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Using conferencing platform Hopin, SaaStock can see how long attendees are tuning in for, which talks they’re watching and how many people they’re networking with via the platform’s chat roulette-style function.

Forging digital connections:

The events and social working space had been wildly popular from the get-go, with 275 members and a waiting list of more than 4,000.

Ethel’s now has the opportunity to go international. Since launching four months ago, there are now more than 1,000 digital members, stretching as far as Germany and the Netherlands.

Taking takeaway seriously:

For D&D London, the challenge was to make sure this experience was on par with what customers of hip haunt Bluebird were used to.

In June, the team decided to make the most of this and set up a rotisserie outside the restaurant, creating a sense of theatre and letting the smell waft down the King’s Road.

D&D plans to continue experimenting with at-home dining.

Leveraging live-streaming:

MelodyVR, a US company that creates virtual reality music experiences, has had to rethink how it does business.

MelodyVR launched its newly kitted-out, COVID-secure studio and an events series, dubbed Live From LA, featuring artists such as John Legend, Cypress Hill and Nelly.

Self-isolation stations:

European hospitality brand 25hours Hotels saw occupancy crash from 95 per cent to zero.

could book into a room with high-speed wifi, a work station and complimentary Nespresso coffee.

Marti says the office offering will stay until business is back to normal levels.

(2) Initially, hotels will be in a period of ‘any deal goes’

(3) Hotels will require more financial security upfront

(4) We’ll face supply and demand issues

(1) Event planners will pay more attention to contracts

(6) Focus on revenue generation from value added se

rvices

(7) We’ll see an increase in hybrid events

(8) There will be an increase in local travel

(9) Future hiring will be impacted by how you act now

Things like building websites, increasing event registrations, and email promotion are all made possible thanks to event technology.

While some event tools require manual data entry, others might automatically capture information for you. Some tools might perform competing tasks while other might actually work better together.

consider your business goals

Venue sourcing tools are any event technology program that allows event planners to search, browse, and filter through venue options

There are many tools for finding event venues and spaces but here are some options to consider:

EventUP allows organizers to directly message venue owners. They have a wide selection ranging from corporate event venues to private dinner party spaces.

Your event website is an important digital portal for prospects and attendees to get acquainted with your upcoming affair. Important details, registration and ticketing options, and additional marketing materials are all located here. These tools help you create this important piece of your event puzzle.

Tools for event registration offer users different ways to increase and facilitate attendee conversions. Some event registration tools specialize specifically in event registration but can integrate with other event technologies.

Event agenda tools help attendees learn about, select, customize and navigate their activities during your event.

If you want to drive people to your event, you will need a strong event promotion strategy. It also helps to have the help of event technology that was built just for this purpose.

email list segmentation and social media leveraging that turns attendees into brand ambassadors.

Getting feedback from event stakeholders is made possible with the help of live event surveys and polls.

Software integrations are what ultimately create a seamless workflow for your event planning process. There are three main types: open API integrations, native integrations, and third-party integrations.

s the competition within the event technology industry has grown, so too has the importance of providing easy to use tools for event marketers.

event ROI (51% according to the 2018 Event Marketing Benchmarks and Trends Report). This means that working towards event ROI clarity is a high priority task for many planners.

In addition to increasing labor productivity by 40%, organizers will be able to use artificial intelligence to efficiently allocate and spend their time.

Choose wisely.

Consider market trends

Sort through the noise.

For loyalty a combination of beacons, qr codes, NFC and geofencing may give you best results

How companies use proximity marketing?

Certain use cases for proximity marketing can work without a mobile app. If you are planning to use QR Codes or NFC Tags then you do not need a special mobile app for it.

One of the biggest challenges for operations managers and housekeepers alike is in implementing the new cleaning protocols. Extra time needs to be planned per hotel room to make sure that the right processes are followed, and the correct manpower needs to be available to execute the new protocols adequately for the number of rooms in service.

