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Take capacity management, for example. If a room is unoccupied, or event space empty, a hotel or conference center loses money. Or food and beverage planning. In addition to having the right staffing for food preparation, service, and cleanup, you need accurate guest data to avoid costly over-ordering. 

Read on to explore automation’s impact on marketing, sales, and operations so that you can narrow down the best options for your hotels.

Marketing your event space is key to helping event planners, businesses and organizations discover your facility and services, especially when you consider 67 percent of the buyer’s journey is now conducted digitally.

Social media automation software is used to automate or semi-automate the process of sharing posts and content on social media channels to promote events.

For example, you could have one Facebook page for your hotel, and one for your event spaces

There are many benefits to email marketing, from saving money on printing and mailing to increasing attendee engagement and generating buzz.

Event planners begin researching venues online before contacting your sales team, and 3D floor plans help them visualize how their conference would fit your location

RFP management tools automatically prioritize and send responses to event planners and group business leads. This will help you reduce a major pain point for planners: the length of time it takes to receive hotel responses on RFPs

The meetings and events sector is competitive — drawing and landing group sales requires hotel CRM software that automatically scores leads and supports lighting-fast responses to RFPs

Think like an event planner when it comes to your meeting facility ingress and egress; give them access to electrical outlets and secure Wi-Fi networks to hook-up wireless printers that produce name tags as attendees sign-in

On-site meetings at events are important for attendees for many reasons, including cost.

Hotels such as Caesars have been testing mobile ordering technology for food to better cater to guests. Have event attendees share F&B preferences during check-in and automate push notifications to remind them of onsite cafes and restaurants before breaks. 

The Canadian Rockies of Alberta Canada may not have the same high-speed internet reliability as other areas. "Banff Lodging Company uses Maestro's multi-property centralized on-premise single-image database system.

Maestro's networked single-image database lets us recognize guests at any property whether they are with a group or on vacation, and deliver personalized service when they return.

We are on 723 acres with six separate lodging buildings, each with its own amenities," said Dace Starkweather, General Manager of Glen Eyrie Castle & Conference Center. "Most of our guests are repeat visitors with specific requirements. We wanted a Cloud system based on the latest technology that would make it easy to provide the highest level of guest service and create the most efficient operation. We selected the Maestro Web PMS Cloud Hosted Solution."

"Maestro Web PMS was better for us than an on-premise system. It reduced our overall IT requirements and ensured that all data was securely managed and backed up in the Cloud by a proven system company."

Digital menus can include high resolution photos of the food served.

Digital menus also increase accuracy in ordering.

Having a digitized menu can give a restaurant the competitive edge it requires to grow a business and build a loyal following.

They can include additional nutritional information, details on gluten free ordering, diabetic recommendations and markers, and other information that may not make it into a paper menu.

A digital menu can upsell or recommend paired dishes automatically, resulting in higher sales and better customer satisfaction.

easier to produce menus in multiple languages when they are digital,

make the menu accessible on all devices - from PCs to tablets and mobile phones,

A good PMS offers unprecedented visibility that allows you to take full control of your hotel's administration, and will come with a wide array of options when it comes to data report dashboards. Having said that, it's still important to find out what level of custom reporting is available to you before buying.

With the constant development of new technologies, having a PMS with a growing integration partner list is becoming more important. An integrated partner could be anything from a channel manager to a mobile app or online guest feedback system. Less integration opportunities could mean that you end up with data spread over a number of different applications, or having to settle for apps that don't serve your needs like they should.

It's important to have a clear understanding of the PMS platform's customer support process before making a buying decision. It's also important to consider what kind of training is provided to hotel staff who will be using the system for the first time. More than 80% of hoteliers agree that user training is a key success factor in getting the most out of a PMS.

Thanks to rapid developments in technology, PMS platforms today aren't nearly as expensive as their predecessors. However, whether you choose a cloud-based or traditional computer-based system for your hotel, it's important to find out if you'll be making any surprise payments down the road – some examples include future software updates, technical support, infrastructure or maintenance etc.

How much time your new PMS will save in terms of managing front desk activities, like check-ins and check-outs, consolidating guest accounts, and managing rates and availability across all of your different channels (OTAs, travel agents and so on) is a critical consideration to make.

Lastly, it's important to look at the company's track record before making a buying decision. Even if they've been in business for years, check their client base to determine how reliable they are. The last thing you want is to be promised the world, only to be let down by poor service delivery.

