http://lodgingmagazine.com/study-2017-a-record-year-for-gds-hotel-bookings/

In 2017, a study done by TravelClick and Phoenix Marketing International of nine-hundred travel agents in fifty-two countries reported a record use of global distribution systems to make hotel reservations, citing that booking growth exceeded sixty-eight million reservations (two million more than 2016). Amongst various trends found that support GDS usage-growth, GDS hotel bookings and ADR's generated through travel agents were on the rise. Rate parity was a topic of choice in that most travel agents felt that GDS's should offer it, sustaining constant rates for an identical product. The study also mentions how amenities are becoming increasingly relevant in regard to travel agent's booking behaviors, favoring amenities such as swimming pools, free parking, airport shuttles or transfer, hotel gyms, and early check-in/check-out. The article concludes with a statement explaining how alternative lodging did not seem to be having a great impact on the GDS, even though there had been quite an upsurge in that particular industry.

http://lodgingmagazine.com/study-shows-40-percent-of-large-businesses-to-adopt-ai-chatbots-or-assistants-by-2019/

Intelligent assistants and AI chatbots have begun to take over customer service in all forms of businesses. Spiceworks' recently released a survey result and analyses on businesses adopting and using these virtual assistants. According to their results, within the next year roughly 40 percent of businesses with more than 500 employees will adopt at least one intelligent assistant or AI chatbot. Smaller businesses are less expected to adopt these virtual assistants, but roughly a quarter of them still will.
The most common virtual assistants are Microsoft's Cortana and Apple's Siri. Most prevalent usage is for voice to text dictation, support team collaboration, and employee calendar management. Less than 15 percent of the companies surveyed used AI chatbots and assistants for customer service or IT help.
Spiceworks also looked at why companies have not implemented these forms of technology. Half of the respondents indicated there was no use in their workplace. Less than a third were too scared of the security and privacy uncertainties. Only a quarter held out due to cost. Shockingly, a majority of the people did not feel that AI chatbots and assistants will put their jobs at risk. Spiceworks' senior technology analyst said AI is rapidly advancing and integrating therefore companies should be preparing to handle this technology soon. Unfortunately, most of the IT professionals surveyed lacked confidence in their organization's abilities to implement and sustain AI technology.

http://lodgingmagazine.com/streamlining-maintenance-across-hotel-portfolio/

In this article, the author focuses on how to streamline maintenance in hotels via a hotel management software by Quore. Quore's software enables hotel engineers to work with the maintenance staff through any cloud-based mobile device, such as an Ipad or Iphone. The mobile device allows the staff to inspect and document problems while simultaneously putting in work orders and recommendations to fix issues. Not only does the program track problems and maintain accountability with the individual hotel's staff, it can also analyze this data to shows trends and provide an overview of major issues as well as employee performance. In addition, the system also features a preventative maintenance schedule to ensure periodical inspections are done at appropriate intervals thus improving the lifetime of the hotel equipment. A report is generated and can be sent to the general manager daily and corporate weekly to allow everyone to monitor the status of the hotel from the room-level issues all the way to the quality of maintenance of the entire hotel. This is an effective method to monitor the status of multiple hotels at once, perfect for any small management company.