Some hotels are also deploying cleaning techniques that require rooms to be left for three hours after spraying, others have a policy of allocating 24 hours per room before another guest can be checked in to ensure there is time to fulfill the new procedures.

We found that the average guest departure room cleaning time has increased by around 11% overall. In fact, over half of the hotels we spoke to report an increase in minutes spent cleaning each room of at least 15% or more. Ivaylo Ivanov, senior vice president of hotel operations for Okada Manila, estimates that at his 5-star resort, an additional 25% to 30% time is required to clean each room.

Expense control pressures are increasing as the costs of these operations continue to spiral with hotels having to outlay hundreds of thousands of dollars on new cleaning products and protective equipment.

With supplementary costs like these to balance against occupancy rates of 20% on average, hotels have to find sophisticated ways to save on costs that won’t compromise the all‐important guest experience.

We expected hotels to turn to a reduction in stayover cleans as a key way to balance out the additional time spent cleaning check-out stays. However, our survey found that only 12% of the hotels we have spoken to have actually gone down this route.

As a five‐star resort where guests know to expect exemplary service, Ivaylo at the Okada resort just simply does not feel this option is open to them as standard (although, if guests request it, that would of course be accommodated). Indeed, where guests do want stayover cleans, the hotels we surveyed found that cleaning time significantly increases by around 35%.

When all the strings of the current environment for operations staff are pulled together, it is easy to see that not only have their jobs fundamentally shifted but that there is a huge amount expected of them. Technology has played a vital role in helping teams to communicate and operate during the lockdown, and it will be even more essential to equip teams with the right tools in this next stage so that hotel operations can be optimized to the maximum and these key members of the team are properly supported.Now is the time to assess each process to gain a full picture of exactly what labor and time is needed to continue to operate at the level guests expect whilst adapting to the regulations of the new normal. Any investment made now to support this essential part of any hotel will pay dividends in terms of lowering staff turnover and increasing guest satisfaction as well as realizing business-critical cost savings.

these systems are also called Human Capital Management systems, or HCM. In this article, we will use the terms HRIS and HRIS systems interchangeably.

keeps track of changes to anything related to employees

ability to offer self-service HR to employees and managers.

This includes material for the identification for employees in case of theft, fraud, or other misbehaviors, first contact information in case of accidents, citizens identification information for the tax

one plac

the tracking of data required to advance the HR and business strategy. Depending on the priorities of the organization, different data will be essential to track. This is where the HRIS comes in.

Record-keeping

time and attendance data from employees

Payroll automates the pay process of employee

is benefits management

This software handles all the company’s recruiting needs. It tracks candidate information and resumes,

allows HR to track qualification, certification, and skills of the employees, as well as an outline of available courses for company employees. This module is often referred to as an LMS, or Learning Management System, when it’s a stand-alone

talent pipeline and having replacements available

having employees and their direct supervisors manage their own data

involves the analysis of this data for better-informed decision making. We’ll explain more about this in the section below.

databases that record a company’s transactions. An example of a transaction is when an employee joins the company.

It includes modules on talent management, workforce rewards, workforce management, and work-life solutions.

They simply haven’t been designed for this. In addition, not all HRIS systems have all the above functionalities build-in.

as it means that data is dispersed into multiple systems. In order to report data, a new layer needs to be added on top of all HR systems to report and analyze the HR data.

These include Workday, Oracle, SAP, ADP, Ceridian, Kronos, and more. Listing all the HRIS suppliers would be impossible, so we decided to explicitly mention the four HCMs that are considered to be leaders.

they offer different suites including recruiting, learning, performance management, and an e-learning LMS.

Workday is arguably one of the best-known HRIS out there

These are systems that keep track of a company’s resources, which include among other things financial assets, orders, and people. In 2011, SAP acquired SuccessFactors,

. They are

HR, payroll, and talent management. Systems include time and attendance, onboarding, performance management, compensation, succession

on-the-job training to HR professionals in the use of the system. This function is usually in the IT arm of the HR department.

provides support for the HRIS. This includes researching and resolving HRIS problems and being a liaison with other parts of the business, like finance/payroll.

