Siegel Sez
January 21, 2022

Here we are in the third week of January. Doesn’t it already seem like the holidays were ages ago? I know it does for me. As we look ahead to 2022, there have been interesting conversations regarding what lies ahead. I talk to so many hoteliers and vendors, and it’s great that there’s a sense of controlled optimism. It’s refreshing after what we’ve all been through. Of course, there will always be those who are focused on the negative, but that will never be my focus. Think positive! Be positive! And great things will happen. I hope this is not just the dreamer in me.

I’ve enjoyed all the inquiries from what seems like hundreds of technology vendors asking about our upcoming 17th Annual Executive Vendor Summit. One of the things vendors need to be successful is to partner with many other vendors, to provide complete solutions for the hotel industry. Last year we had over 100 attendees, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we have more than that this year. We’ll be in the Dallas area March 30 – April 1 for EVS, but you might not want to leave until Saturday, April 2. There’s a very creative announcement coming out soon as to why you’ll want to be there April 1. If you’re a vendor and have questions about EVS please contact Kim at [email protected] or drop me a note at [email protected]. This will be an event that we all will remember, and hopefully positively! There are always surprises at EVS, but it will be hard to match what happened last year. Click here to see what many might call a fun and somewhat embarrassing video from Nashville.

I’ve always been proud of the knowledge I have on all the technology products in the industry. I thought I had my arms around Business Intelligence, until I read Doug Rice’s update on BI and I realized I didn’t know as much as I thought I did. Take a few minutes and read through Definitely Doug that follows, it is quite eye opening.

We’ve talked about many of the mergers and acquisitions that have been happening the second half of 2021, and I must thank Agilysys CEO Ramesh Srinivasan and ResortSuite Founder Frank Pitsikalis. Almost immediately after their deal closed, they let me do a video interview with them to find out how the deal came together. It’s been one of our most popular videos ever. If you haven’t seen it yet, click here. It was very interesting, but we had a bit of fun with them also. I think you’ll enjoy it.

Here now is Definitely Doug and his thoughts on where Business Intelligence is, and more importantly where it’s going. Let’s stay positive and look forward to a great 2022! I’ll see you at the end with this week’s attempt at you-know-what.

Rich
[email protected]

Definitely Doug

Business Intelligence and Analytics: RIP Excel?

Hotel businesses are run in part based on numbers, and they need to see them quickly if they are to address problems early. But with the many different silos of information found in a typical hotel group’s technology portfolio, this has long been easier said than done.

Not very long ago, Microsoft Excel was the most commonly used tool for hotels that needed to combine data from multiple systems, whether within a single hotel or to facilitate roll-up reporting across a portfolio. Excel may still dominate today, but if so, it is rapidly losing share to business intelligence and analytics software. Despite this, there is a lot of confusion in the market around this category, largely driven by the hundreds (literally) of hotel software products claiming to provide business intelligence. Today’s column will try to clear that up.

If you’re buying a property management system (PMS), point-of-sale system (POS), channel manager, accounting system, or other hotel software packages, it’s not uncommon to find a module called Business Intelligence (BI) or something similar. They not only provide access to reports, but usually have the ability to drill down into summary numbers, filter based on dates, market segments, departments, or other criteria, and present information in graphical and dashboard formats.

But in my book, most of these do not really qualify as “Business” intelligence because they only work with data in a single, siloed system that falls far short of everything you need to run your “business” intelligently. To be sure, they can be hugely useful, but unless you are running your entire hotel business on that one system, they can give at best a limited picture of the overall business. Most of them focus on a specific function, such as finance, operations, or marketing and distribution; if they integrate any data at all from other systems, it is usually very limited and may require manual re-keying. And while a few (especially smaller) hotels may operate on a single system, most hotels of any size or complexity use multiple systems, often numbering into the dozens. A BI system that only has access to data from one of them will be very limited in its scope.

Not surprisingly, many of the BI systems in common use are built into financial reporting systems, because those systems have audited, cross-departmental data that plays a major role in performance measurement. They have their place, but also their limitations. Data are (or at least should be) correct, but are typically limited to revenues and expenses. You can see what happened, and can drill down to see detailed sub-accounts and even individual transactions. But you often cannot see why, because that detail may be buried in the PMS, POS, or labor management system.

