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HOTEL TECHNOLOGY NEXT GENERATION ANNOUNCED EMEA TECHNOLOGY INNOVATORS’ AWARD WINNERS

HTNG and EHL congratulate the winners of our first EMEA Innovators competition!

HTNG members can log-in to view the presentations from Ian Millar and each winner on our collaboration site.

	Rotana Hotels & Resorts – Private Services InfrastructureThis entry was selected for deploying a strong IT services foundation, capable of delivering private services via a SaaS model in a private cloud. Of particular note was that they did this in countries where most companies would never consider cloud solutions, because of unreliable telecommunications. By using applications where telecom reliability doesn’t matter as much, they proved that you can build an infrastructure with an ROI – and then increase the ROI over time by leveraging it for other applications. Initial deployment covered High Speed Internet, a mobile application with profile authentication for guests, and video calling from guests to the company’s contact centre, and numerous supporting services.	Mr. Samir Abi Frem, Group Director of IT, receives the award from Douglas Rice of HTNG and Ian Millar of INTEHL. (click to enlarge)
	Hotel St. Gotthard Basel – Channel Blanket WLANThis entry is a 95-room independent hotel which won for its identification of a technology that has existed for five years, but which has not been seen elsewhere in the hotel industry. It has the major advantage of central management of the pairing of WiFi devices with access points, so that there is a planned hand-off from one access point to the next, with zero delay, as the device moves around the hotel. Some new WiFi standards, such as 802.11ac scheduled for approval next year, will provide similar capabilities. But this hotel did not wait; it identified a need and found a solution outside the mainstream, well ahead of others. The “channel blanket” solution delivered seamless roaming without the need for re-authentication, in a solution that also easy to deploy and maintain.	Ms. Selinda Geyer, Co-Director, receives the award from Douglas Rice of HTNG and Ian Millar of INTEHL. (click to enlarge)
	Kempinski Mall of the Emirates, Dubai – Burstable & Ubiquitous Wi-FiThis Kempinski branded hotel is based in the United Arab Emirates and was selected for its innovative approach to providing on-demand bandwidth to guests — particularly to meetings. If you are familiar with the UAE telecommunications market, you know that it is heavily controlled and that the two providers have historically provided only limited options to meet the needs of hotels, and at ISP costs amongst the highest in the world. This hotel forged a partnership with one of the two ISPs to design and implement managed, end-to-end burstable bandwidth, to the bandwidth demands of all guests. This was the first such deployment in the UAE, and the only case we are aware of anywhere in the world where a hotel drove an ISP to deliver a new product. This allowed the hotel to provide high bandwidth on demand, without the time delay or cost of paying for it when it was not needed. The hotel also upgraded its WiFi network by more than tripling access points to ensure strong signals everywhere. Additionally, it used the combination of reliable bandwidth and signal to deliver a completely mobile solution for reception and front desk staff.	Jeremy Ward, Senior Vice President, IT receives the award from Douglas Rice of HTNG and Ian Millar of INTEHL. (click to enlarge)

About the Competition

Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG), in cooperation with Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL), gathered nominations for the most innovative uses of technologies within hotels in the Europe/Middle East/Africa region. Nominated projects were reviewed by an independent judging committee who selected the winners. Winners were announced at the HTNG European Conference in Vienna on 6 December 2012. During the award ceremony session, led by EHL faculty member Ian Millar, winners were recognized and made short presentations about their winning projects.

Judging Criteria

• The hotel (or multiple hotels within a hotel group) have used one or more technologies in new or unique ways to deliver benefits to customers, staff, or the hotel owner.
• The technologies used was (were) already available in the market prior to the project, and was (were) implemented with little or no custom modification. We are not recognizing new technologies, rather great new applications of existing technology!
• The effort was initiated by a hotelier, not by a vendor.
• Significant value was driven for the guest (with direct revenue implications), for ancillary revenue, for employee satisfaction, or for operating costs.
• The concept would be broadly relevant to a significant number of other hotels; i.e. it is not something that would work only in very limited circumstances.
• The hotel must approve participation, and the nominator or someone from the hotel must be available to receive the award and make a brief presentation at the HTNG conference. Complimentary registration to the entire conference is provided.

Judging Committee:

The judging committee included two EHL faculty members, Ian Millar, Deputy Director, of INTEHL; Fred Delley, Head of innovation at EHL; as well as Douglas Rice, HTNG’s Chief Executive Officer.