This means improving the employee experience in using the systems, coming up with user-friendly innovations, and implementing new policies to be reflected in the system.

IT is useful to understand the intricacies of the system while HRM helps to understand the processes that the HRIS is supporting.

the specific demands of the different stakeholders inside the company are inquired about.

you choose an implementation partner,

Here the functional and technical requirements for infrastructure,

a core test team is created.

communication plans need to be created, and Frequently Asked Question and other support documents created to benefit the software implementation and uptake.

the system can Go-Live. Feedback needs to be constantly collected and training material updated with the evolving systems. Cons

virtual hotel tours.

Interactive elements within hotel rooms can also improve the guest experience.

This helps them to plan their daily itineraries and provides incentives for them to book at your hotel.  

AR and VR offer huge potential within the hospitality industry.

despite resistance from many properties to invest in new technology, we see an increasing amount of guest journey applications coming to the market, from digital check-in/check-out to marketing/upselling solutions.

it was very difficult to really produce an ROI as it related to travel and hospitality. 

Augmented reality requires a “wearable”, which is a major barrier to adoption, even after Facebook's acquisition of Oculus and significant price drops. 

Did the industry want a technology that further distances them from the customer? While that today may be needed during COVID, at what point does “hospitality” and personal communication become relegated to the technology? 

Here in Las Vegas, the footprint of integrated resorts ensures that wayfinding is a very important facility to move the guest from location to location. The volume and frequency of entertainment and dining options also mean that static wayfinding even when well thought out does leave room for improvement. 

In another thoughtful application, property in Las Vegas is combining art and augmented reality to provide a guest room with a 'view' where the physical realities of the actual room may not provide such a facility. In this case, an artistic overlay is applied against a static art piece. The outcome is focused on guest engagement, entertainment, and a point of difference. Although it is the same technology used that could provide reference information.

The pandemic propels the hospitality industry to innovate and offer new and exciting ways for guests' experience. As the industry seeks to upsell, enhance their guest experience and service offerings to stimulate demands, AR becomes an extremely valuable hotel technology during this recovery period. Augmented Reality technology can help solve the hotel industry's challenge in enhancing the physical environment and guest experiences without the costly and physical disruptions to their operations and facilities. With digital transformation and improving operational standards being the go-to recovery plan for the industry, AR could easily disrupt and transform the hotel industry around the world.

Technology has enabled waste management to ensure environmental and human health protection while at the same time handling complex materials, increasing recycling, producing energy and virtually eliminating landfills in some countries.

Robotics are already widely present in sorting material facilities

The internet allows continuous real-time tracking of waste across countries

Hydraulic collection systems are increasingly being introduced in new buildings to avoid bins on the road.

Plant management, emission monitoring, chemical/biological parameters within plants

These new technologies are creating vast amounts of data. The data allows us to understand the movement not just of waste but of people – how they behave and what products and materials they are buying and will turn into waste.

predict the future and plan waste collection, the location of bins on the streets, the amount of plant we need, with some anticipation.

It also allows producers of waste to intervene to reduce their waste outputs

Add to this the use of artificial intelligence and blockchain computing – technologies that allow the multiplication of the access and transmission of intelligence and its automation. How does this work in practice?

First, data collection will be faster and simpler; then automated trend and performance analysis allows the user to see anomalies immediately; finally, this informs employee behaviour and decisions and allows immediate corrective actions.

Others go belly up, leaving behind millions of pounds of old gadgets piled in mountainous heaps atop land which has lead levels many times normal.

You’re probably not screaming into a paper bag about the $20 billion or so of gold that’s trashed in electronics every year worldwide. Precious metals come and go. But if you care about the soil that comprises the land of the brave, you should start thinking about what happened to last year’s smartphone (even if it’s just sitting in the garage).