Why were payroll costs so high in the food and beverage department yesterday? Your financial BI can probably tell you that overtime pay was responsible, but not the reason, which might be that delegates from a large in-house group took over the restaurant bar last night and spent tens of thousands of dollars, paid for by a combination of credit cards and individual guest room charges; staff were scrambled to help, and the bar was open hours later than usual. That kind of information is useful not only in assessing the departmental payroll variance, but also in determining the value of a group beyond what gets posted to the master folio. But fully understanding it may require information from the PMS, POS, sales and catering, and/or time-clock systems.

It’s also common to see BI modules in systems designed to manage hotel marketing and distribution. These can be very helpful in targeting particular markets and managing distribution costs. But aside from room revenue and distribution costs, they usually provide little insight into profitability. They typically cannot tell you what types of customers spend the most on food and beverage, spa, and other hotel services, because that data is locked in other silos.

By my definition, a true hotel BI system should have detailed data from multiple systems so that it can address questions like:

  • What is my distribution cost by market segment?
  • What are the costs of my brand affiliation by market segment and loyalty level?
  • What is my labor cost per restaurant cover, per room cleaned, per function delegate catered?
  • What geographic regions, length of stay, party size, or days of the week generate the most revenue and most profit? How does that vary by market segment?
  • What is the profitability of food and beverage, retail, or spa outlets by day of week and time of day?
  • What food and beverage items are most popular among the 10% of most profitable guests?

These questions are more interesting for larger and more complex hotels; many smaller and lower-market properties will likely find this to be overkill. For them, the built-in analytics of their financial systems may be more than enough.

True BI, beyond simple financial reporting, used to be something that only larger and more luxurious hotels needed, but costs have come down and managers have become more data-hungry, so BI has been rapidly moving into the midmarket. It may never be useful for a 50-room limited service roadside property, but it is now being adopted by many midscale hotels, especially those with significant food and beverage operations.

There are surprisingly few vendors providing what I consider true BI in hospitality – platforms that integrate significant amounts of data from multiple systems into a single platform. I spoke with key executive at several of the leaders and innovators in the space, including Avenue9 Solutions, Datavision Technologies, inhovate, myDigitalOffice, and Profitsword, who provided much of the wisdom included in this article (for which I thank them!). I am not going to try to compare them because while they are all good products, which one is “best” will depend almost entirely on the fit with your needs. But looking at several of these (as well as any others that come onto your radar) will ensure that you can make a well informed decision.

In addition to products like this, there are numerous large consulting firms that will build custom (and expensive) solutions, usually for very large clients, and various do-it-yourself approaches using commercial tools and a team of data scientists. But today I will focus on commercial packages.

Key Considerations

Before evaluating BI products, it is important that you first define what you are trying to achieve. What are the key insights you are looking for, that you cannot get today? Audited financial data is necessary and can serve many purposes, but often is not actionable – you can see that something went wrong, but may get very little indication of why, and it is historical only (but no action you can take will change the history). Unaudited data can be more timely, more actionable in some cases, and more detailed, but also less correct. And owners or asset managers will care about different things than a general manager, marketing director, or food and beverage director.

Do you need only historical data, or forward-looking as well? Budgets, forecasts, business-on-the books, and revenue management system analyses can be combined to give a better look at the future, and overlaid with actual results to see the past, present and future together. This is a big differentiator of the systems I saw; the better ones know how to combine multiple sources, for example taking last year’s results from audited financials, last month’s from trial balances, yesterday’s unclosed results from the financial system, today’s and tomorrow’s mostly from on-the-books reservations, next month’s from now based on on-the-books plus a revenue management (or other) forecast, and next year’s based on the budget. This gets tricky when you start to drill down and need to change the source because (for example) the audited financials don’t have transactional folio detail – but some of the systems are quite good at handling this.

Another important question is how you want to see your data. Some people like visual presentations in charts and graphs, others prefer tabular presentations of numbers. Some hotels may be fine with canned reports provided by the vendor, others will want to modify them or create some of their own, while still others will want to access the raw data directly to see what they can learn. Most of the systems offer quite a bit of flexibility and the ability to maintain multiple presentation formats for different users; tools for working with raw data vary. A good piece of advice is not to simply recreate a report you already use in a new BI system. Rather, you should engage with the vendor to find out other ways the information might be presented. You might be surprised at how much more useful a presentation might be if can be if you approach it with an open mind!

