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most organizations still don't have any standardized processes or solutions to manage small meetings, the way they do for large events or transient business travel."

many of our clients spent up to 70% of their meetings and events budget on small meetings

aking the search and booking process simple and efficient for meeting organizers

The standard version of the platform, which is ideal for one-off meetings, is free for any meeting organizer to use and allows planners to easily search, compare and instantly book meetings.

Preferred venues and partners can be highlighted within the tool and made to appear at the top of the search results.

a customizable option for large companies looking to automate their meeting booking processes

guests can pay instantly and never have to wait for the waitstaff to bring them a check or to process the payment

Digital menus offer the opportunity to capture survey responses on customer satisfaction.

faithful employees will not be happy about the addition of these digital kiosks. Essentially it is replacing a lot of their duties as a waitor or waitress. 

this means an increased expense of purchasing

l need a team to keep them updated with the most current menu and promotions

As time goes on, jsut lik with a cell phone, the battery is not going to last as long which will cause problems for the guest's experience.

designers must become leaders in finding creative, hygiene-driven solutions with attractive, budget-conscious, non-porous, non-transmitting and sustainable materials for future crises

the guest could experience a physical cleansing with UV-C light (400–470 nanometers (nm), an antimicrobial against numerous bacteria) as well as a metaphoric one, an abstracted feeling of rebirth and joy due to the use of art, music, lighting, and planting.

The UV-C light fixtures that can be programmed to activate when a guestroom, elevator, cab or corridor is unoccupied may soon become standard design practice

As hotel operators navigate the new normal, expect to see innovations in hotel welcome packages. Especially with limited staff, hotels will need to rely on visual cues that indicate and reassure cleanliness.

A brightly-colored seal on the room’s exterior door or towels wrapped in clear wrap to show items have been cleaned and hygienically packaged

next phase of guestroom should integrate separately-zoned HVAC supply and return HVAC systems, which have the ability to immediately evacuate air from infected rooms. To make the guestroom bathrooms ideal for privacy and infection control, restroom exhaust systems should be inspected and made to filter out air continuously.

Guestrooms worldwide are shrinking because space is expensive, which presents a challenge to designers looking to optimize already small spaces in line with social distancing guidelines.

Technological improvements to touchless entry doors, smart HVAC systems, and room lighting will occur, as information will now be imparted to the guest via phone or touchless television system. Smart spaces are not a new trend. In fact, a MarketsandMarkets™ report reveals the global smart home market size is expected to grow from $78.3 billion in 2020 to $135.3 billion by 2025. As more and more consumers rely on smart devices and sensors like Alexa and Google Nest, hotel businesses will need to adapt the same contactless technology solutions to their guestrooms and common spaces.

Elevated experiences to increase joy might include innovations in higher-end materiality, comfort, spa-quality guest baths, interactive workout systems, in-room workout equipment, and elaborate mood lighting systems. In the manner of the guest experience, the hotel needs to remain a peaceful, calm, and safe alternative to the more urgent, chaotic world outside.

Unfortunately, the first generation of beacons had a number of practical integration problems.

Imagine tourists receiving notifications about the nearest landmarks as they travel around London or shoppers seeing a list of a shop’s best offers as they walk past the store. These are the kind of opportunities beacons make possible and there’s a lot of reason to be excited about this technology.

sports brand uses more than 40 beacons across a 41,150 square-feet space in the famous Nanjing East Road shopping district to create a seamless shopping experience. The beacons allow customers to pay for goods using Instant Checkout spaces and collect reserved items from lockers at multiple locations.

In a practical sense, this means developing apps with beacon integration quickly becomes unmanageable and this is one of the most important solutions Google Beacon Platform provides.

As with any kind of marketing strategy, define what your goals are and then determine how you can use the tools at your disposal to achieve them.

The PCI Security Standards Council claims that since March, malicious virus-related reports are up 475%. The reason for the uptick is that cybercriminals are trying to take advantage of rapid changes to the payment-card data environment. In addition, 41% of small businesses have said they’ve suffered breaches costing more than $50,000 to fix.

Contactless payment is one of the big changes within the payment data environment. Several restaurant companies – from chains to independents – are offering it because it reduces customers' physical interaction with the restaurant's POS system. As part of this move, some businesses have eliminated credit-card PIN numbers.

Eliot says malicious email is usually the easiest way for cybercriminals to access your networks. The emails typically show up as urgent requests for sensitive information, often pretending to be from the Small Business Administration or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When the intended victim types in his or her credentials and clicks on a specific link or downloads an attachment, criminals are in.