This list of reasons isn’t exhaustive, but serves as a solid starting point for understanding the United States’ e-waste dilemma and what can be done.

U.S. e-waste recycling laws are often outdated or nonexistent

Only 25 states (plus Washington, D.C.) have legislation that addresses e-waste recycling. The other 25 don’t have comprehensive programs, and don’t report what happens to the electronics beyond occasional voluntary numbers, says Jason Linnell, head of the National Center for Electronics Recycling (NCER). Federal laws don’t explicitly address e-waste recycling.

The U.S. isn’t good at recycling

The current level and effectiveness of e-waste recycling depends on which state you live in and whether or not you trust locals to “do the right thing.” The hope for improvement sits with congressional reps, state lawmakers, manufacturers, and gadget freaks (yes, you).

Single-stream recycling hasn’t helped

Between 2005 and 2014, single stream recycling programs increased from 29 to 80 percent in American towns and cities. During that same time period, material contamination rates increased from 7 to 25 percent.

E-waste legislation regularly disappears in Congress

This is not the first Congressional session in which similar bills have been introduced and allowed to die like a first grade classroom goldfish on summer break. SEERA currently sits with the house’s Foreign Affairs Committee. Why is it so tough to pass e-waste legislation?

The U.S. is an environmental rogue

As of late 2018, 186 states and the European Union have ratified it and follow its legal framework. The United States has signed the Basel Convention, indicating an intent to ratify, but is the only developed nation that hasn’t actually done so, which

After the initial Basel Convention was adopted in 1989, many organizations said the treaty didn’t do enough to address the disposal of waste from first world countries into the developing world, and pressed for an update, which eventually became 1995’s Basel Ban Amendment. The tweak — which was attacked by many industrial powers, including the U.S., Canada, and Japan — needed three decades before it was accepted by enough countries to go into effect. In August 2019, Croatia became the 97th country to ratify it, which transformed the updated stipulations into international law in December 2019.

EPA regulations are incomplete

Federal attempts at regulation have stalled, been killed

U.S. pushes back against international efforts

As a part of the 2003 Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE Directive), the public was guaranteed free recycling services, and conveniently located collection centers. Around the same time, the EU also passed the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS), aka the “lead-free directive,” which restricts the use of several toxic materials in the manufacture of circuitry and electronic products.

In Japan, the Association for Electric Home Appliances requires consumers to help pay for the processing of their goods and manufacturers to set up recycling programs. Electronics recycling has been promoted as such a point of national pride — because Japan is both a huge consumer of gadgets and the country has few indigenous precious metals — that there’s serious talk of making the 2020 Tokyo Olympic metals out of recycled materials. An estimated 80,000 cell phones need to be pulled apart and picked over to complete the plan.

State-level e-cycling programs are uneven

Certified e-cycling programs are important, but also confusing

If you’re the compliance officer who has to make sure the company’s used servers don’t wind up getting tossed in an Indonesian landfill, and you won’t have to nervously answer questions in a “60 Minutes” exposé, you probably want to get that e-waste removed by a disposal team with one of these

That all sounds great until you listen to Puckett, who helped create the e-Stewards protocols. He’s one of several people who took part in the development of R2 for over two years and then refused to continue when the proposed guidelines seemed to be too tainted by lobbyists, including ones at the Institute of Scrap Recycling (ISRI), an organization that favors a free market approach over regulation. Puckett and 13 recyclers created e-Stewards, which describes itself as the “the cleanest, most globally responsible standard for e-waste recycling.” He points out that the R2 certification still allows recyclers to export to developing countries. E-Stewards’ doesn’t. R2 recyclers can drop toxic e-waste in landfills or incinerators in the event of “circumstances beyond their

Scrap recycling lobby doesn’t like regulations

The announcer proudly explains e-cycling is a vibrant industry that adds 20.6 billion to the U.S. economy and supports 45,000 jobs domestically, “safeguarding our environment,” along the way.