As travelers increasingly take their transactions online, the direct online channel has grown into the most important avenue for hoteliers to utilize to achieve the highest ROIs. This push toward digital is continuing into 2013, as hoteliers plan to allocate a large portion of their budgets toward their website in 2013, according to a HeBS Digital Industry Pulse Poll performed last month.

According to the HeBS Digital Industry Pulse Poll results, hoteliers overwhelmingly chose the property website when asked which digital marketing initiatives they would most like to budget for in the coming year. Hoteliers also cast votes for initiatives such as SEM (paid search), SEO, Social Media, mobile marketing and others.

HeBS Digital Industry Pulse Poll Results, October 2012 

What are the top 3 digital marketing initiatives you would like to budget for in 2013?   % of Votes*

• Property Website + Website Design                      91%
• SEM (paid search)                                                           3%
• SEO                                                                                        3%
• Social Media                                                                      3%
• Mobile Marketing                                                            2%
• Other Initiatives**                                                          5%

*Total vote percentage exceeds 100% — participants could select up to three answers

**Other Initiatives include Reputation Management, Email Marketing, Analytics & Campaign Tracking, Retargeting/Remarketing Advertising, Tablet Website Design, Online Video, Local Search/Linking, etc.)

More than 91% of those surveyed indicated they would like to budget for the property website in 2013.

Why Hoteliers Need to Re-Evaluate Their Property Website in 2013

The explosion of the mobile and social media channels and the emergence of the new tablet channel present major challenges to hotel marketers: Creating and managing digital content throughout three distinct distribution and marketing channels, as well as publishing the hotel’s latest special offers and promotions on the hotel’s social media profiles.

Today’s hotel website needs fresh content, rich media and current promotions. The hotel’s special offers, promotions and packages need to be marketed across all channels, from the desktop website to the mobile site and social media channels.

Many hoteliers are mistakenly led to believe that not investing in the property’s website re-design or optimization is actually saving money. Wrong! Not investing in your website is severely damaging to a hotel’s bottom line.

Your old and tired 1-2 year old property website cannot possibly meet the latest best practices and most likely has dropped off the map, i.e. experienced deteriorating search rankings.

Case Study: Need for Website Content & Digital Marketing Asset Management System

There is a growing need for centralized website content and digital marketing asset management technology as hotel marketers are challenged to create and manage content; store and distribute the hotel digital marketing assets; and circulate special offers and packages, events and happenings, all through several distinct channels:

• Own “desktop” website
• Mobile website
• Tablet website
• Social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Google+
• Hi-res photos to the OTAs and GDSs (optional)

Obviously, hoteliers need more than just a simple website content management system (CMS) capable of adding and editing textual and visual content. HeBS Digital’s proprietary CMS Premium offers all of the above capabilities and acts as a centralized web content and digital marketing asset management system and was specifically developed to accommodate the Google Panda and “Freshness” updates by allowing hotel marketers to maintain fresh content on the hotel website.

In addition to covering their property website costs, hoteliers said they intend on allocating resources toward a vast array of digital marketing services such as SEO, SEM, Mobile Marketing, Online Video, Tablet Website Design, Campaign Tracking and Email Marketing.

Partnering with an industry leader in hotel digital marketing and direct online channel strategy is the best way to build an optimal budget in 2013 and beyond. Learn more about achieving high ROI by reading The Smart Hotelier’s Guide to 2013 Digital Marketing Budget Planning.

Asher Fusco is Senior Copy + SEO Specialist at HeBS Digital

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2012 at 5:04 pm and is filed under HeBS Blog Survey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

By Erin Shea

InterContinental App

InterContinental Hotels is adding to the culinary experience at its properties in Atlanta, San Francisco, Boston and Miami through the Kitchen Passport mobile program that features recipes by the hotels’ executive chefs from around the world.

The Kitchen Passport is a component in InterContinental’s “In The Know” iPad applications that give guests an exclusive experience in the destination to which they travel. The latest San Francisco edition of Kitchen Passport will feature the second series of hotels to be included this mobile program.

“The overall goal of the Kitchen Passport program is to elevate consumer awareness of InterContinental Hotels and its brand hallmarks and differentiators, two of which are our food and beverage program and ‘In The Know’ experiences,” said Gina LaBarre, vice president of brand management at InterContinental Hotels Group Americas, Atlanta.

