How Hotels Are Meeting The Demand For Quality Meeting Space
Whether they're hosting a conference for 300 out-of-town guests or an away-day for a 30-strong team from a local company, hotel meeting and event spaces are in high-demand.
External Articles
Airbnb Creates Opportunities for Startups That Fill the Gaps in Homesharing
David Krauss had parlayed his Dallas condo into a successful Airbnb listing until one fateful weekend in 2014. Then, a couple of guests threw a party so loud it elicited more than a dozen noise complaints from neighbors, a police report and an angry letter from an attorney. His reputation in the building was so sullied he decided it was best to sell the unit - at a $30,000 loss.
Amazon Is Doubling Down on Travel, Just Not in the Way You Think
The travel industry has been anticipating Amazon's entry into travel, and we at Skift have covered its current and impending moves through a Skift Research report, a podcast, and an e-book. Turns out the travel-focused action on Amazon's side is, for now, via the cloud.
Google Maps Adds More Hotel Search Filters
Google Maps has updated its desktop and mobile app versions to add filters for its hotel search functionality. Users can now search properties to find ones with amenities such as free Wi-Fi, a gym, and a pool, and to see if they are pet-friendly or kid-friendly and have services like free breakfast or a gym.
Starwood data breach: Lessons for the hotel industry
Marriott International President and CEO Arne Sorenson testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee in early March, providing some insight into the data breach of the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide legacy reservation system.
How Expedia is using deep learning to improve the hotel booking process
Expedia Partner Solutions is using deep learning models to improve the hotel booking process for partners and - ultimately - the end consumer.
China’s Alibaba Is Shaping the Future of the Machine-Driven Hotel
Imagine being in your room within one minute of arriving at your hotel. FlyZoo, a 290-room hotel located close to Alibaba Group's headquarters in Hangzhou, a city 170 kilometers southwest of Shanghai, promises just that. It is powered by Fliggy, Alibaba's online travel platform.
Sabre breach ‘a wake-up call’, ITB hears
Travel industry leaders have insisted consumers can have "confidence in how their data is stored" despite growing concern about cyber security and after Google was fined €50 million under Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Marriott CEO: Source of cyberattack still unknown
Marriott International CEO Arne Sorenson testified to a U.S. Senate subcommittee Thursday, apologizing for the massive data breach that involved 383 million guest records in the Starwood hotels reservation system.
Caesars Looks to Mobile Tech to Raise the Hotel Guest Experience
Caesars Entertainment's flagship product may be gambling, but lately the company's biggest bet has been on catch-up tech investments in hotel tech. The newsiest and most eye-catching of these has been its experiment in on-demand mobile delivery of food.
Link Hotel In Tel Aviv Is The Hotel Of The Future
Link Hotel & Hub in Tel Aviv has no reception desk, no bellhop, no concierge, and no cash transactions. There are ample staff of course, endlessly cheerful, multi-lingual, full of insider tips on where to go in Tel Aviv; the type of people you always hope to meet when you're traveling. But Link is emblematic of Israel itself—the start-up nation, Silicon Wadi—and guests get most of what they need through their phones. For checking in and out, opening guest room doors, calling staff or anywhere in Israel, controlling everything in the room, connecting with other guests, and reading up on where and how to go in Tel Aviv, there's LinkApp.
Self-Cleaning Hotel Rooms Have Arrived
Stay in a high-tech hotel today and you might see the day's headlines in your full-length mirror or have a personal trainer on-demand when you turn on the television.
Airbnb-hotel Hybrids Offer More Homey Comfort With Less Risk
Airbnb's "live like a local" fantasy can quickly morph into a nightmare when your host's sun-dappled apartment photos turn out to conceal a roach infestation. But hotels can be so homogeneous. Now a new crop of startups is offering a hybrid alternative: apartment hotels, lodging that promises the comfort and roominess of a homestay (minus the flaky homeowner) with the consistency and in-room amenities of a hotel.
Millennials Choose Hotels Based On Tech, Social Media
A strong online and social media presence is really important if a hotel hopes to attract millennials, according to a new report.
The Biggest Threat Facing The Hospitality Sector
In today's competitive consumer-facing landscape, customers now have more power and options than ever before - and this is levelling the playing field. For every clothing brand, there's hundreds of other labels; for every hotel, there's another twenty that guests can stay in. Now, hospitality brands - ranging from hotels to food and beverage establishments - are under huge pressure to keep innovating in order to remain relevant in today's market.
Google Assistant Now Has a Bunch of New Travel Features
As we get closer and closer to Google planning entire trips for us, the tech giant announced upgrades to its Google Assistant today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that will make certain aspects of travel easier, and hands free.
What To Expect When You Travel In 2019
If you like crowds, personalized travel experiences or talking to machines, then you're going to love traveling in 2019. That's because "overtourism," personalization and artificial intelligence rank among the top travel trends of the new year, experts say. And, as in years past, you'll also pay more to get where you're going.
AI, Analytics and DS: pool of opportunities for the hospitality industry
n the last 10 years, digital transformation has spurred numerous innovations and disruptions in the travel industry. Digital and data-centric technologies have enabled the hospitality and travel sector to redefine customer experience. More recently, mobile technologies have taken center stage as pre-purchase behavior among consumers, is increasingly dominated by extensive research and comparison of multiple options through smartphones and mobile apps.A key benefit of using digital technologies for customer-facing processes is that, they produce a tremendous amount of data for travel companies. Customers create data on multiple touchpoints through historical online searches, past bookings of hotels and flights, reviews, referrals, etc., and greater the number of touch points, more detailed are the insights. Given such a surge in the volume of data from so many platforms, brands can sometimes find it intimidating to make sense of all this information and apply it productively. However, this is precisely where integrating data science and analytics, can offer a brand huge dividends.Where does data science fit into the game?The expectations of each customer are as varied as their purpose of travel. Hence, identifying customer demands and meeting their expectations can be a daunting task for the travel and hospitality sector. Nonetheless, these expectations have to be met and exceeded in order to retain customers and elicit their loyalty towards the brand. To this end, more and more brands are integrating data-driven tools and advanced analytics into their enterprise solutions to derive contextual insights through their interactions with both existing and potential customers. These tools can play a major role in helping brands deliver a seamless and satisfying customer experience, especially for high-involvement purchasing activities like booking hotels or leisure services.
Is This The End Of Blockchain?
In recent years much has been said about the transformative power of blockchain - the distributed, encrypted ledger technology that powers Bitcoin.
Driving Transformation, Superior Guest Experiences In Hospitality
Hospitality organisations that don't meet their customers' need for a digital presence and mobile operations will soon become irrelevant, says Jane Thomson, MD at EOH Infor Services.