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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Carolina Ferrer

Carolina Ferrer

How Technology Is Upending the Meetings Industry - Skift - 1 views

  • The discussion revolving around event technology in destination meetings has exploded in the last year among hotels and tourism bureaus trying to come to grips with the exponential growth in demand for event tech and the onslaught of new tech providers.
  • many travel suppliers are adapting quickly to the need for more fluid and dynamic meeting design integrating new forms of technology and digital communications at every level.
  • “These technologies provide planners with greater opportunities to increase engagement and generate and capture real-time feedback, while attendees can gain a richer and more connected experience throughout the event life cycle,” said Issa Jouaneh, VP and general manager of American Express Meetings & Events
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  • An event app is basically like a dedicated social network and appointment calendar for the community of participants at a specific meeting. They can be as simple or as complex as a meeting planner wishes, with pricing to develop them ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands of dollars.
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    This article goes into great detail about how technology is growing within the hotel and tourism industry. The VP of American Express Meeting and Events states that new technologies are providing event planners with much more opportunities to increase participant engagement, obtain feedback and get more connected. The article also dives into the fact that event planners notice that new technology may be a distraction to people who are not accustomed to it. A fun fact I found about this article that event mobile applications can be customized to range up to thousands of dollars to develop and maintain. It seems that meeting applications are working well with larger events as opposed to smaller sized meetings.
Carolina Ferrer

Marketing Success of Paris Hotel du Collectionneur Highlights Flip.to's Global Appeal - 0 views

  • Hotel du Collectionneur in Paris faced a big challenge - it became the largest independent hotel in Paris at 408 rooms when it parted ways with Hilton.
  • "Flip.to helped us accomplish both things. First, they enticed thousands of unique visitors to the hotel's website through 72,000 guest connections. Secondly, they increased the brand awareness of the hotel on social networks thanks to their sharing platform.
  • Flip.to is the brand advocate platform that helps hotels boost brand awareness and earn new guests with the help of their most trusted, untapped marketing juggernaut - their current guests. Right at the point of booking, guests share with their connections about their upcoming trip, driving new visitors back to a uniquely personalized hotel website experience.
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    Hotel du Collectionneur in Paris broke away from the Hilton chain in 2013 and became the largest independent hotel in the city. Without the Hilton brand, the property needed help creating brand loyalty and foot traffic. The property's marketing department teamed up with a company called "Flip.to". This company was to help bring in newer people to their website and target a new group of customers. Flip.to used e-marketing to enhance the hotel's website traffic and create brand awareness on social media. Additionally, by increasing website traffic the property saw an increase in direct bookings. We can see the benefits of using a company like Flip.to to increase profits and create awareness. If we look at this from the perspective of a large chain hotel, they have the resources to market their properties through their corporations. We can see that Hotel du Collectionneur had to go in this direction of hiring a third party company to meet their goals and they can see if paying off today.
Carolina Ferrer

Restaurants adopt mobile apps for ordering, payment | Technology content from Nation's ... - 0 views