A very useful feature is the ability to view the original data as it was imported from the source system. There will inevitably be data anomalies in the BI system, and this will help track down whether the issue existed in the source system or was introduced during the import or normalization. If the BI system is ingesting a report from the PMS, can you view the actual report from which a particular number displayed in the BI application was obtained?

Several of the vendors I spoke with counseled keeping your objectives modest, noting that most hotels do not know how they will actually use business intelligence until after they get it. So rather than designing a solution to do everything you can think of, it’s better to pick just a few high-priority things where you know you need better data and insights. Once you have those solved, identify another few objectives; then rinse and repeat.

Once you know your objectives, there are a number of questions. First, where is the data that is needed stored? Can the solution get access? If yes, does data use common definitions and a common format, or will massaging be needed to (for example) compare data across properties that use different PMS systems or market codings? Do you need to be able to access and analyze individual transactions (such as line items on a PMS folio or POS check) or just summary financial data, such as daily departmental revenues and costs? This exercise should result in a list of systems from which you will need to extract data, and the knowledge of how much detail you will need.

Armed with this list, the questions to ask your prospective vendor(s) are (a) what systems do they already support data extracts from; (b) for the ones they support, what is the level of detail? Some systems extract daily summaries for predefined groupings such as market segment, while others get every underlying transaction (reservation, guest folio, POS check, guest survey response, etc.) and compute the summaries themselves. If they do not ingest the detail, then you will be limited in the questions you can ask. You might be able to find out what happened within the system’s predefined groupings (such as market segments), but you will not be able to drill down further or redefine the groupings. Consider some of the sample questions below and if they are ones that matter to you, ask yourself where you store the data that will be needed to answer them.

This exercise will likely eliminate some of the prospective vendors. It may also help you refine your objectives, because it will give you a better sense of what can be done quickly and inexpensively, so that your BI effort can produce some quick wins.

It is not necessarily a deal-breaker if a vendor cannot already extract data from a system you need, but it is a good idea to consider their relevant experience. A vendor that has extracted and integrated data from 20 different spa systems already, will have a pretty good idea what it will take to add a 21st to meet your needs. On the other hand, a vendor that has never done a spa integration before will have a steep learning curve, adding both risk and (probably) cost to the project.

A third key question to ask if you have multiple properties is how the vendor normalizes data. Normalization enables cross-comparison of data among properties using different underlying systems, coding schemes, accounting schemes, and currencies, such as is frequently the case with management companies that operate hotels under multiple brands or in different countries. If your hotels have to comply with multiple sets of accounting standards and you need consistent financial comparisons, then normalizing to a common schema such as the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry (USALI) can be very helpful, and some vendors can do this.

If you need to normalize market segmentation from the standards of several different hotel brands, some vendors have predefined mappings that may work for you, or you may have to decide for yourself how best define them. From what I saw, some of the products make this process simple, others can require a significant investment of time and/or money to set up.

Lastly, an important question is how data from different sources are connected. For example, if you want to be able to analyze profitability of specific group customers, you might need connections that attach reservations and folios (both master and guest) from the PMS as well as checks from the POS, spa, and golf system to a guest in your customer or loyalty database. The data may come from different systems that either do not know how to make the connection or can only do it in certain specific circumstances, so usually the connection has to be made by the BI platform.

Pricing is always a key question; you can spend as little as $100 a month for a good BI system for a single small hotel, or many thousands for a large complex one. The cost will vary depending on complexity, the amount of data, and other factors, which is another reason it’s smart to start small and get to know your vendor. One thing to check with the pricing model is whether additional users incur an additional license fee (and if so, how much). BI works best if all of the managers in your organization can use it, so you will want a plan that will be affordable when they all do.

What Systems can be Connected?