Does the solution offer flexibility in functionality, including data access and performance reporting? How easily and seamlessly does the PMS integrate with third-party technologies and data? How long will it take for problems to be resolved? What is the total cost of ownership? Are there "hidden" costs? What return on investment (ROI) can be expected? What is the PMS solution provider's track record of success?

By Friday morning, the festival, founded by the rapper Ja Rule and the tech entrepreneur Billy McFarland, was in damage-control mode. “Fyre Festival set out to provide a once-in-a-lifetime musical experience,” the organizers said in a statement. “Due to circumstances out of our control, the physical infrastructure was not in place on time and we are unable to fulfill on that vision safely and enjoyably for our guests.” (A second weekend, planned to start May 5, was also scrapped.)

internet programming, the ocean and rap music.

But the pair soon discovered logistical hurdles, including a lack of proper water systems and transportation. “There wasn’t the infrastructure we needed. We attempted to build a city out of nothing,” Mr. McFarland said. “Neither of us had developed an island or a festival before.”

Still, after a few months of planning — including adding sewage piping and buying an ambulance in New Jersey and shipping it to the island — the organizers thought they were ready for the crowds until the storm on Thursday morning washed away some of what they had built.“Our mistake was trying to own all of it in-house,” said Mr. McFarland, who is also the founder of Magnises, an exclusive members-only benefits card for upwardly mobile millennials. “We were in over our heads.”

The Bahamas Ministry of Tourism expressed its dismay in a statement on Friday, citing the festival’s “disorganization and chaos.” It continued: “ We offer a heartfelt apology to all who traveled to our country for this event.”

Earlier, Chopra had said that though digital marketing was in geometric progression, there were huge gaps that created significant opportunities.

Founded in 2010, iCubesWire works with over 400 brands across e-commerce, automobile, technology, financial, travel and hospitality sectors. It helps deliver tailor-made digital concepts to the brands they work with.

Wearables debuted on the open seas in 2014 when Royal Caribbean launched its Wow Bands. Three years later, Princess Cruises debuted its Ocean Medallion technology. This wireless gadget can be worn as a bracelet or discreet pendant necklace, and it enables contactless boarding, keyless stateroom entry and onboard payments for everything from drinks to purchases in shipboard shops.

Now, instead of just making it possible to keep an eye on your kids while they’re having fun at a watery splash zone, these devices are now capable of keeping tabs on travelers who are quarantined due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. As part of Kauai’s so-called “enhanced movement quarantine,” six resorts on the Hawaiian island use a mobile app paired with a wearable surveillance device to ensure guests comply with a mandatory 72-hour quarantine upon arrival. Some properties provide the bracelets for free, while others charge guests up to $100.

The British Virgin Islands also mandate that guests wear tracking bracelets. Arriving passengers, including residents and citizens, must take a COVID-19 test at the airport and use a contact-tracing system on their phones linked to a government-issued wristband during a four-day quarantine before being tested again. The two required tests, the mobile contact tracing app and monitoring bracelet are provided at the visitor’s expense, costing approximately $175.

There are also environmental concerns. Most properties don’t reuse the bracelets. Chapur, of Le Blanc, said their beachfront resort uses plastic-free vinyl wristbands, but they still generate more waste than a keycard, which can be reprogrammed.

With more travel providers (and entire nations) turning to wearable technology in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19 amongst travelers, we’ll likely see new innovations in the wearable space. A single device could become your room key card, a quarantine monitor, theme park pass and mobile payment device. It could even use biotechnology to monitor your health, like the buttons deployed by the Cayman Islands to help travelers enjoy a reduced quarantine period. But hopefully, these wearable devices will become increasingly comfortable, eco-friendly and more discreet, so guests and travelers aren’t easily singled out — and aren’t deterred from using the technology in future applications.

Despite the rise in demand for contactless payments, many states and cities in the U.S. have passed laws banning cashless stores.

Millennials are the ones leading the charge toward a cashless future.

Nearly a third of U.S. adults said they typically make no purchase using cash during a week, according to a study by Pew Research Center.

Those within the industry maintain that the future of contactless payments remains promising.

Rob can speak eight languages, allowing international patrons to order and converse with the robot in their preferred language.

Successful customer interactions are often determined by how long it takes to resolve an issue or answer a question. The faster you can help, the happier customers will be. This is why more and more companies are implementing artificial intelligence as part of their customer service strategies.

Using AI, chatbots collect and use customer data to offer better service. Best of all, chatbots don’t need to be paid and never take a break. They can provide 24/7 assistance to early birds and night owls alike.