“Another goal of the program is to populate our Kitchen Cookbook iPad app with new, creative recipes as well as reach new audiences through shared interests,” she said.

“The Kitchen Passport program will allow us to reach current and potential InterContinental Hotels’ guests who also share our love and passion for fine cuisine.”

NorCal taste
The Kitchen Cookbook iPad app is available for free in the App Store.

The new San Francisco-themed edition of the app will feature an appetizer, entrée and dessert inspired by Northern California. It was created by travel expert Avital Andrews and chef Daniel Corey.

The cuisine of the meal reflects the culture of Northern California, the Intercontinental San Francisco on-site restaurant Luce and the global presence of the hotel company.

Ms. Andrews also worked with Eric Hammermaster of InterContinental San Francisco’s Bar 888 and Thom Phan of the Top of The Mark Lounge at the InterContinental Mark Hopkins San Francisco to develop a specialty martini for the program.

InterContinental App

“The InterContintenal Hotels brand attracts guests who have an appreciation for a unique food and beverage experience,” Ms. LaBarre said. “This program highlights the unique aspects of the InterContinental dining experience through showcasing recipes created by our top hotel chefs.”

InterContinental App

Atlanta is also currently featured on the Kitchen Cookbook app. The brand has plans to expand with Boston and Miami this year.

Insider experience
Under the Kitchen Passport program, InterContinental is also offering blogger participants the opportunity to try one of the brand’s signature Insider Experiences.

The Insider Experiences are concierge-inspired packages that allow guests to explore the local flavor of the destination.

Some Insider Experiences include a behind-the-scenes tour of the cigar manufacturers in Miami’s Little Havana and a late-night dining experience at Atlanta’s Holeman & Finch Public House where only 24 specialty cheeseburgers are served at 10 p.m. each night.

The Kitchen Passport program works to give consumers more than just a cookbook.

“Consumers are increasingly turning to wireless tablets as modern-day cookbooks to explore and learn about different recipes,” Ms. LaBarre said. “In response to this emerging trend, InterContinental has brought the dishes of the hotels’ executive chefs from around the world into the homes of travelers.

“The app offers consumers the ability to build out shopping lists for each recipe, as well as access information about the associated InterContinental Hotel and book a hotel reservation directly within the app,” she said.

Erin Shea, editorial assistant on Luxury  Daily

Booking.com has no reservations about its new re-sale practice for canceled rooms.

Since the start of this year, Booking.com has implemented a function, market by market, that changes what happens when a customer cancels a hotel reservation. Now the online travel agency (OTA) automatically takes the canceled room and returns it to the pool of inventory on its site.

The billion-dollar, Priceline-owned, Amsterdam-based OTA considers this change to be a service, not a power grab. Many smaller properties do not have the capacity (or even the interest) to access Booking.com’s extranet daily. So they were not immediately responding to room cancelations.

In some cases, the delays in response led to rooms going unfilled. So the Booking.com change can help reap gains that would have otherwise been lost.

Yet some hotel managers don’t see the company’s grabbing of canceled rooms for re-sale as a service.

Canceling machine

Some hoteliers dislike losing the opportunity to respond to a cancelation, which could be interpreted as a last-minute market signal that the pricing on the room isn’t right.

A cancelation might prompt a hotelier to rethink its rate for that particular night, given the short notice and local market conditions.

Perhaps a rate of, say, 150 euro a night that seemed appropriate when uploaded into the Booking.com system two months earlier doesn’t look as appropriate with only a few days left until the date of vacancy.

The hotel may instead be able to hike its rate at the last minute through its own website, e-mail marketing lists,  or social media channels. In such cases, it could benefit doubly: By re-selling the room directly through its own channels, instead of Booking.com, it could skip the commission and also net a larger total rate.

Alternatively, a room cancelation might mean a rate is now too high, given market conditions. One response might be to re-package the room in a rate structure outside of Booking.com’s restrictions, such as by tailoring a package offer for the room that includes another perk, such as a free breakfast, and selling the package through the hotel’s own website.

A package price is unlikely to cause Booking.com to retaliate by threatening to have the hotel’s overall listing demoted in the search results.

There’s one last reason why a hotel owner might want to take control over the re-sell of a canceled room.