I asked the vendors I spoke with what types of systems they ingest data from, and accumulated a long list. To be sure, no one vendor handled everything on the list, the younger vendors had somewhat more limited lists – but ones that could still meet the needs of many hotels. The list of potential systems includes PMS, financial/ERP systems, POS, sales and catering, central reservations, channel managers, golf, spa, retail, guest satisfaction surveys, social media reviews, competitive data such as STAR reports, weather data, exchange rates, airline schedules, economic data, forward-looking data such as from OTA Insight or revenue management systems, Google Analytics, e-Procurement, time and attendance, and labor management. On future product roadmaps but not available in the products I looked at today, were data from housekeeping and building management systems. The list will undoubtedly continue to grow.

As important as which systems are connected is what detail they can provide. In today’s labor market, some hotels want to look in detail at housekeeping productivity to understand what types of customers have low vs. high impact on housekeeping labor. And while a BI system may already get payroll from the financial system and hours from the time and attendance system, that provides no insight as to how long the housekeeper spent cleaning a particular guest’s room. That data is tracked by some housekeeping systems. If you can’t get it, either because your housekeeping system does not track it or because the data can’t be handed off to the BI system, then your BO solution will offer no insights on this question.

What Questions Can a Good BI Platform Answer?

Hotels who have never used BI are often at a loss to understand how they might use it. I asked about the kinds of questions BI customers wanted their vendors to be able to answer. To be sure, not every product can handle every question. But very few of the purely or primarily financial BI systems can handle many of them, so they are a good differentiator of what you get by upgrading to a true BI system.

  • What determines the revenue and profit the hotel can earn from a particular type of guest? This helps target marketing, sales, and promotional efforts. Factors often analyzed include booking lead time, length of stay, market segment, size of party, day of week, seasonality, booking channel, nationality or geographic origin, rate plan/package/special, and even (for restaurants, spa, golf, etc.) time of day.
  • Who are my top individual guests and what do they buy? What are the most frequently purchased menu items, wines, or spa treatments by the top 5% of guests?
  • How much revenue and profit did a group provide, including individual guest charges that never showed up on the group master folio?
  • What guests with future room bookings have used hotel facilities (spa, golf, dining, etc.) on past stays, and can we reach out to them before their stay to ensure their needs are met and our revenue maximized? Are we adequately stocked with menu items or wines that high-value guests have purchased on past visits?
  • Which spa therapists are most requested by top customers?
  • Which food and beverage servers are most productive (meaning more revenue per minute worked) or earn the highest tips per dollar sold?
  • What are the distribution costs and brand fees (royalty, loyalty, etc.) associated with specific guests, market segments, seasons, etc.

It’s important to understand that once you have a BI, there is virtually no limit to the questions you can ask at no additional cost, based on the data that are loaded and the capabilities of the platform. You can build your own reports and graphs, you can filter data based on your own criteria, you can change those decisions in an instant to do “what if” analysis, and you can for the most part present it the way you want it. You will typically face additional costs only if you need to ingest new data or modify how it is processed as it is brought in. Yes, there are tasks where you may need paid vendor support, but if you have selected the package well, they will be few and far between.

Other Considerations in Evaluating a BI Solution

BI systems have lots of data, and data can be used for lots of purposes, some of them extending beyond what would normally be called analytics but nevertheless often providing real value to management. Some of the interesting applications and capabilities I ran across in my research include:

  • Using a BI extract to prepare daily closeout data for a POS to the financial system to eliminate a multi-hour daily, manual, error-prone process.
  • Combining various data sources and analytics to produce a detailed forecast of future activity for a hotel spa, combining reservations on the books, predicted bookings from transient guests with future room reservations in the PMS, and estimated walk-ins. Since most spa bookings are made very close in, this gave the spa manager much better visibility of future demand and scheduling needs.
  • Using data on what facilities guests actually used in the hotel to customize post-stay guest surveys and ask only those questions that are relevant for that stay.
  • Tracking of identified problem areas, where a problem is not only identified, but actions assigned, and follow-up scheduled to assess whether those actions worked.
  • The ability to embed customized reports, even to the point of producing a “board deck” in PowerPoint with custom commentary and fully interactive data tables.
  • The ability to save specific views of data and share them with co-workers with comments can be very useful for ensuring that insights are seen by the right people and acted upon.