Personalization

5. Increased Focus on Self-Service Options

A simple example is inventory. Companies can use past sales data and predictive analytics to determine how much product they need to keep in stock. Predictive analysis will account for factors like seasonal demand and demographic data to keep the right items on your shelves at the right times. And that will definitely improve your customer experience. Businesses live and die by their customers. While keeping up with new expectations can be daunting, making these six changes can help your business thrive. Make sure you’re prioritizing the customer experience, and the necessary changes will come naturally.

They'll first land in the new Bronco, Edge, F-150, Mustang Mach-E and Super Duty this fall. Do note, only vehicles equipped with Sync 4 will be eligible for the OTA update.

You can even inspect the site of your next sales event halfway across the country

You can’t be in two places at once, but with video conferencing event management you can be in six successive locations without leaving your office.

Your video conferencing salvation resides in the cloud–the same cloud computing you’re probably already using to access project and event management software

all your varied information is stored in one location and accessible from all your devices

in place of your CRM, provisional schedules, marketing collateral, and venue plans, is a single video conferencing portal you can use from your desktop, smartphone, or tablet.

this cloud-based meeting platform can be integrated into your everyday workflows.

With the right video vendor, you can move from a spreadsheet to email to internal video call to phone call and on to a client face-to-face sit-down with all the effort it takes to click between browser windows.

The goal is that every contact you make with both the internal and external elements of your working life become channels within the same workflow.

All the data you collect on a client, all the information you have about venue capacities, all the voice of the customer lessons you’ve ever learned are stored and analyzed here as well.

you can combine all your existing event management needs with a digital communications arm that lets you turn that knowledge into a flexible and persuasive way of keeping all your stakeholders happy.

Since you’re now traveling by video, the three back-to-back meetings you have with stakeholders across the city don’t involve leaving the office, which gives you time for a quick pre-meeting huddle room catch-up with your marketing team.

You can even remain at your desk to join the call, while your team in another part of the building meets together in the huddle room. Your notes from this meeting can be pinned to the project file for your upcoming external face-to-face, along with all the relevant data from your integrated event management app.

At all times, you can be adding notes to each respective file, sending chat messages to your team, taking photos and recording video, and presenting multimedia examples of some event planning do’s and don’ts.

You can’t be in two places at once, but with video conferencing event management, your entire working life can be based in the same platform.

Trends tell us that a personalized experience isn’t enough anymore; guests today want a hyper-personalized guest experience. In order to provide one, hotels are going to have to think of new and innovative ways to collect data and then quickly and seamlessly use it to meet and exceed expectations. For example, Virgin Hotel Chicago adjusted its rewards program to be less of a rewards program and more of a preference program. In the program, appropriately called “The Know,” guests put in information about themselves in exchange for things like coupons to dine at the hotel’s restaurant. It gives them the chance to give dietary preferences, select what types of liquor they’d like in their mini bar, and what kind of cocktail they’d like waiting for them at check-in.

Smart Rooms & Self Service For The Win The “smart home” has left the bedroom and transitioned to the hotel room. Hotels of every shape and size are incorporating self-service capabilities that ‘smart’ technologies offer to meet the needs of their guests at every point of their stay.

Hotels like Hilton allow guests to check-in and set their room preferences -- from temperature to how dim or bright the lights should be -- before they arrive. By implementing self-service options, you help reduce wait times for guests trying to find information and request service.

Yotel is also embracing the digital revolution by allowing guests to check in via their airline-style kiosks. The kiosks, which are set up throughout the lobby, allow guests to avoid lines, select preferences, and set them up with their room quickly and easily. With studies showing that people estimate that they waste at least one hour a week waiting in lines, these self-service options not only alleviate waste times, but frustrations as well.

At the Godfrey Hotel in Boston, when you walk into a room, the television automatically syncs with your phone and loads your social media, Netflix, or Hulu account giving you easy access to all your favorite content. Meanwhile, in New York, the Renaissance is using its interactive digital concierge service to offer suggestions and information on restaurants and sights.

Real-time Communication Will Make Or Break You Of course, even with the introduction of new and exciting technologies that do some of the work for you, you still need to master the basics, such as communication. And today, this means real-time communication. Why, you ask? In December 2017, hotels on the Zingle platform received over 140,000 messages from guests. That’s roughly 4,500 messages a day that teams are fielding regarding everything from service needs, recommendations, complaints and general information inquiries. To handle this deluge of communication, savvy hotels leveraged 103,811 automated responses to answer some of the more common questions in a more efficient manner.

Prepare For A New Reality… That Includes Robots As time goes on, hotels are going to have to find ways to incorporate more immersive and interactive technology in order to provide better and more memorable experiences that differentiate themselves from their competitors. 2019 is poised to be a big year for virtual and augmented reality as hotels either find ways to incorporate it, or face the unhappy reality of losing guests.