Can anything be done? Possibly

Recycling isn’t the only answer for fewer landfills filled with decaying circuits. Chris Wellise, Chief Sustainability Officer for Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), which installs and recovers tech, emphasizes the importance of designing products for longevity, disassembly, and reuse.

“On average, 85 percent of the environmental impacts can be addressed in the design phase,” estimates Wellise.

Similar challenges exist for smartphones. Review IFixit’s guide for repairability and you can expect the phones that are easy to disassemble are also easier to refurbish or scrap. In an unusual display of transparency, eco-minded electronics company Fairphone sells spare parts on its site and has visual cues printed on the pieces to help novices figure out where everything goes. In case you’re wondering, it’s possible to make a Fairphone work in America, but most of the company’s sales are in Europe.

In 2018, Apple gave birth to Daisy, a robot that can disassemble 200 of the company’s phones in an hour — 1.2 million a year. The company has an installation of the machine in Austin, Texas, and another in the Netherlands. Daisy’s supply chain of used products comes from the company’s in-store trade-in program and a partnership with Best Buy.

Pretty awe-inspiring, right? Keep in mind that Apple sold over 217 million phones just in 2018 and has moved 2.2 billion iPhone units since the product line launched in 2007. The two Daisy divisions aren’t even working at capacity. Apple is willing to license the robot technology so any company can use it to disassemble phones, but none have approached them yet.

Many crimes committed in a certain area of Chongqing were committed by non-residents, so facial recognition cameras were seen as a way to combat this.

But critics warn such widespread surveillance violates internationally guaranteed rights to privacy. To meet international privacy standards enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both collection and use of biometric data should be limited to people found to be involved in wrongdoing, and not broad populations who have no specific link to crime. Individuals should have the right to know what biometric data the government holds on them. China’s automated facial recognition systems violate those standards.

“These systems are being developed and implemented without meaningful privacy protections against state surveillance. The depth, breadth and intrusiveness of the Chinese government’s mass surveillance on its citizens may be unprecedented in modern history.”

Cities elsewhere may not be too far behind China’s mass surveillance.

media access control address of users’ smartphone devices, a request sent when a device is searching for a wifi connection, to track their travel journeys precisely. It was only after the media raised awareness of the project that TfL widely informed its passengers.

“With the rise of things like facial recognition, that is why we need new legislation that decides what is in the public’s interest and the legal structure within which they can be used. We shouldn’t drift there by accident.”

And part of that is building trust with the community based on good community information, not on Big Brother technology.”

Since then, two more Californian cities, Oakland and Berkeley, have also passed bans on all government use of facial recognition technology. Somerville, Massachusetts, passed a similar law this summer.

Some people support facial recognition on the basis that technology has always driven change and is a force for good if used responsibly and proportionately.

Omanovic argues that live facial recognition fundamentally threatens free societies. “It might start with the monitoring of just a few thousand people but it definitely won’t end there,” says Omanovic. “Authorities need to permanently ban its roll out now before it’s too late.”

“Singapore has plans to install 100,000 facial-recognition cameras on lampposts, Chicago police have asked for 30,000 more, and Moscow intends to have 174,000 by the end of this year.”

The law required that all checked bags be screened, cockpit doors be reinforced, and more federal air marshals be put on flights.

Things that clearly could be wielded as weapons, like the box-cutters used by the 9/11 hijackers, were banned. After “shoe bomber” Richard Reid’s attempt to take down a flight from Paris to Miami in late 2001, footwear started coming off at security checkpoints.

Clear, which recently went public, plans to use PreCheck enrollment to boost membership in its own identity-verification product by bundling the two offerings

The long lines created by post-attack measures gave rise to the PreCheck and Global Entry “trusted-traveler programs” in which people who pay a fee and provide certain information about themselves pass through checkpoints without removing shoes and jackets or taking laptops out of their bag.

, PreCheck asks people about basic information like work history and where they have lived, and they give a fingerprint and agree to a criminal-records check.

