141

SOLUTION

GUEST MANAGEMENT

Dot.Cy Nicosia, Cyprus CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Management /CRM/Loyalty

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues? dot.Hospitality was developed to solve the problem of silo databases in multiple systems used in a hotel. It connects various departments and replaces legacy systems, thus decreasing operational costs and overheads by providing comprehensive feature coverage in one centralized solution.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The resistance to change, fragmented systems and data, and a lack of IT expertise and resources. Some businesses struggle with legacy systems and the complexity of integrating new technologies into their existing infrastructure.

Overcoming these barriers requires a strategic mindset and a clear understanding of the benefits of utilizing technology.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

The three common problems all our clients were facing before dot.Hospitality was complex operations, silo databases, and inefficient processes. We’ve witnessed a remarkable transformation in staff performance, efficiency, revenue, and guest satisfaction. Streamlining operations and processes reduced errors and increased productivity, whilst utilizing insights improved their services and marketing strategies.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

AI holds great promise for the hospitality industry.

With the help of automatization and fast analysis of data, AI has the potential to revolutionize operations, improve guest satisfaction, and drive revenue growth. Its impact on the hospitality industry is expected to grow even more significantly in the future.

One impactful step is to implement a CRM system.

CRM allows hotels to centralize data, track guest preferences, and personalize their services accordingly. By leveraging this technology, hotels can enhance guest satisfaction, foster customer loyalty, and tailor marketing efforts to target customer segments, leading to improved business performance and revenue.

Back to index

143

Annette the Virtual Hotel AgentTM Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Hotel Artificial intelligence/Chatbot

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Hotels are finding it hard to hire qualified front desk staff, and labor costs are increasing. Our conversational AI can answer up to 60% of the repetitive calls to a hotel’s front desk.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The lack of understanding that the general public is used to interacting with effectively conversational AI, and it’s okay to implement in a hotel.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

At one large client, we have programmed our voice assistant to answer 300 FAQs for the property, significantly enhancing guest service.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

The integration of conversational AI tools with software programs such as Open Table and HotSoS.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Open their minds to the idea - it’s that simple, and move to a discussion of what is possible rather than closing down a discussion of the concept.

144

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

myma.ai (formerly Book Me Bob AI Chatbot) Havelock North, New Zealand CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Hotel Artificial intelligence/Chatbot

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Myma.ai’s technology benefits hotels and hospitality venues with an industry leading ChatGPT integrated AI Chatbot. Boosting direct bookings, offering highly customizable solutions, enhancing staff efficiency, improving customer communication, enabling data-driven decisionmaking, and increasing auxiliary revenue is just the beginning. These solutions draw from a combined 50 years of industry and development experience and are accessible globally, with a presence in over 20 countries and growing.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Myma.ai has witnessed technology-driven success for clients worldwide, achieving in excess of ten times the expected return on investment.

The Myma.ai suite of solutions benefit a diverse range of accommodation providers, from large establishments to smaller operations, across the hospitality industry in over 20 countries and growing.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Sourcing and retaining trustworthy tech partners, resistance to change, high implementation costs, limited time for adoption, and concerns about job displacement are the predominant challenges we’ve encountered that are holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology. To overcome these hurdles, industry operators must research and remain open to new technologies.

Myma.ai offers simplified, transparent, and cost-effective solutions for all-sized operations.

With an extensive list of enhancements and industry-specific products that are yet to be released, our road-map is set to demonstrate a new level of AI powered personalisation, contactless experiences, and smart AI voice automation that has never been seen before.

These solutions are set to change the way the hospitality industry interacts, so keep an eye on this space, we’re only just warming up.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Find out more

Hotels can leverage technology by investing in relevant customer communication platforms and adopting a multi-channel approach.

Utilizing AI Chatbots like Myma.ai’s industry leading ChatGPT integrated AI Assistant for reservations, service requests, and personalized recommendations enhances the online customer experience, catering to a growing acceptance of AI chatbot communications.

Back to index

145

PolyAI London, United Kingdom CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We’re helping helping businesses effectively and efficiently automate all front desk/reservations/ facilities requests using guest-led voice assistants in their call center.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Upfront and operational costs, scaled integration with existing infrastructure, as well as the false perception that technology creates a de-personalized experience for guests.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Leverage reporting and data capture capabilities to better understand not only where operational inefficiencies exist, but how adjustments are affecting outcomes. Real-time benchmarking is key!