Hoteliers might feel a greater personal incentive to put heads in beds at the last minute than Booking.com does, because the OTA behemoth faces no penalty if it fails to re-sell the room on its own. When keeping occupancy levels high is an important metric for a hotel manager, he or she has a deeper interest in taking control of the sale of that canceled room.

Automatic for the people

Booking.com tells Tnooz that any hotelier who doesn’t appreciate this functionality in the reservation system can have it turned off.

The distributor says it has proactively informed its partners about this change.

But it does seem that some hotel owners have missed any step-by-step instructions on how to turn the functionality on and off, as warranted, and what their advantages and disadvantages might be.

Wrestling over guest data

Hotel trade publications, such as Hospitalitynet, have in recent weeks claimed that Booking.com is eliminating transmission of customer e-mail addresses to hoteliers.

The OTA denies this, telling Tnooz that e-mail addresses from guest reservations can still be “easily retrieved in the extranet.”

Yet Georges Panayotis, a widely followed industry commentator who runs the Paris-based hospitality consulting firm MKG Group, points out that Booking.com, like all the major OTAs, have been making changes that “are not in favor of the hotelier.”

In an interview with Tnooz, Panayotis warned that, for any hotelier that relies up to 50%, or even more, of its occupancy through the Booking.com channel, “it is very hard to be in a bargaining position.”

“This is why we call for a reaction from the hoteliers, to manage more carefully their reservation sources and to be more careful when concentrating their distribution on a limited number of channels.”

The big OTAs appear to be taking more and more power over inventory and customer data from hotel owners. Recently in Germany HRS hiked commission rates and demanded “last room availability” and “best available rate.”

The company would point out that those commission rates are used to attract customers, via paid search, SEO, display advertising, affiliate networks, and print/billboard/broadcast advertising.

Yet despite grumbling, the OTAs continue to add to their inventory, as hotels are tempted by their capacity to fill more rooms and generate more revenue, at less cost, that a small hotel, or hotel chain, could on its own or through many wholesalers and consolidators, who tend to charge higher levels of compensation.

Commission jujitsu

Hotels take a risk when they heavily rely on the OTA’s marketing savvy and inventory to fill rooms, rather than diversify through a portfolio of partnerships and marketing efforts.

Booking.com’s typical 15% base rate of commission has for years been the cheapest rate among comparably-sized OTAs using the agent model in Europe, such as Expedia, Hotels.com, (Priceline-owned) Agoda, HRS, and Trivago.

Yet hoteliers have noticed lately that if they want to gain prominence in the OTA’s listings, they have to become ‘preferred’ hotels and pay 18%. Booking.com enables properties to buy preferred status on night-by-night.

If used often, the effective commission rate becomes higher than the up-front rate charged by Expedia Inc, which dictates OTAs commission levels and, in general, doesn’t allow the option of alternating commission rates for different service levels.

Reputation management

Some hotel relationships with online travel agencies are so thoroughly dysfunctional that no amount of analysis will figure out precisely where and when everything went wrong. For years, Booking.com has prided itself on avoiding that type of relationship with its hotel partners.

But there’s trouble in the family. The company has lately been adjusting its practices in ways that have raised concerns with some hotel owners. The booking giant may need to bacon-wrap its messaging if it wants to retain its reputation as the lesser evil among global distribution platforms.

In other words, if it doesn’t watch out, Booking.com risks becoming the OTA That Pushed Too Hard.

“The No. 1 thing we stand for is the authenticity of our reviews,” she said during a general session at Best Western International’s annual convention. “We know if people come to the site and don’t believe the reviews, they won’t come back. And if you don’t come back, we don’t have a business.”

Petersen declined to identify all of the ingredients of the “secret sauce” TripAdvisor uses to identify honest reviews from those that are paid for, or negative comments intentionally posted by a hotel’s competitor. She did, however, list several of the factors the company looks for when deciding whether to boot a review from the site.

Those factors include:

• the email system used by the reviewer in posting the review;
• the IP address of the computer used to post the review;
• the time of day, day of the week, week of the month and month of the year the review was written;
• the syntax used in the writing of the review; and
• whether the language in which the review was written matches the language of the country the hotel is in, or the official language of the TripAdvisor user’s location.

Every review kicked off the system is reviewed again by members of a TripAdvisor team, she said. Further, Petersen said the company relies heavily on users flagging reviews they believe look suspicious.

