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pects of a franchisee’s business, from guest check-ins and housekeeping services to billing and finances. Over time new features have been rolled into the software platform making it more robust and useful for hotel owners—it’s currently distributed in eight countries and available in four languages. And while plenty of cloud-based PMS packages are now available from third-party vendors like Micros, Maestro, and RoomKey, Choice’s internal solution has garnered its fair share of attention. “We had been getting knocks on the door from IT vendors at other hotel companies and individual Choice franchisees that own other brands, saying they were interested in our product,” says Pacious, “So we set up a new division so we could take a look at other opportunities we could develop.” This led the company to launch SkyTouch last year, a new division that develops and markets cloud-based software solutions to hotels inside and outside the Choice system. Pages: 1 2 3 4 2013-06-18 Sean Downey !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })(); (function() { var li = document.createElement('script'); li.type = 'text/javascript'; li.async = true; li.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https:' : 'http:') + '//platform.stumbleupon.com/1/widgets.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(li, s); })(); inShare0 Related Articles attachment-3

Switching to the cloud from a client server platform pays off with a big drop in both the initial capital outlay and the ongoing operating costs for the property management and other systems.

his led the company to launch SkyTouch last year, a new division that develops and markets cloud-based software solutions to hotels inside and outside the Choice system. Pages: 1 2 3 4 2013-06-18 Sean Downey !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })(); (function() { var li = document.createElement('script'); li.type = 'text/javascript'; li.async = true; li.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https:' : 'http:') + '//platform.stumbleupon.com/1/widgets.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(li, s); })(); inShare0 Related Articles Hotel Market Insight: Cleveland a

This led the company to launch SkyTouch last year, a new division that develops and markets cloud-based software solutions to hotels inside and outside the Choice system.

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.”

Shopify has worked to position itself as the online commerce solution with the experience and size to support fast-growing, digitally native brands — the company’s tech has powered direct-to-consumer staples such as Allbirds and Brooklinen —

Last year, the company announced plans to invest $1 billion over five years on warehouse space and robotics to build out a fulfillment network so Shopify can also deliver your packages.

But what really has made the Shopify platform a bit of a juggernaut is its comprehensiveness

Currently, 1.4 million full-time jobs globally are supported by companies using Shopify.

who can tap their networks to instantly bring “high quality, low volume goods” into the world.

The company expects to see roughly $1.5 billion in revenue in 2019, a 50 percent jump from the previous year, and continues to see strong growth in subscription revenue.

Shopify software was processing $1.5 million in sales and 16,000 checkouts a minute.

Shopify’s plan is to lease warehouse space, and utilize robotics technology from a company called 6 River Systems, which they purchased in October for $450 million

Companies that sign up for the program can even have their own logo stamped on the box, unlike Amazon third-party sellers, which end up advertising Bezos’s latest project.

Trying to take on Amazon and its fulfillment network is a daunting task. That $1 billion investment Shopify is making may sound massive, but Amazon plans to spend $64 billion on logistics and shipping alone in 2019.

The three-tiered EPEAT rating system includes 23 required criteria and 28 optional criteria.

100 representatives from environmental groups

“We recognize the potential human health impacts associated with the materials found in traditional computers. As a result, we are very pleased to be one of the first private sector companies to use the EPEAT green computer standard, in addition to other environmental criteria, in our computer purchasing practices.”

Having a consistent standard makes it easier for customers to evaluate the environmental features of the technology they purchase,

Dell is pleased to be one of the first manufacturers to register products with EPEAT.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, using very conservative assumptions, estimates that over the next five years, purchases of EPEAT registered computers will result in reductions of: More than 13 million pounds of Hazardous Waste More than 3 million pounds of Non-hazardous Waste More than 600,000 MWh of Energy - enough to power 6 million homes

$62.5 billion, more than the GDP of most countries.

Less than 20% of e-waste is formally recycled, with 80% either ending up in landfill or being informally recycled – much of it by hand in developing countries, exposing workers to hazardous and carcinogenic substances such as mercury, lead and cadmium.

improper management of e-waste is resulting in a significant loss of scarce and valuable raw materials, such as gold, platinum, cobalt and rare earth elements.

circular economy in which resources are not extracted, used and discarded, but valued and reused

Nigerian Government, the Global Environment Facility and UN Environment announced a $2-million investment to kick off the formal e-waste recycling industry in Nigeria.

100,000 people work in the informal e-waste sector in Nigeria.

PACE is a public-private collaboration mechanism and project accelerator dedicated to bringing about the circular economy at speed and scale.

The UN E-waste coalition is a group of seven UN agencies who have come together to increase collaboration, build partnerships and more efficiently provide support to Member States to address the e-waste challenge.