146

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

On the client side, of course. From a personal experience, I’ve seen both effective and ineffective utilization of technology ì and the common factor of success is how fully baked the implementation of the tech is. Cutting corners never bodes well for the guest experience.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

With PolyAI’s guest-led voice assistants built upon cutting-edge proprietary conversational AI, every call from every guest ì no matter the language, dialect, or intent ì is handled with unrivaled accuracy and usually without live agent escalation. As the system learns more with every call, the potential for off-the-shelf, industryspecific solutions is closer than ever – cutting a 6-8 week implementation down to guest-ready CCaaS in days.

Back to index

Quicktext New Port Richey, USA CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Hotel Artificial intelligence/Chatbot

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Virtual assistants powered by artificial intelligence, help hotels manage the shortage of human staff by delivering instant automated answers to guests’ repetitive requests and increase direct booking by proactively delivering support to customers through their booking process.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Hotels have a complex tech ecosystem and, compatibility of any new technology often kills initiatives. Tech investment decisions are shared among stakeholders that do not have the same background. Projects are refused due to failure to translate the benefits into the language everybody understands USD

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Spectacular results come from solutions that solve real problems. With chatbots, hotels started benefiting from this technology the day they stopped imaging a humanoid virtual concierge and started leveraging AI to automate basic tasks such as answering frequent questions at the call center level.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Generative AI enables virtual assistants to personalize customer interactions like never before and open the way to deliver great voice interactions.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Technology is only part of the equation.

The human factor is often ignored, so users do not receive proper communication and training leading to non or underutilization of perfectly valid and useful solutions that the hotel is paying for.

Back to index

147

Canary Technologies San Fransisco, USA

CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Management /CRM/Loyalty

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Canary enables hoteliers to increase revenue, streamline operations, and boost guest satisfaction with a suite of products across the entire digital guest journey, including Check-in, Checkout, Dynamic Upsells, Guest Messaging, Digital Tipping and more.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

The cost and time of implementation for technology can be a big barrier for many hotels, especially while keeping up with a high volume of daily guests. Changes to their technology stack, process, or routine can have a huge impact on productivity and revenue, but aren’t always an easy proposition.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

A recent example is the growing number of guests who do not carry cash during their stays, leading to lower instances of tipping and downstream impacts on staff retention. Hotels are now implementing digital tipping solutions to help boost staff take home pay, solving a core issue around retention.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

I am excited about the coming wave of AI-enabled solutions for hoteliers and operations staff. With the right tools that help decrease the amount of manual work, especially for those requests or questions that are fairly common, hotel staff can maximize the personal touch given to each guest.

Focus on the core experience you want to create for your guests first and foremost. Technology enables staff to scale meaningful interactions but it works best when it’s applied to a singular vision for the entire guest journey.

148

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Crave Interactive Ltd Cranfield, United Kingdom CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

For over ten years, we have been delivering innovations to the guest experience, using Crave in-room tablets, guest mobile & kiosks.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

It is recognising the products that help guest satisfaction and deliver a great return on investment.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Technology is not just purchased and then left to run all by itself. It’s essential to assign a hotel champion, who will constantly review the chosen to ensure that it’s providing the expected outcome.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Yes, many times. Crave’ customer retention rate is over 96%. Where resort hotels use Crave technology effectively to fill the space on the day, the returns on investment are huge.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Crave AI is a fully managed AI solution for hotels that provides exceptional guest services. It’s not just a text chatbot, but an elegant natural language solution that includes contextual visual content with Crave’s unique AI Display Window.

And to top that we’ve integrated video chat for the moments when human service is required.

The result is a truly compelling guest experience.

Back to index

149

SevenRooms New York, USA CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Management /CRM/Loyalty

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

SevenRooms provides operators with a 360∞ view of their guests across F&B venues and properties worldwide. Operators leverage this data to better understand guests before they walk through the door, provide with exceptional guest experiences, and drive greater brand loyalty and retention.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Resistance to change holds the hospitality industry back. People tend to fear change, especially when it involves the integration of technology because it can seem intimidating.