Anyone looking for easy-to-implement security tips can try these six to start. Reduce areas where payment-card data is stored. The best way to protect against a data breach is to avoid storing any card information at all. With many small operators offering curbside pickup and accepting payment over the phone instead of through face-to-face transactions, it’s important they train employees not to write down payment card details. Instead, have them enter numbers directly into a secure terminal. Use strong passwords. Using weak and default passwords is one of the leading causes of payment data breaches among businesses. Effective passwords must be strong and updated regularly. The most recent guidance is: the longer, the better. Think of it almost as a “passphrase” rather than a password. Use it in the form of a sentence, but mix in different characters within the phrase. It’s much harder to break a long passphrase than it is a short, complex password. Weak and vendor default passwords often result in small business data breaches. Also, don’t repeat your passwords. Update your software often. Criminals look for outdated software to exploit flaws in unpatched systems. Timely installations of security patches are crucial to minimizing the risk of a breach. Whenever updates are available, use them. They will improve performance and close out some of the vulnerabilities cybercriminals are searching for. Enable two-factor authentication. It's so important for restaurateurs, especially where their POS systems or any of their sensitive databases are concerned, to have two-factor or multi-factor authentication enabled. If an instance where credentials are stolen occurs, there will be a second layer of verification the operator can rely on to potentially reduce the chances that information will be breached. Segment your networks. If you are going to store payment data, make sure your POS system has its own separate, secure network. Do not store sensitive documents on public cloud services such as Google Docs or DropBox. If you’re going to store sensitive documents, house them in an encrypted, locked down location.   Be hyper-vigilant. Criminals are going to try to take advantage of this pandemic situation as much as possible. You can protect yourself by not giving out sensitive information, especially within unsolicited emails. Don’t click on links you’re not expecting and do everything in your power to protect all sensitive information.

One of the biggest strengths of a cloud-based hotel management system is that it can be easily connected to other software applications, even if these applications don’t share the same provider.

Employees were given the choice of when to return to work. They were also required to get tested for COVID-19 weekly. 

When vaccines became available, Genuine Concepts held a vaccination event at Ladera Taverna y Cocina and encouraged all employees to get their shot.

Not all of these shots were given to Genuine employees, as the team extended invitations to other local restaurant and bar employees. However, a large percentage of Genuine's employees were vaccinated at the event.

"It's important because if we protect our employees, then it protects their families, our customers and their families, the vendors that go on site to our places and their families," Cramton says. 

There are two components of the puzzle: the booking engine used by hotels, and the actual PMS

Understanding how your hotel accesses and stores guest data is key to understanding their liability in relation to that data

Hosting your hotel's online booking engine comes with an extensive investment into web server technology

work with third parties to host their booking engine off site. However, even if your hotel's data is out of sight, it is a hotel's responsibility to keep their data partners accountable

Request information on the hosting facility’s certifications for GDPR, PCA, SOC 2, and others.

Forming relationships with your network administrator is key because every partnership in this arena is unique

data storage and security for hotels could be mostly automated, or hotels could be expected to manage several processes on their own

No matter how a hotel stores its data, operators will always be liable for securing it on some level.

Partnerships of any kind also do not absolve hotel operators from managing their local network

data services have tenants, like the housing market, and it pays to know if you have neighbors or not. Businesses have the option to invest in either a dedicated or open hosting environment,

Dedicated hosts allow for updates to roll out in coordination with operators’ decisions, keeping it autonomous and allowing for proper scheduling and preparatio

The other option, where multiple businesses share a single server host and single application instance, is a more hands-off proposition

but when an update is rolled out by the host it is done to every company on the shared server environment, whether your property is prepared for it or not. Surprise updates such as these can potentially impact operations, or other aspects of your business.

The hosting environment for your PMS and guests’ data should provide you with confidence through open and clear communication, vendor commitment and choice of options that best suit your specific independent needs

    Improving hotel operations

By effectively training your staff to perform like robots, your service levels will decrease too.

Your front desk staff can comfortably answer guests at the front desk, while the chatbot takes care of online queries from potential guests

This means that both the tasks are being performed simultaneously without the hassle of adding extra stress on your staff.

    Effective revenue management

Moreover, a cloud-based property management system will give you numerous other benefits (hyperlink to our cloud-based PMP article).

Artificial intelligence in the hospitality industry has made it possible for your channel manager to compute complex data to give you the best rate.

    Personalization gets a whole new meaning

While a small hotel might be perfectly satisfied with a Facebook chatbot to drive additional sales, a hotel chain with hundreds of rooms at each hotel will need more than just a chatbot.

  Data analysis

AI technology can be used to quickly and efficiently categorize your guest data as per room preference, budget, amenities your guests use etc to lure them with attractive loyalty programs and offers for their next stay or perhaps even reach out to potential guests.