Petersen said hoteliers should be comforted by the fact that reviewers on the site also are peer-reviewed. “You can see what the community thinks of the reviewer,” she said.

Petersen often is asked why TripAdvisor doesn’t just go to a system where reviews can be authenticated. Such a process is not ideal for the company, Petersen said.

First, there are 50 reviews submitted to TripAdvisor every minute. That’s far too much volume to authenticate each and every review, she said. Secondly, Petersen said the company wants to provide as little interference as possible during the review process.

TripAdvisor misconceptions
Petersen also took time to clear up what she said are some “misconceptions” the public has about the review site, including:

You can’t trust the reviews. Petersen said TripAdvisor has had 60 million unique visitors to the site year to date in 2012 and there are more than 75 million reviews on the site. The truth, she said, is bound to shine through when considering that kind of volume. “More reviews, more accurate,” she said.

The only people who post are people who want to complain. The average score of a hotel on TripAdvisor is 4.01 out of 5, Petersen said. “People are happy,” she said. “People around the world are eager to share positive experiences.”

Also, Petersen said a recent study TripAdvisor commissioned found that 74% of people reported they want to share a good hotel experience with others.

Finally, Petersen offered some words of wisdom when it comes to the negative hotel reviews that are on the site. She said a hotel’s management would be wise to respond to such a review.

“Management responses are the last word,” she said. “A carefully written management (response) is the end of the story.”

Article printed from Luxury Daily: http://www.luxurydaily.com

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[1] Image: http://www.luxurydaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/shangri-la-instagram-contest-185.jpg

[2] 5th Finger: http://5thfinger.com/

[3] Shangri-La: http://www.shangri-la.com/

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[7] see story: http://www.luxurydaily.com/fontainebleau-uses-qr-codes-instagram-to-boost-pool-party-interaction/

[8] see story: http://www.luxurydaily.com/four-seasons-pushes-reopening-of-toronto-property-via-city-imagery-contest/

Having literally trampled the competition both in Paris and in the surrounding regions, Booking.com profits from their dominant position by imposing new rules on the game. To the surprise of its “partners”, the site now reserves the right to automatically resell a room that one of its customers has canceled, so as not to lose commission. They block access to the customer’s bank information, so that the hotel cannot claim the forfeit for no-show. They eliminate the transmission of e-mail addresses of their customers, a ridiculous practice to avoid direct contact between the hotel and the customer. This does not characterize a relationship of trust between business partners.

By hiding their customers under a virtual burka, Booking unveil their true face, more of a predator than a partner. But beware, all these practices are also indicative of the fear that its model might be undermined by technological change or the sound response of customers and hoteliers. The most hastily built walls are not the strongest. Giants with feet of clay, Booking, and those who follow their ways, have everything to fear from the will of Google or Apple to tread on its land. The e-commerce T-Rex sharpens their teeth to feed on those who interfere. No one can really predict the outcome of the fight. An opaque veil will eventually tear for the client to question the added value of a service provider that offers, in the end, the same rate as the brand website. Hoteliers can say thank you to the Best Available Rate, as long as they retain control. There are fights that should not be undertaken: after having reconquered the right to set their prices, they must regain full control of their inventory, preventing an online agency from coming to dig in the PMS without being invited.

And no doubt, Booking, Expedia, Agoda, Trivago and others do not expect a response as powerful as from the hotel groups who realize that both marketing and distribution engines were essential to run the operations. By investing heavily in brands, sales tools, and communication, they restore meaning to the customer relationship. They implement neutral tools that allow them to restore the direct link without having to compromise with community sites. Distribution is one of the major challenges in the hospitality industry that lost profitability, having transferred a portion of its sales force to greedy partners. The recent actions of Booking should open their eyes and raise a welcoming insurrection among hoteliers. They missed the first steps of the Internet and had to run behind the pioneers to catch up. Now hoteliers must not miss the opportunities of mobile tools and smart partnerships with new actors. Coupled with the revaluation of brands, new distribution channel will enhance the interest of the franchise. And I bet in this field, the hoteliers have all the chances to win the fight.

About MKG Group | Established in 1985 by Georges Panayotis, MKG Group has built a solid reputation for business expertise and substantial European-based know-how in the fields of tourism, lodging and food service. MKG Group meets the needs of each of its clients by providing valuable analytical and decision-making skills necessary for success. www.mkg-group.com