  • With the growing number of smartphone mobile ordering and payment applications, restaurant information technology divisions have gone from a cost center serving brands’ operations to a crucial part of the revenue stream.
  • With the growing number of smartphone mobile ordering and payment applications, restaurant information technology divisions have gone from a cost center serving brands’ operations to a crucial part of the revenue stream.
  • With the growing number of smartphone mobile ordering and payment applications, restaurant information technology divisions have gone from a cost center serving brands’ operations to a crucial part of the revenue stream.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • With the growing number of smartphone mobile ordering and payment applications, restaurant information technology divisions have gone from a cost center serving brands’ operations to a crucial part of the revenue stream.
  • With the growing number of smartphone mobile ordering and payment applications, restaurant information technology divisions have gone from a cost center serving brands’ operations to a crucial part of the revenue stream.
  • With the growing number of smartphone mobile ordering and payment applications, restaurant information technology divisions have gone from a cost center serving brands’ operations to a crucial part of the revenue stream.
  • With the growing number of smartphone mobile ordering and payment applications, restaurant information technology divisions have gone from a cost center serving brands’ operations to a crucial part of the revenue stream.
  • With the growing number of smartphone mobile ordering and payment applications, restaurant information technology divisions have gone from a cost center serving brands’ operations to a crucial part of the revenue stream.
  • With the growing number of smartphone mobile ordering and payment applications, restaurant information technology divisions have gone from a cost center serving brands’ operations to a crucial part of the revenue stream.
  • With the growing number of smartphone mobile ordering and payment applications, restaurant information technology divisions have gone from a cost center serving brands’ operations to a crucial part of the revenue stream.
  • With the growing number of smartphone mobile ordering and payment applications, restaurant information technology divisions have gone from a cost center serving brands’ operations to a crucial part of the revenue stream.
  • With the growing number of smartphone mobile ordering and payment applications, restaurant information technology divisions have gone from a cost center serving brands’ operations to a crucial part of the revenue stream.
  • Customers are more frequently demanding a connection to a brand on their smartphones, and restaurants are considering an increasing number of technology options to meet those demands
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    Information technology serves a big party in keeping up with the latest trends especially in the restaurant sector of the hospitality industry. Restaurants owners have seen an increase in revenue from partnering with application developers to create online ordering applications for mobile devices. Consumer data collected from these mobile applications for online ordering most be processed properly especially if employees are in the mix. Companies must ensure that their property management system integrates efficiently and properly with the application that is being developed to ensure proper completion of orders.
Carolina Ferrer

If Expedia Was Too Powerful for Hotels, Consider Booking.com's Plans - Skift - 0 views

  • Fresh off its acquisitions of Buuteeq, Hotel Ninjas, and OpenTable this year, the Priceline Group is in the process of integrating Hotel Ninjas’ property management system with hotel digital marketing company Buuteeq, according to a report,  Google’s Travel Plans in a Post-Atomic Era [embedded below], written by Ken Sena of Evercore. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display("div-gpt-ad-1390432568424-0"); }); With the integration of the two cloud-based systems for hotels, the Priceline Group “has the ability to handle property management, channel and rate management, and CRM, all of key consideration to hotelier,” the Evercore report states. “In return, Priceline receives subscription revenues on some of the services provided in addition to keeping these hoteliers’ semi-tethered to its Priceline traffic channel from the standpoint of ease an efficiency, given Priceline’s leading scale as an OTA.”
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    Recently, the Priceline Group has acquired Buuteeq, Hotel Ninjas and Open Table. They are looking to merge Hotel Ninjas' web based PMS with Buuteeq's digital marketing software. Integrating both of these programs would mean that Priceline would be able to offer hoteliers a well-rounded system that could keep track of customer folios and housekeeping processes through cloud based web interface. The Priceline Group has plans to integrate their two cloud-based systems for hotels. Many properties are concerned with the security that Priceline may have in place and they do not want their information getting out to competitors. While the new processes that Priceline Group is offering seem very worthwhile and efficient many properties may buy into it and ignore the security concerns. One of the main considerations of this new venture is that Hotel Ninjas is a young company and the Priceline Group does not have much experience on this end of the industry. These changes could start a fast growing trend with the way online travel agencies and properties are communicating and doing business.
Carolina Ferrer

Amadeus steps up efforts to enable personalized travel experiences - Runway GirlRunway ... - 0 views

  • Amadeus also found that 26% of travelers are more likely to respond to messages tailored to their personal interests, and 22% are more likely to respond to promotions that are specific to their location.
  • Merchandising is about providing customers with a shopping experience that presents products in the best possible light, at the best possible time, and allows them to tailor their travel experience. In the past, GDSs have faced criticism from airlines and other industry stakeholders for not always being able to accommodate this philosophy
  • Fast forward to today, and Amadeus is working hard to change this perception by providing tools to travel agents that allow the passenger experience to be personalized. In addition to making ancillary services available to travel agents at the point-of-sale, they can now access and book even more enriched content through ‘airline fare families’.
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    Amadeus is working with travel agents to ensure their clients get the most personalized experience possible while booking their vacations especially, airfare. After a study done by Amadeus with Frost & Sullivan, the found that many travelers would respond to messages that they can relate with their interests. Also, they found out that travelers would respond to offers related to their locations. The article summarizes that GDS were not providing the most conclusive and personal content to travel agencies. Amadeus has developed 'fare families' for airlines. These fare families are able to combine options and services that appeal to consumers and give travel agents the ability prepare targeted offers with the GDS in place. Additionally, using consumer relationship management data, like spending patterns and social media, will lead to better customer response. Travel agents rely a great deal on global distribution systems. Amadeus is going in the right direction in giving travel agents the proper tools to succeed in a market that is increasingly booking directly with suppliers. This new personalized offers that Amadeus is bringing to the table may actually give travel agents an advantage over the competition.
Carolina Ferrer

