Asia’s Hotels Warming Up to Automation Thanks to Growing Social Distancing Norms
Meet Genie, Gena, and Genius, the latest hires at L'hotel Island South in Hong Kong to beat the coronavirus travel slump.
External Articles
So long, minibar: How the coronavirus will change hotel stays
A hotel stay that doesn't include a breakfast buffet, an in-room minibar and a coffee station would have been inconceivable to many Americans three months ago. But the onset of the coronavirus has prompted a sea change that could alter everything from how guests check in and eat to how rooms are cleaned.
10 Virtual Tours Of The World’s Most Famous Landmarks
They're closed for now but you can still take an interactive online tour, to gaze over the edge of Machu Picchu and marvel at the Pyramids from every angle.
Running An Event In A Pandemic – Worse Than Bungy Jumping But It Gets You Thinking About The Future Of Meetings
I've done many things in my life - bungy jumped, tandem skydived, climbed Mount Kinabalu, trekked many trails, ran into armed gunmen in Thailand, rolled down a jeep in Namibia, contended with a scorpion sting in the middle of the night in Bostwana - but I've never ever run an event in the midst of a global pandemic.
Coronavirus: S'pore Government to make its contact-tracing app freely available to developers worldwide
In a move to help the international community combat the coronavirus pandemic, the Government will be making the software for its contact-tracing application TraceTogether, which has already been installed by more than 620,000 people, freely available to developers around the world.
Top 5 Data Science Trends for 2020
As Data Science continues to expand into the next decade, this article features five important trends in the field that are expected in 2020. Leverage these trends to help improve your business processes for maximizing growth.
Why Are Hotel TVs So Bad?
While home TV tech keeps marching on, hotel TVs seem hopelessly behind: They feature few channels, no on-screen menus and lots of other outdated annoyances. So what's the problem?
Trump Blocks Chinese Deal for U.S. Software Firm StayNTouch
President Donald Trump ordered the Chinese acquisition of a hotel property management software company reversed on national security grounds. Trump ordered Beijing Shiji Information Technology Co. to unwind its 2018 acquisition of StayNTouch Inc., the White House said in a statement on Friday. Trump said there was "credible evidence" the Chinese company "might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States." The order marked the third time Trump has blocked a foreign takeover of a U.S. company on national security grounds, and just the sixth time a U.S. president has done so in three decades. The Trump administration has ramped up scrutiny of Chinese acquisitions of American businesses over risks to national security. The panel that reviews foreign investments in U.S. firms, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., has thwarted a number of Chinese deals, especially for technology companies.
Sabre to Boost Its Travel Tech Investment by $150 Million This Year
Sabre CEO Sean Menke is right to highlight the progress his business has made during the three years since he took the top job. He's also right to insist the company needs to invest more in tech to keep up with the travel industry's pace of digital change. But will investors be patient?
Will the travel industry adopt white box AI?
I recently attended a Venture Beat webinar entitled: 3 Keys To Moving Toward White-Box, Explainable AI.The panel discussed varying degrees of transparency in respect to understanding the output from artificial intelligence, the worst being a black box where the underlying decision is masked in AI algorithms. So what does this all mean?
Where owners, operators invest in tech features
For hotel owners and operators, making technology investments is all about creating balance between guest needs and brand wants, according to sources.
Oracle Hospitality Takes Hotel and Vendor Gripes Seriously At Last
When it comes to providing tech services to hotels, has Oracle Hospitality turned over a new leaf?
She's pushing the world's largest hotel chain to be more like Airbnb
Not long ago, traveling to another city generally meant selecting a hotel to spend the night. But then Airbnb made it fashionable to stay in people's luxury villas, city-center condos, rustic cabins and any number of unique accommodations around the world.
Travel Trends To Watch For 2020
The travel industry continues to see massive changes as the Internet of Things continues to morph the world into its virtual, app-based mold. Along with technology, the issue of global warming is another major factor in change with travelers increasingly paying attention to carbon footprints and factors like single-use plastics when they book their vacations. Another factor in travel trends continues to be the emphasis on marketing to millennials with hotels creating entire brands to seize the almighty millennial dollar.
AI-powered hotel revenue management is all about smart pricing
Intelligent pricing is a channel-agnostic approach. Instead of thinking about OTA bookings in relation to direct bookings, for example, smart pricing looks at every distribution channel's relative value and assesses how much each channel can drive guest room demand and help to achieve the overarching goal.
Check In, Check Out Anytime You’d Like at These Hotels
Hotels want guests to overstay their welcome.
Brand Business - Lindsay Nelson of TripAdvisor
Lindsay Nelson joined TripAdvisor in October 2018 in the new position of president of core experience - overseeing brand, consumer user experience and revenue-generating products and features - after four years at Vox Media.
Is Singapore’s New Hotel Guest Authentication Just Creepy Surveillance?
The Singapore Tourism Board announced this month the launch of an "E-Visitor Authentication" as part of new hotel "industry-wide" initiatives. This led to reports of an "automated facial recognition system" in the city that helps hotels reduce check-in time — but is it what it's cracked up to be?
Booking Holdings and Expedia in Arms Race to Deliver the Connected Trip
High-stake online travel agency competition used to merely revolve around how many tens of thousands of hotels, or homes and apartments each company added to its ranks during the previous quarter, and those milestones are still very much in play.
Hospitality groups blur the lines between workspace and hotel
As professional life has, for many, been transformed into a precarious portfolio of short-term contracts and side-hustles, so the flocks of peripatetic keyboard-peckers - gathering in cafés, certain hotel lobbies and members' clubs - have grown larger. Even as properly kitted-out co-working spaces have appeared and multiplied (there is now an estimated 521 million sq ft of 'flexible workspace' around the world, valued at around $26bn) many of the long-established hotel screen guilds and members'-club laptop collectives have decided they are quite happy where they are. The hospitality giants are now moving to leverage that legacy and make revenue-generating moves into the co-working market.