Technology

Blockchain technologies have to take a backseat right now because, with 2023 as a rebuilding year filled with uncertainty, there are just so many other technology and organizational issues for hotels to tackle that take priority.

I am particularly interested in the marketing and branding side of how blockchain can help the hospitality industry. Blockchain users are a very tight, large, and financially powerful community of people from around the world, that usually does incredible amounts of travelling.

Blockchain technology presents a "leapfrog moment" for the hospitality industry, allowing hotels to jump to the next stage of tech solutions and bypass intermediate stages. Hotels have been slow to adopt new technology, but blockchain offers the opportunity to create value by restructuring distribution, controlling pricing and increasing loyalty.

Unpopular opinion: we need to cut back on using the word 'revolutionize'. When we overuse it, it gets diluted to the point where it loses its meaning. After all, most technologies are only revolutionary in hindsight. For 2023, hotels need to first focus on cash flow and deepening their tech integrations across all outlets to improve KYC and TRevPAR.

Without a doubt attribute based (up) selling will revolutionize hotels booking and upsell process. Attribute-based Selling (ABS) re-imagines hotel inventory merchandising in order to improve guest satisfaction and generate greater hotel revenue.

Hey! I'm 82. It's all in the mind. At any age, it takes 10% of a person's time to keep up with, and become comfortable with new technology.

"The medium is the message!" as Marshall McLuhan coined six decades ago. In this case, the underlying message of establishing a metaverse presence is that a hotel brand is forward-thinking and is engineering its products to fit the mindset of Gen Y+Z+Alpha.

The Metaverse provides the opportunity for people to travel who normally could not afford to travel as much. The middle class is able to visit the most incredible places through virtual reality experiences that bring joy and wonder.

The rise of the Metaverse presents exciting possibilities for the travel and hospitality industry. Businesses can use the Metaverse for advertising, immersive e-commerce experiences, and B2A marketing. One effective strategy is to leverage avatars as native advertising, as demonstrated by companies such as Tommy Hilfiger or Deliveroo.

The Metaverse is here to extend the possibilities of reality and the digital presence of any person or company. My personal and professional use goes from a creative CV, to my virtual office to organizing activities up to 2000 users.

There are three specific and tangible practical business applications for immersive platforms and the Metaverse with the global travel and hospitality space. First, the ability for brands and operators to deploy mobile digital, immersive overlays of information, new services, marketing and guest experience enhancements to their hotel, resort or restaurant locations.

The question is: what can we do with the Metaverse which we cannot do on Web2?I think one missing piece of the puzzle is helping the Hotel guests understand the area around the Hotel.Ideally, a potential guest may stroll around the Hotel and get a feeling of the environment: see the streets, the restaurant, the shops, the noise and so on.Also, simulating the transport from the airport to the Hotel may be fun and make the experience smoother once on place.

If you look at technology from a decades or even centuries-long perspective, you realize that there will always be new terminology. This makes sense; we need neologisms as communication shorthands (and to a lesser extent, these terms help experts substantiate their own credibility!).

The Metaverse doesn't start and end with web3. There are Metaverses such as VRChat, AltSpace, Mozilla Hubs that run on VR, are centered around events and community, have a big recurring user base. The ideal way to create a Metaverse is with an economy powered by crypt, so users can experience true digital ownership of any items they use there (clothes, furniture, art, etc.), because each item would be an NFT, no matter what happens with the platform, our stuff stays our stuff.

Interoperability: Interoperability refers to the ability of different virtual environments, platforms, and technologies to work together seamlessly. This means that users should be able to move freely between different virtual worlds and experiences with his assets.NFTs: Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are digital assets that are unique and cannot be replicated or replaced.

There are 2 major adoption hurdles for the Metaverse: hardware & interoperability. 1- Hardware: most Metaverses that run on crypto (Decentraland, Sandbox, etc) require a powerful computer, that barely anyone has or can afford.

In the metaverse, we are only bound by our creativity and the resources at our disposal. Because it is digital, anything can be created as long as we set our minds to it. After all, in the digital world, the laws of physics do not apply, even if we interact with the physical world.

I think the answer is the same to the question : "An open internet for an open, decentralized industry" and Web3 is trying to address it. So, rather than looking for a metaverse specific reply, we should treat the problem as a common one (i.e.

The greater opportunity lies not in what to sell, but in how to sell it. Whether we like it or not, there are some best-sellers that travelers prefer and that generate significant revenue and margin for hotels. It's quite hard to come up with new product ideas, but it's quite straightforward to design a better way of showcasing the products hotels already have.

I'm forever surprised by hoteliers who seem to consider that the room booking is the culmination of the guest sales journey, and not, as it should be, the start! The honeymoon period for upselling is at the time of booking, so why not employ tools that are easily accessed by QR codes to advertise hotel amenities and services to help boost spend per customer?

We interviewed a General Manager of one of our resort hotel customers recently. I thought he made an interesting comment "I am not in the business to sell a flower or chocolate deal!, yes it may delight the guest, but it's not really helping my bottomline, given the logistics involved to get it actually all to the guest".

The concept of the "Metaverse" has existed since the 80s, and Full Fledged Metaverses like 'The Sandbox' and 'Decentraland' have been there since 2012 and 2017 alongside Axie Infinity (2018) and of course the oldest mainstream name amongst the bunch Roblox which officially launched in 2006.

Gartner states that emerging technologies for 2022 fall under three main themes: 1) evolution/expansion of immersive experiences, 2) accelerated automation of artificial intelligence, and 3) optimisation of technology delivery.

I think various fields have been doing a lot of research for years in AR/VR, and the idea of the Metaverse gives them a great mass adoption use case. There is also the gaming industry that has been creating virtual worlds for ages, Habbo Hotel is happy to say they were the first Metaverse, and any video game could say the same.