Despite being one of the largest and most dynamic segments of the US and global economy, penetration of cloud-based technologies in the segment remains incredibly low, and the vendor landscape remains tremendously fragmented on a global basis,” says Matt Melymuka, co-founder and partner at PeakSpan Capital.

Life House, a tech-first hotel experience, shows proof-of-concept: that hotels that invest in technology drive higher revenue, better guest reviews, and a higher star-rating.

Hotels use Zingle’s messaging tools to deliver five-star service at scale; Medallia’s investment in Zingle gives hotels the opportunity to provide frictionless guest service and streamline time-consuming interactions, such as check-in.

Hotels are catching on, adding convenience through streaming, voice activation, guest-room tablets, and food ordering tech.

White labeling is a practice in which a product – in this case, hotel software – is manufactured by a third party and uses branding by the purchaser, or marketer, so that the end product appears to have been produced by the purchaser.

An API, application programming interface, is simply a messenger of data between applications. APIs allow your various hotel technology tools and programs to work together, connecting your RMS to a PMS, or your PMS to your upsell software, or your business intelligence software to your PMS. An API makes your technology user-friendly and efficient; when your tools work together, you capture each platform’s full capabilities.

For instance, feeding data from your PMS into a business intelligence tool leads to real, operational data to analyze trends and provide recommendations for better marketing campaigns, smarter staffing decisions, seasonal trends, and market competition. Hotels that are comfortable using APIs can automate tasks that take up much of their employee’s time with manual data entry.

On-demand convenience dominates our lives, and guests expect this level of ease from their hotel experience as well.

Oaky, one of the industry’s leading upselling tools, raised a Series A funding round of $9.5 million led by PeakScan Capital. Oaky’s appeal to investors stems from the app’s data-driven approach to driving incremental revenue. Their deep understanding of customer behavior makes Oaky one of the top-rated upselling tools on the market today.

Hilton is taking a different approach, partnering with Netflix to allow guests to control their streaming straight from the Hilton Honors mobile app.

As far as voice-activation, Volara is leading the way in providing a thoughtful, Alexa-esque guest-room solution. Volara integrates with the most popular work order management systems so that guests can make requests and get confirmation when the item or service they need will be delivered.

And for savvy marketing managers, tablets provide a new channel through which to send targeted, automated messages generating $5,000 per month in additional revenue.

2nd Kitchen is a godsend for hotels without a kitchen on-site: guests can order room service from restaurants near your hotel, taking care of care of orders, menus, payment, fulfillment, and customer support for your property.

Hotels are a prime target for hackers. “Only about 25% of all U.S. businesses, including hotel operators, are fully compliant with current data security best practices. That means that three out of four are not and are potential disasters waiting to happen,” reported one cybersecurity expert.

Numerous high-profile malware attacks on the hotel industry have led to hundreds of millions of guests’ data being compromised and millions of dollars in damage. Just this February, MGM Resorts revealed they were the target of a massive data breach that compromised personal information for more than 10.6 million guests. Files leaked in the MGM attack included information on celebrities, chief executives of technology companies, reporters and government officials, according to Skift.

Expedia and Booking have taken some pretty big hits in recent months.

Why the dive in stock price? There are two factors outside Coronavirus that are impacting OTAs. First, hotels are getting better at capturing direct bookings. Hotel tech like direct booking platforms, metasearch ad managers, and messaging integrations help properties draw more visitors to their site and convert more direct bookings, circumventing the high OTA commissions in the process.

Secondly, Google has entered the travel market in a big way. Google has expanded from traditional AdWords to include hotels everywhere via its Hotel Ads product.

5G may be getting all the buzz, but for property owners, WiFi 6 is much more relevant. WiFi 6 is the term used to describe the next iteration of Wifi, a faster, more efficient connection enabled through new technologies. WiFi 6 is about 30% faster than our current WiFi.

With WiFi 6, your property can leverage in-room technology to provide better service, driving positive guest reviews and repeat business. Smart thermostats, smart speakers, and smart locks will all perform better with the adoption of WiFi 6 over the next five years.

Investors in Oaky already recognize this next insight: data has become the world’s most valuable resource. The sooner you start to mine guest data for better customer insights, the better positioned your property will be against your competition.

Data can fuel smarter marketing campaigns, inform your pricing, and help you capture a higher market share than your competitors by knowing your guests on a deeper level.

Earlier this year, Revinate launched the hotel industry's first Guest Data Platform to aggregate, clean and deliver rich guest profiles for hotels and property groups of all sizes. The platform combines data from multiple sources to provide a complete picture of a hotel’s guests, delivering the information needed to increase guest satisfaction scores, direct bookings, and ultimately, profit.

Brands in the alternative lodging sector include Stay Alfred, Sonder, The Guild Hotels and to some extent groups such as Selina and OYO. 