Conclusion

BI tools have made great advances in recent years. With today’s minimal cost associated with storing even huge quantities of data, it is more and more feasible to implement a useful BI system that can provide very deep insight, and modest cost. Excel may be very cheap to license, but many hotels have found that BI systems can vastly reduce the amount of time needed to maintain even modest amounts of data vs. Excel. If you have not looked at the BI options in recent years, it may be time to do so!

Douglas Rice
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @dougrice
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ricedouglas/

Recent Technology News, from Hospitality Upgrade and Hotel Online

Corporate News

– Cloudbeds Named Best PMS, Best HMS in 2022 HotelTechAwards
Cloudbeds has been recognized for the fourth consecutive year as one of the industry’s top technology providers by Hotel Tech Report. The 2022 HotelTechAwards honors Cloudbeds with five total awards: Best Property Management Systems, Best Hotel Management Software, 10 Best Places to Work, Top 10 People’s Choice, and Channel Manager Finalist.
www.cloudbeds.com

– Salto Achieves Carbon Neutrality, Offsetting 2020 Co2 Emissions in All Its Offices and Factories
SALTO Systems has achieved carbon neutrality thanks to its participation in two innovative projects with a triple-transformative effect on the economy, society and nature to achieve SALTO’s goal: for its operations to have zero impact on the climate.
saltosystems.com

– HID Global Acquires InvoTech Systems to Broaden Its Leadership in Commercial Laundry Management Solutions
HID Global, a worldwide leader in trusted identity solutions, today announced it has acquired InvoTech Systems, Inc. The acquisition enhances HID’s advanced textile inventory management systems offering for uniforms, linens, and laundry operations and adds to HID Global’s industry-leading RFID portfolio.
www.hidglobal.com

– Shiji Selected as Pilot Partner for New AWS Outposts Servers
Shiji has recently announced that Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) has selected Shiji as the pilot Partner for their newly launched AWS Outposts servers, a fully managed service that offers hybrid cloud experiences to run the same AWS infrastructure and services, application programming interfaces (APIs) and tools to locations with limited space.
www.shijigroup.com

– IQware Inc Acquires Megasys Hospitality Solutions
IQware Inc, a leader in the Independent Market of Hospitality Technology providers, has acquired Megasys Hospitality Solutions, a Hospitality Property Management Software company that provides a robust guest-centric application for managing Hospitality accommodation properties. The move to acquire Megasys Hospitality Solutions commenced in the summer of 2021 after IQware Inc. raised capital from its new co-owner and Director Mr. Doug Skrepnek.
www.iqwareinc.com

– WTS International Acquires Meet Hospitality Services, Will Expand Services
WTS International, a global provider of hospitality and amenity services for commercial, residential and hotel properties, today announced it has acquired Meet Hospitality Services LLC, which provides design and management services for meeting, conference and amenity centers in New York City.
wtsinternational.com

– Agilysys to Acquire Resort & Hotel Management Software Provider ResortSuite
Agilysys, Inc., a leading provider of next generation SaaS software solutions, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire ResortSuite, a Canada-based fully integrated property management solution provider focused on the complex multi-amenity and resort market.
www.agilysys.com

People on The Move

– Patrick van der Wardt Joins PROVision as Senior Managing Director EMEA
PROVision Partners “PROVision”, a leading global strategic growth, marketing, technology, and commercial services advisory firm to the travel and hospitality industry, announces the appointment of Patrick van der Wardt to the role of Senior Managing Director EMEA.
www.provision-partners.com

– President & CEO Ken Greene to Depart AAHOAAAHOA today announced that President & CEO Ken Greene will leave the organization in February to pursue another opportunity. The AAHOA Board of Directors will immediately begin its search for his replacement.
www.aahoa.com

Guest Management Systems

– Stayntouch and Pace Revenue Partner to Deliver Mobile Access and Dynamic Automation to Hotel Revenue Management
Stayntouch, a global leader in guest-centric cloud hotel property management systems (PMS) and contactless technology, today announced a new partnership and integration with Pace Revenue, an industry-leading provider of the Pace Revenue Platform that includes innovative decision intelligence, business intelligence and revenue optimization.
www.stayntouch.com