From Hilton to Intercontinental, physical bots have joined their digital counterparts in entering the hospitality industry. However, hotel teams don’t need to panic about losing their jobs -- just yet. Nonetheless, they do provide real value for their ability to perform mundane, repeatable task that can free up staff to service guests elsewhere.

organizations must take preemptive measures not only to mitigate the financial and reputational impact of these events but ultimately to protect their customers.

Deploying the latest software protection is only the beginning. Transparency to customers and actionable steps to correct such a catastrophic event are critical to an orderly recovery.

An effective plan includes a risk assessment to identify vulnerabilities across a wide spectrum of threats including, but not limited to, cyberattacks.

Here are six important questions to ask your crisis management team:

Solomon: Is the human element getting lost?  Allen: Absolutely not! A key differentiator of casual dining is the personalized service model. Our technology innovation is not only a win for our guests, but also a win for our team members. With technology, we’re able to remove some of the mundane tasks of the server and allow them to make our guests feel special with a memorable dining experience. Furthermore, technology is completely optional and guests can choose to opt out if they wish. These tablets do not eliminate the personal service our guests receive from servers. In fact, these tablets have served as a good tool for our team members to help eliminate some transactional pain points, such as paying the bill or ordering dessert, and have helped our team members do their job more efficiently. This allows our team members to focus on the duties that make a personal impact on the dining experience, such as getting to know the table, taking entrée orders and delivering meals, among other duties.

Micah Solomon:  Can you bring me up to speed on how the Chili’s digital service came to be deployed, and how it’s going so far? Wade Allen, vice president of digital innovation and customer engagement, Chili’s Grill & Bar: We started our digital guest experience journey in Sept. 2013 as the first mover in the casual dining industry to bring tabletop technology to our restaurant tables. The goal was to remove common guest pain points around paying the bill and re-ordering drinks. We’ve seen rapid adoption with 75 percent of guests using the tablets to quickly pay their bill. Furthermore, we’ve been able to gather valuable insights through real-time feedback where 25 percent of guests use the tablets to complete the Chili’s survey at the end of their dining experience. This feedback allows us to make improvements on an individual restaurant level, as well as, provide proof points for national-scale decisions around our Fresh Tex and Fresh Mex menu favorites. Once we had the tablets in place, we took a different approach and launched a fully digital loyalty program, “My Chili’s Rewards,” in May 2015. The goal was easy access/participation for all guests. We also included unique elements around gamification to keep guests engaged. In six months, we went from no loyalty program to 4.2 million members. Furthermore, approximately 18 percent of transactions in restaurant are tied to loyalty members. We’re building on this for what we call “loyalty 2.0” with our latest partnership with the Plenti rewards program, as the newest partner to join representing the casual dining industry. This will allow guests to earn points at partner locations and redeem for their Chili’s favorites.

Solomon: What are the backup plans for when guests want human rather than kiosk service? Allen: Our model is based on personalized service to make guests feel special when dining with us. So, the personalized aspect will always be a part of what guests experience at Chili’s. The technology innovation is completely optional and guests can choose to opt out if they wish.

Second, the success of Oracle has always stemmed from Larry’s passion for finding great programmers to fix fundamental issues. Oracle Hospitality and its adherence to legacy rules suggests they are interested in none of the above.

Oracle has always done one thing amazingly well - maintain a ruthless focus on performance and speed at the expense of the more intangible parts. Once again, Oracle Hospitality goes against company principles: it offers functionality at the expense of speed and performance. To compound things further, and ironically for such a service-oriented industry, customer service is an afterthought at best. It doesn’t even offer performance for the processes that truly matter, such as customer check-in speeds, report creation or those painfully slow night audits. On all the key hospitality benchmarks we’ve been able to track (more on that in a post coming later), Oracle is nowhere near the top.

Fourth, he can barely disguise his hatred for system integrators and has always preferred an all-in-one solution to an ecosystem of connected apps and software.

With Oracle Hospitality lacking what the current market demands in so many different ways, the company has been forced to work closely with the old hospitality tech guards such as Sabre, TravelClick, Amadeus, Duetto and IDEAS, as well as newer entrants including Expedia’s AliceApp and TinkLabs.

The result is a product lacking proper interfaces to standard functionalities, let alone the conveyor belt of new must-have integrations (TripTease and HotelChamp to name a couple), which also suffer on account of Opera’s six month minimum integration lead time.