The biggest distraction or barrier these next-gen hotels face is that they’re taking the wrong approach to tech. The companies that win will be the ones who stop acting like tech companies – using buzzwords like AI and virtual concierge – and focus on being more innovative and agile real estate businesses than traditional market players today. Those that succeed will be tech-enabled businesses; not tech businesses.

Smart hotel rooms use technology to allow guests to personalize their stay experiences.

Technology is becoming more important to hotel operations because it can deliver increasingly high value for hoteliers and guests.

The most important software in the hotel industry is the property management system, which acts as “mission control” for hotel operations. Hoteliers use a PMS to manage reservations, check guests in and out, and handle billing.

While exciting technologies present new options for hoteliers to enhance their offerings, these new innovations also mean hoteliers must focus on data security and continued training when implementing the technology that guests expect.

determine whether the latest cyberattack is more significant than the 2016 breach of the ICH systems. Initially thought to have been a minor breach that affected 12

Between September 29 to December 29, 2016, 1,175 properties were infected by malware designed to steal credit card data

Marriott International has been breached thrice, resulting in the compromise of the personally identifiable information of up to 338 million guests

Marriott was also fined £18.4 million ($23.8 million) by the U.K’s data regulator Information Commissioner’s Office for failing to protect the data of the 338 million guests

This is yet another reminder of the damaging impacts of cybercrime. Not only is IHG potentially getting held to ransom for its data access, but it is also losing out on customer bookings

Organizations should use this as a warning to never gamble with their cyber defenses. After all, the cost of preparing and preventing an attack is far less than the cost of recovering from one

Data breaches, on average, cost organizations $4.25 million in 2022, according to IBM’s 2022 Cost of Data Breach report.

Our investment in technology infrastructure will not only benefit hoteliers but the many business and leisure travellers who book and stay at Choice-branded properties in Europe

New rooms at The Peninsula Hong Kong will be smothered in digital touches, ranging from touch-screen tablets that control all functions of the room, to a DVD library of 3D movies to be watched on the in-room HD televisions.

A touch of a screen can change pre-set room modes, such as switching to a "spa mode," or change languages settings across all platforms in the room. 

Long-distance calls from the rooms become free-of-charge as complimentary Wi-Fi allow VOIP calls. 

"Since June 2011, Red Lion Hotels has reduced its debt by over $58 million and purchased $37 million of leased properties using proceeds from the sale of assets," said Shiflett

The Red Lion Hotels and Red Lion Inn & Suites network is comprised of 51 hotels with 9,088 rooms and 471,687 square feet of meeting space. The Leo Hotel Collection is comprised of one hotel with 2,956 rooms and 220,000 square feet of meeting space. The Company also owns and operates an entertainment and event ticket distribution business.

A key part of Alice’s system is its ability to let guests, front-of-house workers, and back-of-house staff communicate and track requests. For instance, a guest request via a text message for, say, more linens, can be conveyed to the right worker using Alice, the company said.

It now processes more than 50,000 requests a week, up from the 10,000-a-week pace it had a year ago. The company anticipates hotels will handle more than two million requests on its platform over the next year.

Alice has more than doubled its count of hotel clients this year.

Expedia’s interest in Alice suggests that the online travel company is curious about possibly providing more back-end software services for the hotels that use it to market and distribute their inventory globally.

Expedia officially began to market a series of new tools for hoteliers that it has been adding to its extranet for suppliers since 2015 under the name Expedia Powered Technology. Tools include help with revenue management and messaging with guests.

There are other hotel tech brands that offer software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions that overlap with what Alice’s platform provides, such as the housekeeping-focused services of Amadeus Hospitality’s HotSOS. Other potential players in the market include Sabre Hospitality Solutions and Oracle Hospitality.

Expedia’s suite of data analytics tools includes a free service that aims to help hotels set their rates to command the most revenue and Expedia’s first meetings-and-events booking tool to help hotels automate requests for proposals — which today is still, largely, a manual process.

Priceline Group has, since 2015, been investing in business services for its hotel partners under the BookingSuite brand. The tools include revenue management software and digital marketing help for a property’s own branded website.

Trivago, the hotel metasearch brand that is backed by Expedia (but operates independently), is also offering hotel services, such as for revenue management and hotel management (like Base7booking).

Winning strategies of key drivers that are helping them consolidate their position in the Event Management Software market.

Trends in the Event Management Software market that are influencing key players’ business strategies.

Key factors that create opportunities in the Event Management Software market at global, regional, and country levels.

Demand-supply scenario of the Event Management Software market.

“ ATO攻击是对任何企业的主要威胁。

在2018年11月，万豪表示，它已经发现了数据泄露的喜达屋预订系统影响5分亿的记录。

ATO attacks are a major threat to any business.

In November 2018, Marriott said it had uncovered a data breach impacting 500 million records in the Starwood reservation system.

Marriott has sent an email to the guests impacted by this breach and has set up a dedicated website with additional information.