– Stayntouch Partners With Residential Hospitality Brand Mint House to Launch Guest-Centric Cloud PMS Across 22 Properties
Stayntouch, a world-wide leader in guest-centric cloud hotel property management systems (PMS) and contactless technology, today announced an expanded partnership with Mint House, a transformational residential hospitality company that offers tech-forward apartment-style accommodations across the United States.
www.stayntouch.com

– Maestro Makes 5 Roadmap Predictions for the Evolution of Hotel Property Management Systems and the Return of Travel
Hoteliers are doing a lot more with a lot less. Staffing and budgets continue to shrink while guest demands rise. The only salvation is technology innovation. As the undisputed heartbeat of the hotel, the property-management system must continue to evolve if the asset is to remain strong and withstand future economic attacks
www.maestropms.com

– Seven Feathers Casino Resort Partners With Infor Hospitality
Infor, a leading provider of industry-specific cloud applications, today announced that Seven Feathers Casino Resort has selected Infor Hospitality Management Solution (HMS) for its property management system (PMS) and Infor Sales and Catering, a fully integrated, event-management software solution in the cloud.
www.infor.com

– Record Growth in New Customer Acquisition & New Leadership Mark 2021 as Best Year in Stayntouch History, Sets Momentum for Accelerated Growth in 2022
Stayntouch, a global leader in guest-centric cloud hotel property management systems (PMS) and contactless technology, has announced a record year in performance for the company in 2021, with sharp increases in both new hotel customer acquisitions and the number of hotel rooms under contract. The success follows the establishment of new C-Suite and Sales leadership in the first half of 2021.
www.stayntouch.com

Reservations & Distribution

– Cloud5 Communications Demonstrates Hospitality Market Rebound With Opening of Toronto Contact Center
Cloud5 Communications, a leading provider of communications solutions and managed IT services for more than 5,000 hotels, MDUs and commercial facilities across the Americas, has announced the opening of a 15,000 Sq. foot contact center in Toronto to service customer travel itinerary needs for one of the world’s most well-recognized financial services companies.
cloud5.com

– Artificial Intelligence Collaboration Between P3 and Arvoia Delivers Personalized Guest Experience to Drive Direct Bookings at Hotels
Arvoia’s AI utilizes technology similar to that used by Netflix and Instagram, in order to deliver a unique booking experience to each guest.
www.arvoia.com     www.p3hotels.com

– UpStay Wins 2021 PhocusWright Innovation Award
UpStay, the first post-booking yield optimization platform for hotels, has won a major international travel industry award at the Phocuswright Conference held in Florida last month. The Award recognizes UpStay as one of the most innovative technology platforms available to the global travel industry today.
www.upstay.tech

Revenue Management & Analytics

– Salamander Hotels & Resorts Sees Record Portfolio Performance With IDeaS
IDeaS G3 RMS was instrumental in helping the resort properties capture the growing domestic leisure demand at optimal rates.
ideas.com

– IDeaS Revenue Solutions First RMS Provider to Achieve Level IV Global Support Certification From Hotel Tech Report
IDeaS, a SAS company, the world’s leading provider of hotel revenue management software and services, announced today it is the first RMS provider to achieve Level IV Global Support Certification (GCSC), the highest level of certification, from Hotel Tech Report. The company also ranked in the Top 10 Global Hotelier’s Choice Award in the annual HotelTechAwards for the third year in a row.
ideas.com

– Unique Vacations, Inc., an Affiliate of the Worldwide Representative for Sandals Resorts, Partners With IDeaS
IDeaS, a SAS company, a world leading provider of hospitality revenue management software and services, announced today it has partnered with Unique Vacations Inc., (UVI) to bring the power of automated revenue science to Sandals Resorts and Beaches Resorts properties throughout the Caribbean.
ideas.com

Guest Facing Technology

– Travel Outlook Introduces Bella, The Virtual Hotel Agent, Providing Instant Guest Service While Reducing Fixed Labor Expense
Travel Outlook Premium Hotel Call Center (“Travel Outlook®”) announces the launch of the hotel industry’s first AI-powered voice bot, purpose-built to reduce fixed labor costs with a distinct human touch:  Bella, The Virtual Hotel Agent.
www.traveloutlook.com