Privacy advocates are particularly concerned about ideas that TSA has floated to also examine social media postings (the agency’s top official says that has been dropped), press reports about people, location data and information from data brokers including how applicants spend their money.

Each new requirement seemed to make checkpoint lines longer, forcing passengers to arrive at the airport earlier if they wanted to make their flights.

The TSA is testing the use of kiosks equipped with facial-recognition technology to check photo IDs and boarding passes rather than having an officer do it.

co

“TSA is an effective deterrent against most attacks,”

This summer, an average of nearly 2 million people per day have flowed through TSA checkpoints.

“They are there for my security. They aren’t there to hassle me,” Gathings said of TSA screeners and airport police.

Those incidents highlight a threat that TSA needs to worry about — people who work for airlines or airports and have security clearance that lets them avoid regular screening.

“All those folks that have a (security) badge, you’re right, many do have unescorted access throughout an airport, but they also go through a very rigorous vetting process before they are even hired,”

We needed a cost-effective, low-upkeep system that is lightweight enough to provide the same responsiveness to island resorts in Asia, as it does to city hotels in Europe for example

“We also wanted a solution that could provide enhanced guest recognition. Our company’s vision is to create Natural Enjoyment for our guests and partners around the world. In Opera cloud, we found a system that ultimately benefits our guests—through recognition and improved operations.”

provide critical business intelligence insights to marketing and revenue management teams that drive decision making from the center and at property level.

xpanding its presence in the cloud will enable Wyndham to focus on growing its core hotel franchise business—seamlessly integrating new properties into its network—while leveraging AWS’s proven global infrastructure to help meet demand where it arises post-pandemic during the peak summer travel season. 

For example, Wyndham will use AWS machine learning to help optimize over 90,000 daily rate changes across its approximately 9,000 hotels to help maximize occupancy rates that vary according to factors such as location, weather, and time of year.

In addition, Wyndham will use AWS to develop new digital services for guests to automate check-in and leverage AWS partners to deliver customized offers during hotel stays, such as recommendations on local attractions, restaurants, and entertainment. 

Looking ahead, Wyndham will use AWS to remain agile and adapt to rapidly changing guest and market needs with plans to use AWS machine learning to drive demand with greater personalization and more timely and relevant guest offers.

“By moving the majority of our workloads to the cloud, Wyndham was able to rapidly respond to the changing business conditions brought on by COVID-19, and now we’re positioned to scale our operations as different parts of the world begin to reopen.

“The hotel industry has faced a series of rapid changes recently, yet by running on AWS Wyndham gains the insights and agility it needs to support its franchisees, transform its customer engagement, service, and business models, and remain an industry leader,”

What is a hotel concierge software?In brief, a hotel concierge software is a digital platform that allows the efficient organization of daily operations, planning, collaboration, and booking of experiences for concierges.In other words, it empowers concierge teams toHave better collaborationReduce downtimeMonitor the performance of your hotel’s experiencesMake bookings without the need for physical presence by the guest

But in the last few weeks, airlines have reported a steep drop in demand and an increase in reservation cancellations.

The average domestic round-trip flight costs $260, down from $290 at the end of August

The average round-trip price of a flight to Europe from the U.S. is $565, down from $665

In its own Sept. 9 investor update, Delta Air Lines said “initial revenue expectations were predicated on an acceleration of business travel through the September quarter. The pace of business travel recovery has paused as companies delay or scale down initial office reopening.”

“Most airlines have said Thanksgiving and Christmas and year-end holidays remain solid,” Unnikrishnan said. “So far, people are not canceling their holiday plans.”

Domestic round-trip airfares around Thanksgiving are priced at an average of $300, up 23% from 2020 ($245) but down 11% from the pre-pandemic 2019 fares ($335), according to Hopper. The average domestic round-trip airfares for travel around Christmas are $430, up 71% from 2020 ($250) and up 10% from 2019 ($390).