COSI,DialogShift, apaleo win! — Photo by apaleo GmbH

FRANKFURT - The first in-person award ceremony post-lockdown was recently held with apaleo winning second place for "Best Travel Technology" at the Travel Industry Club Award Night 2020. We proudly accept, especially because we are in good company alongside COSI and DialogShift, who both won first place in their respective categories.

COSI is bringing serviced apartments into the future by driving technological disruption in the entire industry. COSI set new industry standards in terms of new technologies and has built a range of in-house solutions on top of apaleo core, our name for the only API-first open software platform. With a range of custom in-house solutions for digital access, a housekeeping app, or dynamic pricing, COSI is one of our most innovative customers to date. Their secret is that they've realized early on that having a team of developers is the key to success in today's market, which is why COSI experiences occupancy rates of upwards of 80%, even 90%, in today's tumultuous times.

"A win for COSI feels like a win for us. Our aim is to empower our partners with the freedom to create, and what COSI has accomplished is making waves in the industry and they deserve all the recognition for it," says Uli Pillau, CEO and co-founder of apaleo.

"We are delighted to receive the recognition of the Travel Industry Club's jury, one of the leading think tanks in the travel ecosystem," says Gerhard Maringer, CTO & Co-founder at COSI. "We believe that state-of-the-art technology is the best path forward to building the best guest and operator experience. Scalability, automation, intelligent yield management, and an in-house operating system significantly reduce operating costs for us."

DialogShift, the AI chatbot that beat apaleo for the first-place spot, deserves this win. Digital guest-facing technology is crucial for the survival of the hotel industry. Instead of approaching the content within the messaging system from a hotel's perspective, DialogShift takes on the perspective of the traveler to create the most relevant content. As another source of pride, apaleo and DialogShift are already collaborating on a joint integration that will automatically connect guest information between the two systems.

"There are no hard feelings when you come in second place to one of the products that is already developing a connection to the apaleo platform," says Uli Pillau. "In fact, it reinforces our mission to be the platform that is incredibly easy to connect to without any ulterior motives. At apaleo, we believe in collaboration over competition."

"Improving communication is the core of our business and receiving the recognition from the Travel Industry Club reaffirms that DialogShift is creating real value for the industry. Additionally, the opportunity to network again in person, post-lockdown is a reminder that we are not alone in facing all these challenges alone and that we can all benefit to learn from each other." Says Olga Heuser, CEO and Co-founder at DialogShift.

The one clear winner of the award night is technology. Historically, others in the travel industry are slow to recognize the opportunity of tech innovations out of the fear of losing the human touch in the service industry. The question of incorporating technology shouldn't be approached from the mindset of replacing humans but replacing the administrative tasks and inefficiencies to let the staff prioritize their human interactions. apaleo sincerely thanks the entire jury committee for not only recognizing what we have to offer, but also what our peers, partners, and friends also offer.

apaleo's vision is to empower accommodation providers, apps, and anybody else to create new concepts and develop on top of its platform. When you take a look at the most successful innovators in the market, including COSI, they all use apaleo in the background to drive their business ideas. In addition, many traditional hotel groups, which are re-inventing their operations and replace Opera, Protel, or other legacy PMS and older technology, make radical shifts towards true modern technology stacks with apaleo. Examples here are Gold Inn or Signature Hotels by Novum.

Nicholas Johnson