Multilingual booking experience

These chatbots are programmed to create a simulated conversation through natural language processing (text) and generation (voice) in your guests’ native language; the result being clear and concise interactions between the human and the machine.

Guests will be able to use smartphone apps to program lighting, scent options, sound cancellation, background noise, humidity, temperature, and bed firmness. Other possible features could include guided mindfulness exercises and physical wind-down programs.

Robot Alliance, meanwhile, envisions a deconstructed food and beverage experience in which autonomous robots serve guests wherever they choose to dine or drink inside or outside a hotel

The Outside In, Inside Out concept aims to convert hotel public spaces, such as meeting rooms or areas outside ballrooms, into “outdoor-feeling wonder-spaces where lighting, sounds, air quality, and smells provide the benefits of being outside,

The fourth concept, the Hotel Rover, would be a self-driving adventure vehicle in which one to four guests could work, sleep, socialize, and travel. These would be rented to travelers by individual hotels or brands, replicating their guest room amenities

The right influencer should match both your brand values and the values of your audience, bringing an already-established crowd of relevant consumers to your digital door.

The audience's goal is to use that influencer's experiences to guide and inform them as they choose their next getaway destination - positioning your property as the place to be.

Educate Your Audience

Hotel guests can't get enough of reviews - the more in-depth, the better. An influencer can provide the most detailed content about your brand and the guest experience you offer through high-impact channels utilising video, blogs and photography.

The best influencers are seen by their audience to be unbiased and objective, which puts them in a position of authority and trustworthiness when it comes to purchasing decisions.

People follow influencers and engage with them because they believe they have a wider range of experience to better understand the brand, products and services they are talking about, similar to a professional hotel reviewer.

influencer marketing actively builds trust in your brand.

it's an ongoing challenge for hotels and hospitality marketing departments to keep coming up with something fresh and exciting - something their audience wants to see.

Good professional influencers really shine when it comes to this side of hotel marketing strategies. Not only do they have a deep understanding of what their audience (and therefore your audience) is looking for and what resonates with them, they are also creative specialists in finding fresh and entertaining ways to deliver this content.

leveraging their creative expertise is not only rewarding in terms of results, but helps to avoid critical missteps that can happen in a marketing strategy. You'll get more engagement, avoid the kind of faux pas that can cost you, and drive followers and leads to your website and social pages.

COVID-19 has made social media more powerful than ever before

Instagram, a primary platform for many influencers, saw some of the biggest increase in terms of use, with 2020 projections showing 14% growth - an additional 3 minutes of time per user on the platform per day.

One of the best ways of leveraging these changes in user behaviour work for your hotel marketing strategy is to get an established influencer who understands you brand and already has a relationship with your target audience to work on your campaigns.

Influencer Marketing is the Edge Your Hotel Marketing Strategy Needs

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.

When you enter, a robot velociraptor greets you at the front desk. It then asks you to check-in on a touchscreen. When you get to your room, you’ll unlock the door with face recognition. A robot in the room (named Churi San) controls the heating and lighting, tells you the weather, and more.

he robot in its New York hotel — fondly called Yobot — automatically collects and elvers guests’ luggage.

Cleo and Leo fulfill guests’ needs by delivering whatever they need: an extra towel, a snack, a toothbrush. All in all, they’re a stand-in for when their human counterparts are not available

Target a specific day or time

create a landing page

brand

Involving the community builds long-term brand.

partner with another downtown restaurant for a combo deal

Refer customers to each other and partner with complementary businesses.

Think about how you want your first-time customers to FEEL

loyalty or rewards program, or maybe an exclusive member club

exclusive deals, discounts or events for members

Speak to a specific target audience and make them feel special

target the specific location

advertise to any location you choose.

is when it comes time to do larger upgrades, or migrate systems to new servers, the migration/implementation time could be multiplied 2-10 times just because you haven’t kept your systems up to date.

In situations where you do have a valid good warranty from a recommended vendor, you can often have hardware replaced under warranty by the next business day, minimizing downtime.

Equipment Age – They need to purchase new equipment, since replacement parts aren’t available anymore, and the equipment’s warranty has expired.

Consumer Grade Equipment – Some IT Solution providers, and/or IT staff feel they can build their own servers, or purchase off-the-shelf consumer grade equipment for business use.

Vendor Warranty – We are called in to resolve an issue on a new server environment, but it turns out the equipment just came off warranty after 3 months.

Security and critical updates need to be applied urgently when possible. Upgrades or updates that increase features, functionalities, and correct software flaws are also important, but not as important as security/critical updates.

Hardware should be upgraded when either the equipment is coming off warranty, or when you need to upgrade for performance/capacity reasons.