However, once operators choose to embrace technology and integrate throughout their business, they’ll succeed.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits? ,I’ve witnessed technology helping hotels in more ways than I can count. From automating processes for efficiency, to generating revenue through personalized marketing, to leveraging data more effectively to create better guest experiences, technology is imperative for hotels today.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

SevenRooms recently launched Pre-Shift which provides a real-time, unified view of key shift details to inform and streamline pre-service meetings. We also expanded our Marketing Suite with Email Marketing which sends customers personalized, trigger-based emails on behalf of the operator.

Implementing an online booking F&B reservation system that collects valuable guest data can be accomplished by any hotel. This allows for seamless processes and leads to maximized revenue streams, increased guest loyalty, and better guest experiences.

150

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

The Guestbook Las Vegas, NV, USA CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Management /CRM/Loyalty

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Our technology enables hoteliers to drive direct bookings by incentivizing their guests. We help travelers get rewarded for their stay, enable hoteliers to build long term loyalty with their guests, and redirect travelers right to the booking engines of our partners ultimately boosting net revenue and enriching the guest experience.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Many in hospitality are limited by legacy systems & methods, occasionally resisting shifts in the digital landscape and consumer expectations.

Tech hesitance, inadequate solutions, and data privacy concerns all contribute to the delay in fully embracing technology’s potential to optimize guest experiences and revenue.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We see tech improving outcomes for hoteliers every day. One partner recently shared they’ve seen direct bookings grow from 9% to 50% a substantial increase in their net revenue. Tech can enable a real improvements in the efficiency of a hotel’s revenue management strategy.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

We’re incredibly excited about our new web extension, available at no cost to all of our partners. The extension is a smart assistant that helps travelers booking accommodations travelers search like normal, the extension surfaces the best rate with cash rewards, and cuts down on expensive commissions.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Hoteliers should adopt a digital-first mindset to enriching their guest experience. By using technology to incentivize direct bookings and reward guests for their stay, hoteliers can foster long-term relationships with travelers, delivering even more value & bolstering their bottom line.

Back to index

151

Bookingwhizz Leicester, United Kingdom CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Management /CRM/Loyalty

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We have built a guest-first CRM platform enabling hotels to personalise their service and product offerings to individual guests, while enhancing incremental upsell revenue, and loyalty.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Most hospitality systems are built with a roomfirst philosophy. The industry forgets the our core unit of truth is a guest, not a room.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Our CRM layer enhances guest satisfaction by providing hyper personalisation. Our automated upselling allows hotels to increment RevPAR. Our Loyalty layer allows hotels to save on cost of distribution.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

ChatGPT + Instant messaging

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Hyper-personalise

152

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Laasie Secaucus, USA CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Management /CRM/Loyalty

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Laasie powers a new kind of loyalty for over 2,000 hotels, resorts and vacation rental operators through AI and a network of 1,000+ instant gratification partners. No points, no tiers, no waiting for qualification. Laasie incentivizes conversion and retention, driving over $600 million in direct bookings.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

While there are many tech innovators, the industry has always been reluctant to take advantage of first mover opportunities when it comes to advances in technology.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We power the loyalty programs for brands like Margaritaville and Benchmark and consistently see that loyalty member spend vs non member spend is higher in both rate and ancillaries.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

As an Ai company, we are already incorporating chatGPT across a few areas of our business. We are excited about the efficiencies this is creating.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Leverage instant reward within their guest recognition strategies. A simple strategy to drive direct bookings, create loyalty and increase share of wallet spend.

Back to index

153

dailypoint РSoftware made by Toedt, Dr. Selk & Coll. GmbH München, Deutschland CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Management /CRM/Loyalty

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

We help hoteliers make the most of their data by providing them with a unique central guest profile – the elusive Golden Record. We therefore collect data from all relevant sources, such as PMS, POS, and Website, clean that data, and create with the help of AI a very rich single source-of-truth to use everywhere along the customer journey. With dailypoint, hotels become finally guest-centric!

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

All hotel companies still work with unconnected or poorly integrated systems ending up with about 30 profiles for the same guest! This puts them in a very poor position to derive any value from Big Data or any digitalization projects. And they are not compliant with GDPR, or other privacy laws like in the UAE or Switzerland.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Hotels must rethink how they approach technology and respin the focus of their solutions to enable the creation and maintenance of single, clean guest profiles. The Golden Record must be the key element of their IT-Strategy.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

With a guest-oriented IT strategy, all connected departments work better, from e-commerce to operations and sales, and marketing.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Instead of investing in island solutions, hoteliers have to focus to build and establish a bullet-proof IT-stack. No matter what comes next, it must be connected to the central profile and provide respective use information for a better outcome.