Hyatt Unveils New 2020 Environmental Sustainability Strategy - 1 views

  • an aggressive set of environmental goals for the year 2020, all designed to strengthen Hyatt's collective ability to collaborate, inspire and further its commitment to environmental stewardship. Hyatt, which is already an industry leader for tracking comprehensive global energy and water data since 2006, is significantly expanding the scope of its existing sustainability initiatives and will continue to focus strongly on measuring and reporting progress.
  • The conservation efforts undertaken by Hyatt hotels around the world since formalizing our approach several years ago have had a real impact, resulting in major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and water and energy usage by property across our portfolio," said Brigitta Witt, Vice President of Corporate Responsibility for Hyatt. "With five years and significant momentum under our belt, we saw the opportunity to further our commitment to environmental stewardship in a manner that fundamentally touches every aspect of our business, from the way our hotels are built and operated, to the way we collaborate with our global supply chain, to the way we influence change through the passion and commitment of our colleagues around the world."
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    Hyatt Hotels Corporation has been in the green initiative game for over five years now. Hyatt plans to set higher goals to benefit the environment by 2020. They have set up three focus areas which are done by each sole property. Firstly, they have goals regarding the consumption of less water, less waste and opportunities to recycle. Additionally, corporate sets goals for individual properties to follow. Secondly, Hyatt wants to make sure that they are building environmentally conscious hotels that are efficient. They will start new construction in 2015 and continue with renovations. They hope for every property to reach LEED certification. Thirdly, Hyatt wants to innovate and inspire, they want to create awareness about environmental sustainability and the benefits to society it can have. Hyatt hopes to create waves in the hospitality industry and at the rate they are going they should be seeing success in the future. Hyatt is definitely going in the right direction when it comes to green initiatives. Setting goals and reporting deadlines will help Hyatt and there large number of properties reach the goals they have in place for a more sustainable future.
Carolina Ferrer

Handling Reservations Calls Effectively | Hotel Industry Magazine - 1 views

  • So a good starting point is to quantify how many calls are actually being handled on the front desk and more importantly how many are being lost due to under-staffing, poor training and/or non-existent technology.
  • What then are the guiding principles when establishing a successful reservations function?
  • Technology which supports – rather than prevents – sales may seem an obvious starter for 10 but the reality is that again most hotels are at best challenged by IT due to under-investment.
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    From answering incoming phone calls, checking out guests, taking payments, and processing reports for management, a front desk agent can't do it all. Today, many hotels can come to the conclusion that a high number of guests are booking through online channels, but they cannot lose sight of to business that can be made over the phone. If hotels do not accommodate to guests calling in, it may lead to lack of trust from potential and loyal guests. In order to solve this issue, Collins refers to a mantra: hotels must need to recognize that what get measured, gets managed. This can be done by measuring how many calls are actually being handled and measuring those that are being ignored by a front desk agent on a typical day. When calls get ignored or are rushed, any investment that a hotel put into advertising or content production could turn up to be a loss. If incoming calls aren't being measured now, eventually hotels will be in for a rude awakening. Collins mentions that technology can help solve this issue, but most hotels find it difficult to handle scenarios with IT due to a lack of investment. Collins stresses how important it is to have the appropriate software and hardware for employees to perform at their best for the hotel to reach it's goals. In order to better navigate and keep track of call volume, Collins states that the PMS provider may not be able to accommodate a hotels request; therefore, hotels may need to invest in additional hardware and software. In addition to this, hotels may need to find an additional information technology partner to help reach their monitoring and service needs. In my opinion, although smaller hotels may have an issue with having to invest in sufficient hardware and software, the benefits would lead to better business practices and a more efficient front desk staff. The benefits of a more efficient front desk are endless, especially when it comes to effective multi-tasting and creating memorable customer relationships
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