Group items tagged

Guests at the Sheraton Maui who dine at its poolside restaurants and bars also will notice that the utensils are out of the ordinary. They’re all “bio-based, made primarily with potato and vegetable starch and highly sustainable,” Yamazaki said.

At Cayuga Collection hotels, where sustainability “is very much in the company DNA,” Pfister said there also are no lids on property. If a guest asks to take out food, there are biodegradable containers.

Anantara hotels also have eliminated plastic water bottles from guestrooms in favor of reusable containers, Roberts said.

Anantara hotels also have eliminated plastic water bottles from guestrooms in favor of reusable containers, Roberts said.

“The best, of course, is when we not only get buy-in at work, but that our folks take initiatives home or, as is the case with the bamboo straws in Chiang Rai, other local businesses see what we have done and have joined the club, starting to order their own straws, which has turned a ‘crazy idea’ we took to a local village into a thriving community run business,” he said.

He said he also believes that the brand’s sustainability efforts will build guest loyalty, and “in the future people will begin to preferentially choose truly sustainable hotel chains.”

enable buyers and agents to book, change, cancel and modify reservations through the GDSs

outhwest has been investing in both of those other "legs," as well

joining ATPCO and SITA's NDC Exchange platform

Southwest projects that the GDS presence will bring between $10 million and $20 million in additional revenue

the panels are guaranteed for 25 years of use at a minimum of 80% capacity. “The lodge can expect to recover the value of the installation through power savings within five years,” enthuses Swart.

Operation and Management: Steps to a More Sustainable Resort

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.

This is particularly important and timely as the hospitality industry has been forced to quickly adopt and embrace technology to survive the "new normal". The global pandemic has only increased the significance and importance of hospitality-centric technology companies for the industry and has put a spotlight on Branded's investment thesis that the hospitality industry must embrace

Branded believes that continuing to identify, vet and make new investments as well as deploy additional capital to several of its current Partner Companies is the right course of action for this investment and advisory platform

When the restaurant shutdown was embraced by most states, Branded's off-premise and mobile/touchless HI-Tech Partner Companies immediately demonstrated an ability and desire to be allies to the industry.

Branded team is in a unique position to "test before they invest" and deploy capital in companies after successful in-store trials. The team is able to offer real insights to on the most pressing and important problems, challenges and opportunities that restaurant owners face

We've found that our boots on the ground experience and our ability to use our network of restaurants to test and vet emerging technology has proven to be beneficial in not only accelerating the growth of our partner companies, but also making smarter strategic capital introductions,

In terms of the Coronavirus crisis, it has challenged the industry in ways that we have never seen before, and technology is more important than ever. The adoption of HI-Tech will be crucial for restaurants to continue to earn revenue in a socially distancing society."

Alipay,

broaden our offerings of guest amenities and services appealing to Chinese travelers

600,000 new Marriott Rewards loyalty members

world’s largest source market for outbound travel

more Chinese join the ranks of the middle class and choose to travel.”

conference attendance numbers

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: 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.

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.

That goes together with concepts like digital “immunity passports” that ride along with travelers carrying vaccination data and other encrypted personal health information.

but some hotel chains and management firms have looked to digital ID solutions to address consumers’ safety concerns.

MGM Resorts debuted a contactless check-in process that allows customers to use its mobile app to verify themselves, pay for their rooms and even receive digital keys.”

Biometrics are playing a huge role in new identity needs, and that function is widening.

The most effective place to start is with your employee onboarding and training practices.

When employees first join your company, you have an excellent opportunity to set your expectations around employee theft and make clear that it’s not acceptable behavior.

Unfortunately, preventative strategies will only lower employee theft; they won’t eliminate it. That’s where your third and final strategy comes into play: regular reporting and monitoring of your point-of-sale (POS) system and any integratedthird-party systems, like guest loyalty and engagement software.

At one point or another, any staff member could give in to the desire to make more money by committing employee theft. That’s why your restaurant leadership team needs to look out for these behaviors and put policies and practices in place that make it as difficult as possible to steal from the restaurant, thereby removing the opportunity from staff members who are tempted.

right: © 2016 A

the internet consumer of today assumes all businesses worthy of trade have a website;

E-commerce mainly helps in the generation of leads, presenting information about the tourism product to the customers, and facilitating the transaction process electronically

E-commerce allows the tourism consumer to purchase tourism products and packages online and act as his or her own travel agent by building personalised travel packages and eliminitaing the need for traditional processes

2B

E-procurement can be defined as a business-to-business (B2B) tool that supports the buying process

Today, e-commerce focuses on profitability.

consumers have become the storytellers and are the new brand ambassadors.

studies in the tourism and hospitality arena have indicated that ICT is a tool particularly suited to this industry for a variety of reasons.

“if I can’t find enough information on your hotel it’s probably not a good choice.”

As the youngest of the four GDS companies, Amadeus has done remarkably well during its short tenure. Yet, in many ways, the company remains an anomaly. Amadeus has the greatest number of travel agency locations with the highest productivity per terminal in the world, yet its booking share is Number 3, and its revenues are dwarfed by Sabre and, to a lesser degree, by Galileo. While the company is Number 1 in locations worldwide, serving the greatest number of countries, it provides the fewest U.S. destinations of the top four GDSs.

HVS Technology Strategies is a division of HVS International, the world's largest hospitality specific consulting firm. The division was formed in mid-2000, following two years of hospitality technology market research. Our findings revealed a growing demand for unbiased, technology-focused consulting throughout the hospitality industry.

These systems have become electronic supermarkets linking buyers to sellers and allowing reservations to be made quickly and easily. Nowadays, more travel is sold over the Internet than any other consumer product. The Internet is a perfect medium for selling travel as it brings a vast network of suppliers and a widely dispersed customer pool together into a centralized market place.

However, any discussion of the Internet as a distribution channel for travel needs to start with an

sting electronic distribution infrastructure, the Global Distribution System (GDS). The airline industry created the first GDS in the 1960s as a way to keep track of flight schedules, availability, and prices.

understanding of the exi

The substantial uptick in online shopping, while only one data point, matters all the more because the US is reporting thousands of more cases each day. That means areas that were not affected during one survey may be affected during the following survey three days later. It is reasonable to expect that trends currently affecting four out of 10 consumers will spread as additional states join the 23 that have already shut down non-essential businesses.

Unsurprisingly, the Covid-19 crisis is proving especially challenging for restaurants, the tourism and hospitality industry, and brick-and-mortars. A whopping 80% of consumers said in the latest survey that they are scaling down their restaurant visits, a 25% increase from the previous survey. Sixty-two percent are avoiding travel for business, and 42% are cutting back on in-store shopping for inessential items.

As part of the agreement, engineers and business leaders at both companies will work side-by-side on three main initiatives:

Improving Sabre’s technology capability

Using Google Cloud tools to enhance and optimize travel:

Driving a broader innovation framework:

Thomas Kurian CEO, Google Cloud. “We believe our partnership will deliver more personalized experiences for travelers, saving time and providing greater convenience that will ultimately raise the standard for the travel industry overall.”

Google Cloud provides organizations with leading infrastructure, platform capabilities and industry solutions, along with expertise, to reinvent their

business with data-powered innovation on modern computing infrastructure.