Find out more

154

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

GuestView Guide

by Sharp NEC Display Solutions Downers Grove, USA CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Answers guest questions, reducing questions to staff. Provides restaurant and activity recommendations, including on-property, for a better experience and potentially more revenue.

Upsells services to earn more for the operator.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

It depends on what sector of the industry. In general, cost considerations are important. An understanding of new technology to transition from a traditional personal touch experience to one where more and more technology benefits the guest and the industry.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Yes. For example, I’ve seen the number of views of property information (such as how to use a TV remote) in a property on a digital guidebook display and the coinciding reduction of phone calls and text messages as tracked by the property operator.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

GuestView Guide from Sharp NEC Display Solutions is unique in that it’s a large wallmounted interactive concierge. It’s built a large customer base in the vacation rental management industry and is now moving into the hotel and timeshare industries.

A better business is happy guests providing high ratings and coming back. So using technology to make an easier stay, a better guest experience will help ensure that.

Back to index

155

STAY Madrid, Spain CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

At STAY, as a digital solutions provider, we specialize in helping hotels optimize operations, enhance staff-guest communication, and increase revenue. Our guest apps (native, web app or embedded) empower guests to manage their stay seamlessly. They access hotels’ information, make reservations, order services, and provide instant feedback via smartphones. This ensures an exceptional guest experience in all of our hotels (our clients).

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Resistance to change: The hospitality industry has traditionally relied on human interactions and personalized services. Some businesses may be hesitant to embrace technology fully, fearing that it could diminish the human touch and guest experience. However, we at STAY always say that technology is only useful if it brings people together. Meaning that our technology does not aim to replace humans, but empower them to make their duties more effective and to help them focus on human interactions.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

A specific example I came across is the implementation of STAY by the Hyatt Inclusive Collection. Through the use of QR codes, guests can access the hotel’s website and service offerings easily. They saw a significant boost in revenue, with services such as spa treatments, gourmet dinners, wine sales, and tastings experiencing notable increases. Moreover, the real-time tracking of guest reviews provided by STAY allowed the hotel to address issues promptly and turn potentially negative experiences into positive ones.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Ordering and Reservations Functionalities through: − Guest Apps: Integrating ordering and reservation functionalities within guest apps − INSTANT Feedback Solutions: Real-time feedback solutions enable guests to provide feedback and share their experiences during their stay. − Analytics Solutions: Transforming the way hotels gather and analyze data.

Any hotel can rely on technology to provide a centralized platform to collect, organize, and analyze INSTANT guest feedback. This enables hotels to monitor guest sentiment, identify areas for improvement, and take proactive measures to address guest concerns before they leave the hotel, in order to improve reviews and increase scores.

156

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

OpsTechPro Palm Beach, USA CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

OpsTechPro is the ultimate provider of Advanced Preventive Maintenance and AI Guest Communication for the Hotel Industry. Providing advanced Maintenance management, streamlined work orders, guest requests, and portfolio-level interactive reporting. Jeanie manages guest requests and dispatches tickets to the relevant hotel departments.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Proper use of technology requires training, communication, staffing and understanding the importance of it. Sometimes corporate office purchases the software and leaves it to their hotel teams to use it without the expectation, oversight and follow up. Successful use of technology requires all of the above.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Technology is created to simplify and improve the operation. Hotel leadership has to learn all aspects f the technology they are using and then their team to be proficient and productive using it.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits? ,I see corporate and hotel teams fully engaged and trained in the technology they are using.

This is the perfect combination that delivers success every time.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Artificial intelligence implemented int current technologies will change the world of the hotel industry.

Back to index

157

FeedbackNow

by Forrester Cambridge, MA, USA CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

FeedbackNow enables clients to easily collect and analyze real-time inputs from People, Processes, and Places to Optimize your Operations

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

No one wants to answer an email survey after their hotel stay but everyone still sends them.

It’s time to try something new!

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Hotels have used FeedbackNow’s real time customer feedback to adjust staffing levels to better meet the needs of their customers

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

FeedbackNow offers a variety of solutions to meet the customer needs of all client types

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Collect feedback in real time to see what, where and when is impacting the customer’s experience

158

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Akia San Francisco, USA CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Akia is an automated customer engagement platform designed to streamline operations for hospitality businesses. Akia integrates with other technologies, including property management systems and hardware platforms, to enable our customers to reduce staff workload and increase revenue.

significantly boosted upsell revenue by 12x.