– Virgin Hotels Partners With InnSpire to Deploy Latest in Guest Experience and Contactless Service Integration Across Multiple Properties
InnSpire, the leading provider of a comprehensive technology suite that helps drive a seamless, world-class guest experience for some of the world’s most iconic hotels and brands, has announced the expansion of its partnership with Virgin Hotels following the successful implementation of its suite of guest connectivity and contactless compatible solutions at the newly opened Virgin Hotels Las Vegas.
www.innspire.com

– INTELITY Announces Its Award-Winning Hospitality Technology Platform Is Now Mobile Responsive
By making its platform more user-friendly and task-focused, the recent update is another step in INTELITY’s commitment to provide its customers with a convenient, streamlined experience.
www.intelity.com

– The Andante Inn of Sedona Caters to Guest Demands for Secure Access to Personalized Guestroom Entertainment With BeyondTV GuestCast
Hotel Internet Services (HIS), a full-service provider of internet services and solutions for the hospitality industry, has been credited with enhancing the guest entertainment experience at The Andante Inn of Sedona with the implementation of the BeyondTV GuestCast streaming platform.
www.hotelwifi.com

– Crave Announced as HotelTechAwards 2022 Finalists
The annual HotelTechAwards, run by Hotel Tech Report, recognises and awards the top companies across the globe with outstanding products and client relationships.
crave-emenu.com

– Room Service Revenues Soaring at EB Hotels Miami With GuestHub
Web-based guest services app is enabling the airport hotel to boost food and beverage revenues while operating with a reduced staff and without increasing the cost of service.
guesthub.io

Marketing

– Zoox Smart Data Online Traffic Connections Set New Record in Q4 2021
Zoox Smart Data (“Zoox”), an international provider of technological solutions that harnesses big data to build customer profiles from existing Wi-Fi networks, has released its guest internet traffic results for Q4 2022, demonstrating a dramatic increase in hotel Wi-Fi usage that dwarfs previously recorded analytics
www.zooxsmart.com

– Personalized Guest Targeting Makes the Difference: h2c Study Reveals the Challenges of the Hotel Industry
Many hoteliers are facing technological problems – especially regarding interfaces to other systems. This was the result of a global study on “Personalized Marketing”, which was conducted by h2c and supported by dailypoint™, among others.
www.dailypoint.com

– Lodging Interactive Launches CoMMingle-PLUS Premium Customer Engagement Service
CoMMingle-PLUS provides properties with the highest level of guest engagement services 7 days a week with social media marketing, direct social media messaging responses with property escalations, and customized guest review responses for all OTA sites and Google Business.
lodginginteractive.com

– 5 Sales Strategies to Win More Business in 2022
As events bounce back, hoteliers will have to adapt to the new needs of customers while differentiating their offerings from the competition. Based on Amadeus research and industry insights, here are five new tactics your sales and event teams can employ now to convert opportunity into revenue.
www.amadeus-hospitality.com

Sales & Catering, Groups & Meetings

– Knowland Revolutionizes Group Business Development With Launch of the Estimated Revenue Calculator
Knowland, a world leading provider of data-as-a-service insights on meetings and events for hospitality, today enhanced its platform with the Estimated Revenue Calculator (ERC), designed to help hotels prioritize sales efforts based on the total account revenue potential of sales leads.
www.knowland.com

– ProposalPath Tapped by Troon for Proposal and Contract Innovation to Win More Group Sales
Troon®, the leader in providing golf and club-related leisure and hospitality services, has joined forces with Bluebuzzard to transform their sales process with ProposalPath, the company’s flagship proposal platform. Utilizing ProposalPath’s all-in-one document workflow, Troon-affiliated facilities can maintain brand consistency with ease while closing more leads in less time, and offering personalized sales documents that impress at every step.
bluebuzzard.com

Back Office

– Raines Co. Dramatically Improves Owner Reporting Using Business Intelligence
Business intelligence solution is enabling the hotel management, development, and investment group to streamline operational reporting and make smarter business decisions on the fly.
www.aptech-inc.com

– ProfitSword Again Wins Industry-wide Acclaim With Multiple Recognitions During the 2022 HotelTechAwards
ProfitSword, a premier developer of business intelligence and data integration software for the hospitality industry, is today honored to announce details on its impressive performance at this year’s HotelTechAwards.
profitsword.com