The problem with property management systems, and the hotel tech landscape in general, is that they are innately consultative. For example, there is no definitively correct way to check someone in or out, nor is there a set-in-stone rubric on how best to run a hotel. Why? I believe it’s because hotels are inherently human and complex machines. Unlike a POS, for example, a hotel’s PMS is a de facto processor and analyser of human behaviours rather than just pure robotic tech. The POS, on the other hand, simply serves as a general system of record with an external point of contact for transactional security.

So why did Oracle acquire Micros in the first place? I believe the real prize was the POS and not the PMS.

Unfortunately for Larry (but fortunately for us), PMS systems are a far cry from their core business. Unlike a POS, a PMS is not simply about the speed of execution. They involve developing deep knowledge around a number of processes connected to unique human behaviours and then managing those processes efficiently.

According to ChatbotGuide.org, Booking.com’s chatbot is capable of handling about 50 percent of users’ post-booking accommodation-related requests. In case it can’t provide an appropriate answer, it redirects the user to a human customer service team member.

Con: AI is Still Developing Even though AI has made tremendous progress in recent years, the field is pretty much in its infancy. In fact, Andrew Moore, Google’s vice president and an AI leader, has the following to say on this matter, according to CNet: “AI is currently very, very stupid… It’s not something we could press to do general-purpose reasoning involving things like analogies or creative thinking or jumping outside the box.”

Con: Data Privacy Issues This is one of the most pressing concerns that all businesses looking to take advantage of AI will face. Data collected by the technology during interactions with users can be potentially used for other purposes, therefore, the risk of data privacy violation is involved.

, Europe is expected to hold the largest share, thus dominating the global smart stadium market in 2016, whereas the Middle East and Africa is the fastest-growing region.

The worldwide market for smart stadiums is experiencing huge growth, mainly owing to the following factors: Rising trend of digital transformation and adoption of IoT technologies Increased focus on attracting home viewers Growing demand for better customer engagement and experience Upcoming national and international sports events across the globe like 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar Increasing government initiatives for smart building projects Growing need for modernization of network and telecom infrastructure

On the flip side, inability of traditional stadiums to match up with the smart stadium technology and low investments in smart technology by the stadium owners in its deployment are the major factors that may hamper the growth of this market.

global market for smart stadiums include Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (China), Intel Corp. (U.S.), NEC Corp. (Japan), Cisco Systems, Inc. (U.S.), International Business Machines Corporation (U.S.), Fujitsu (Japan), Johnson Controls (U.S.), Tech Mahindra Ltd. (India), Volteo (U.S.), and GP Smart Stadium (the Netherlands).

Europe’s new privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, imposes massive fines on companies if they don’t notify privacy regulators about a data breach within 72 hours. The rule took effect in May and applies to any company with E.U. customers. U.S. lawmakers have proposed similar a 72-hour rule to replace the patchwork of state data breach laws that exist here

The company said Friday it had notified European data privacy regulators of the breach, in accordance with GDPR. Shortly after doing so, Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, the watchdog that monitors Facebook’s GDPR compliance, said Facebook’s disclosure “lacks detail” and criticized the company for being “unable to clarify the nature of the breach and the risk for users at this point.”

 Equifax waited six weeks to reveal that the Social Security numbers and other sensitive information on 143 million Americans had been exposed in a data breach. Uber waited a year to reveal a hack affecting tens of millions of drivers — and just last week paid a $148 million settlement in connection with the incident. Yahoo also paid a fine earlier this year for waiting two years to tell investors that Russian hackers stole information on 500 million users. 

Wray stressed that cyberattacks and theft of intellectual property can inflict long-term damage on American companies,

No country poses a broader, more severe intelligence collection threat than China.

The Energy Department on Monday announced awards of up to $28 million to help fund 11 cybersecurity research projects to strengthen the defenses of America's critical energy infrastructure,

Karen Evans, the assistant secretary for the department's Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, said “energy cybersecurity and resilience” is one of the “most important security challenges” that the United States faces.

“The frequency, scale, and sophistication of cyber threats have increased and attacks can be much easier to launch,”

“Cyber incidents have the potential to interrupt energy services, damage highly specialized equipment and threaten human health and safety.”

The Senate Commerce Committee should hear from consumer privacy experts as lawmakers consider whether to develop data privacy legislation, a coalition of consumer and privacy groups said Monday

And while civilian agencies generally face the most lopsided age disparities, the importance departments place on building a long-term talent pipeline varies greatly

That means federal technologists at or approaching retirement age outnumbered their 20-something counterparts roughly 4.6 to 1.”