Technology is transforming the hospitality industry from streamlining and simplifying operations to providing phenomenal guest engagement.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Generative AI!

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Hospitality is adopting technology, but it’s a bit behind the curve. Multiple reasons for this include industry-wide resistance to change, and worries about stitching together various systems or software. Intuitive solutions require investments and dedication to adopt new operational processes. These shifts often seem costly and intimidating at first glance. That said, it’s important to note that every booming industry has been able to grow only through continuous evolution, flexibility, and a progressive attitude.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Be open to the digital transformation ongoing in the industry. Modern guests are looking for modern guest service technologies.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We are very excited about our upcoming launch, which will help you harness the power of AI to transform guest journeys through Mini Apps.

These components are ideal for customers because they create seamless mobile experiences that don’t require download or login. With Mini Apps you can automate and expedite day-today processes like identity verification, security deposit collection, or even contactless hotel check-in. All you have to do is submit a short description of what you want, and artificial intelligence will generate the draft of an app that does what you described. You can ask it to compile an entire app in one query, but we recommend submitting each page as a separate query. As artificial intelligence grows in popularity, too many brands are foisting this nascent technology on customer interactions.

Our automated text responders are carefully coded to be sure that unclear or unusual queries will be fielded to a real person, because we understand that the human touch is essential to your brand. By bringing AI to the Mini Apps, you can take advantage of artificial intelligence on the backend. Whip up a Mini App faster than you can gasp in surprise and delightthen hop into the draft and make any edits needed before it goes live.

All our users rave about how Akia has eliminated paperwork, reduced repetitive tasks, helped increase positive reviews by 400%, and

Back to index

159

Tacit Toronto, Canada CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Tacit’s technology enables hotels and hospitality venues to transform the food and beverage ordering experience for their guests through branded innovative self-serve solutions – including web, mobile, and kiosk applications.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

We feel that often it’s the investment – both capital and human resources – required to implement and integrate new technology solutions that holds back many in the hospitality industry from implementing and/or optimising new technology.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

We’ve had the benefit of seeing many of our hospitality clients leverage technology – such as contactless ordering and payments (room service, pool-side, etc.) – to increase efficiency, improve guest experience, and increase revenues. One of our clients recently achieved $1M in sales, in the first 15 months, through contactless ordering across their resorts (which extended to their employees in addition to their guests).

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Excited to see how recent AI advancements will be incorporated into existing technology to further benefit the hospitality industry.

Ensure that any technology investment contributes to improving the overall guest or team member experience - and preferably both.

160

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

HCN Ottawa, USA CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Communication is key to happy hotel guests. Face to face interactions are down with health concerns and declines in hotel staffing. A guestroom tablet reaches 100% of hotel guests as a two way digital communication tool.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Major brands are constrained by huge technical debt of very old legacy core systems, which limits their ability to be agile and experiment effectively.

Independents and small brands are more agile, but constrained by resource limitations. And although the industry represents over 10% of global GDP, total technology spend for hospitality globally as an industry is roughly half of the annual amount that Amazon alone spends.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Ensure that your hotel has a technology champion on staff. Consider benefits that improve marketing and top line results of any product that you choose to implement. Consider traditional ROI evaluation, but don’t overlook intangible benefits like improving intent to return and satisfying unexpressed dissatisfaction before the guest checks out.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Many many times, but take heed. A great system is only as good as how it is implemented and managed. If you have a tool and stick it away in a drawer, it does nothing for you. Make certain that your purchasing decisions are thoughtful. Select the products that fit your needs, and ensure that they are managed efficiently by your staff. Listen to your line staff for ideas and recommendations about your property technology. Some of the best ideas come from firsthand engagement by line level employees.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Room service has been a challenge for years.

Too expensive, quality challenges, and little to no incremental profit for hotels. HCN’s DineIn product enables a room service product delivered from quality local restaurants, bill to room and deliver to room just like traditional room service, but unlike traditional room service, HCN DineIn has none of the traditional overhead and operational costs of room service, just pure bottom line results.