– M3 Named Best Reporting & Accounting Software in 2022 HotelTechAwards
M3’s flagship product, Accounting Core, the hospitality sector’s #1 cloud-based accounting and financial management platform across North America, received the 2022 HotelTechAward for Best Reporting & Accounting Software by Hotel Tech Report.
www.m3as.com

Human Resources

– UniFocus Achieves Industry First in Spurring Workforce Management Motivation and Engagement With Unveiling of Gamification Capabilities
UniFocus, the leading provider of Workforce Management Systems, has today announced the launch of advanced gamification abilities for its solutions, providing hospitality businesses with a powerful tool leading to enhanced productivity and the increase in labor management expertise across the breadth of an organization.
unifocus.com

– Hotel Effectiveness Launches Into 2022 Announcing New Customers and More Awards
Hotel Effectiveness, a software industry leader for hotel labor optimization, starts the new year with an expanded customer portfolio. PerfectLabor™, the company’s flagship product, has won the Best Software Award for the fourth consecutive year by Hotel Tech Report.
hoteleffectiveness.com

– UniFocus Unveils Predictive Scheduling, a Powerful Tool Ensuring Fair Workweek Compliance and Effective Labor Coverage
Workforce optimization technology provider empowers hoteliers with the means to easily navigate the increasing predictable schedule laws while maintaining seamless operations and high-level service quality.
unifocus.com

Security

– VENZA and CyberTek Announce Commitment to Respecting Data by Becoming a 2022 Data Privacy Week Champion
VENZA and CyberTek announced their commitment to Data Privacy Week by registering as a Champion. As a Champion, VENZA and CyberTek recognize and support the principle that all organizations share the responsibility of being conscientious stewards of personal information.
www.venzagroup.com

– VENZA Town Hall Meetings Added to Product Development Process
In 2021, VENZA inaugurated Town Hall Meetings that bring together customer stakeholders and VENZA’s departmental leaders. The objective of this effort is to gather insightful feedback which serves as a qualitative research portion of a larger product evaluation process.
www.venzagroup.com

– ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions Named Best Mobile Key Provider by HotelTechAwards for Third Consecutive Year
ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions, a leading provider of advanced security technology for the hospitality industry, is today honored to announce that its Mobile Accessplatform has once again been named the Best Mobile Key & Keyless Entry Solution by the HotelTechAwards.
www.assaabloyglobalsolutions.com/hospitality

Market Reports

– Knowland Issues Its Quarterly Event Activity Forecast
Knowland, a world leading provider of data-as-a-service insights on meetings and events for hospitality, today released an updated U.S. Meetings Recovery Forecast (MRF) to provide the hospitality industry with predictive insights into event recovery over the next three years. The forecast remains unchanged from its initial release in November.
www.knowland.com

– Knowland Sights Indicators of a Stabilizing Meeting Industry as Native Seasonality Asserts Itself Into Normal Patterns
Knowland, a world leading provider of data-as-a-service insights on meetings and events for hospitality, released its monthly meetings and events data for December. Although December U.S. group meeting volume decreased 16.8 percent over November 2021, this change is in line with normal seasonality trends.
www.knowland.com

Piqued Our Interest

Even Top Hotel Brands Need to Improve Distribution and Marketing Performance in 2022

Why Hospitality Workers Entering the Industry Are Saying ‘Not for Me’

Ridiculous: Marriott Hotel Adds “Sustainability Fee”

Our 2021 Roundup in Hotel Marketing, Bookings and Tech

And now for you-know-what.…

For several years, a man was having an affair with an Italian woman.

One night, she confided to him that she was pregnant. Not wanting to ruin his marriage, he said he would pay her a large sum of money, if she would go to Italy to secretly have the child. If she stayed in Italy to raise the child, he would also provide child support until the child turned 18.

She agreed, but asked how he would know when the baby was born.

To keep it discreet, he told her to simply mail him a postcard, and write ‘Spaghetti’ on the back. He would then arrange for the child support to begin.

One day, about 9 months later, he came home to his confused wife.

‘Honey, she said, ‘you received a very strange postcard today.’

The wife watched as her husband read the card, turned white, and fainted.

On the card was written:

Spaghetti,

Spaghetti,

Spaghetti.

Two with meatballs, one without.

Send extra sauce.