Find out more

Back to index

161

TigerTMS Innovation Madison, USA CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

TigerTMS solutions optimise hotel operations (e.g. housekeeping), support the back-office and deliver a frictionless guest journey thereby enhancing satisfaction whilst simultaneously reducing costs.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Significant change to the guest experience has only been possible since the advent of the smartphone. Hoteliers are by nature risk-averse and are suspicious of new solutions replacing long-established service delivery methods.

Improved communication and education are essential in order to realise the benefits available.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

On many occasions – TigerTMS iPortal Appless guest services solutions are transforming operational processes throughout the globe across the entire spectrum of property types.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Incorporation of additional AI features into iPortal will make it the indispensable digital assistant used by guests for optimising their hotel experience.

Find out more

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Provide choice - simply digitize the guest compendium and make it available for the guest via their own device by simply scanning a QR-code without downloading an App. Then compare uptake with traditional means (concierge enquiries, room folder). Invaluable guest demographic data will ensue.

162

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

FreshAir Smoking Sensors Lebanon, USA

CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

FreshAir Smoking Sensors enable hotels to immediately detect, stop, prove, and charge for marijuana & tobacco smoking violations (regardless of physical proof left by guests).

Our clients win chargebacks & reduce property damages, cleaning costs, other guest compensation/complaints/bad reviews, rooms OOO, etc.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Mobile apps to process check in and check out virtually.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Direct access to guest rooms via mobile phones (and never having to wait in long check-in lines again, especially after a long flight!).

Hotels’ first priority is resetting from the night before to be ready for the next wave of guests, so being able to shift the focus from the past to the future is difficult. Chronic labor shortages only make this harder.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Dedicate a little time each month to evaluating technology solutions for their property’s specific challenges.

Back to index

163

Benbria Ottawa, Canada CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Utilizing an omni-channel strategy helps hotels to connect with guests across the property, improving the guest experience. Seamlessly integrating with other hotel technology systems to add workflow automation creates a better guest experience and improves back of house operations.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Adopting digital transformation as quickly as guests are, is what is holding the hospitality industry back. During the pandemic the guest expectations evolved and they now require a personalized and customized experience which involves real-time interaction with humans.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

By maximizing the interaction with each touchpoint in the guest journey, you have the opportunity to offer custom experiences which can increase ancillary revenues at the property.

This creates an overall guests loyalty which will increase brand reputation and overall profits in the long-term.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

I am most excited to see how the industry leverages AI-technology to create automation and improve operational workflows. Loop has leveraged AI for writing assist tools, and conversation summaries to improve the workflows and reporting needs for the properties.

Integrating all technology workflows to provide the guest with a personalized experience that makes them feel unique and important to the business. By pre-populating customer data in each system a guest interacts with, it provides a quicker workflow for both guest facing and back of house.

164

eHotelier Hospitality Technology Innovations Report

Back to index

Hotel Genie Las Vegas, USA CATEGORY

Guest Management

SOLUTION

Guest Response/Guest Service/Guest Satisfaction

How does your brand’s technology help hotels and hospitality venues?

Hotel Genie works on Tablets, Mobile phones, and Alexa. Our solutions eliminate and/or augment room phones, lowers PBX and telecom costs, drives staff efficiencies and empowers the guest to communicate where they are via chat or voice and includes e911 service for Ray Baum act compliance for the entire PBX as well as rooms.

Emergency Alerts, Ticketing & Dispatch, and our Guest Services module which includes any desired function such as Room Service, Concierge, Bell Desk, (call or interactive) Compendium, and Push Marketing all of which are self manageable.

What do you believe is holding the hospitality industry back from optimising technology?

Delays are generally due to lack of budget or staff resources. To solve those issues we focus on delivering cost savings and/or delivering new revenue streams and can be deployed by our staff with minimal customer input.

How have you personally witnessed technology helping a hotel or other venue to improve efficiency, experience or profits?

Our customers experience savings on new phone system costs and upgrades, telecom costs, increased revenues in F&B orders, and staff efficiencies by knowing what guests need ahead of time and being able to respond to guest requests quickly and efficiently.

What upcoming hospitality industry technology solutions are you most excited about?

Our soon to be released AI platform will drive savings and efficiencies even more. From the guest perspective we’re building it to be the most human-like, quick, and responsive platform available to avoid frustrating experiences.

What is one thing any hotel can do that leverages technology to build a better business?

Invest in technology that delivers on their mission statement.

Back to index

165

Visit ehotelier.com