The Tricycle of Guest Service Excellence: A Perfect Model For Remarkable Experiences
Doug Kennedy | October 4, 2024
The Art of a Great Arrival for Luxury Hotels
Adam and Larry Mogelonsky | May 22, 2024
Guest Experience
Continuing Professional Development for Housekeepers
Larry Mogelonsky | January 2, 2019
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.hotelmogel.com) While new legislation is emerging from all corners of the world to better safeguard workers, and more specifically housekeepers, from harm and thereby generate new applicants for these roles. Two prominent examples are the widespread mandate for employee safety devices, often called the panic button, as well as the new musculoskeletal injury prevention regulations in California. I see these trends as part of a bigger issue, though. Namely, we aren't doing enough to make this particular line of work rewarding over a long stretch of time. Housekeeping can be grueling, monotonous and o...
Why Employee Recognition Matters for Hotels
Ben Travis | November 8, 2018
By Ben Travis The hospitality industry is one of the most important in today's interconnected world - it creates local jobs, opens areas to new business and tourism, and makes up around 10% of global GDP. However, it can also be a high-stress industry, with irregular schedules, long hours, and a lack of appreciation. Here are some sobering statistics: Employee turnover for hotel and other hospitality organizations is almost double that of other private sector jobs. There's a strong correlation between hotel employee engagement and likelihood of guests recommending a hotel to others. Only 55% of Millennial hospitality workers...
On-Demand Service and the Culture of Convenience: What Are Guests Really Looking For?
Jos Schaap, CEO -Founder and CEO | November 8, 2018
By Jos Schaap CEO and Founder – StayNTouch We aren't just living in a mobile age — we are living in an 'on-demand' economy, and it is revolutionizing business models and the corresponding consumer experience across every industry. With digital platforms and apps empowering instant gratification, paired with efficient and intuitive technological properties to cater to a personalized and data-driven experience, the supply which meets the demand of customers is readily available, 24/7. The modern consumer has become accustomed to the ease of uninhibited access to messaging, e-mail, social media, e-commerce, and general online f...
Angie Hospitality to Join Expert Panel on Voice Technology at HX: The Hotel Experience 2018
Angie Hospitality | November 7, 2018
Angie Hospitality's Michael Cohen to serve as industry expert in panel discussion exploring how voice control technology is impacting the hotel industry. San Jose, CA – November 7, 2018 – Angie Hospitality, creator of Angie, the world's first 24-hour interactive guest room assistant, Wi-Fi and room control technology solution built for hotels and resorts, has been selected to participate in a panel discussion at this year's HX: the Hotel Experience, taking place November 11-12 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. Angie Hospitality's head of business development, Michael Cohen, will serve as a key paneli...
Intelity and ALICE, Forbes Travel Guide Brand Officials, Announce Integration and Partnership
ALICE | November 7, 2018
Partnership offers hotels a suite of tools to manage their properties and interact with guests Los Angeles, CA (November 7, 2018) — Intelity, the global travel industry's leading enterprise mobile and in-room technology platform, and ALICE, the hospitality industry's leading operations platform, announced today they have teamed up to offer hotels the most complete suite of tools available to manage their hotels and interact with guests. Through Intelity's enterprise platform, hotels can access important guest-facing tools such as a customizable mobile app, in-room tablets, mobile key, voice, TV casting, and more. Through ALICE's o...
Over 1,000 Hotels Around The World Are Now Sharing Unique Local Experiences With Arrivedo’s Technology
Arrivedo | November 5, 2018
Arrivedo celebrates the milestone just as it's been selected as an innovator for this year's Phocuswright Conference. San Francisco, US November 2018 - Arrivedo, the first online platform with curated content of local things to do around hotels, today announces that 1,000 hotels are now using its technology to enhance their guests' experience. The company has been selected as an innovator at this year's Phocuswright Conference on November 13-15 in Los Angeles, which will allow it to share its quality content creation expertise with the event's attendees. Arrivedo allows hotels to act as local hosts and offer guests the most authentic st...
Finding Meaning in Travel
Dr. Reza Etemad-Sajadi | November 1, 2018
By Dr. Reza Etemad-Sajadi and Marie Schöpfer For more and more travelers nowadays, vacations are less about the "fly and flop" and more about living an outstanding experience and finding meaning and purpose in their busy lives. Some travelers seek authenticity and want to really dive into the culture or destination they are exploring; some want to dedicate a portion of their trip to a charity, besides taking time for themselves and get involved in volunteering projects. People are traveling for new reasons As explained by Jean-François de Clermont-Tonnerre - Executive Producer of "Going Home to the Stars", a documentary that...
Lodging Interactive Rolls Out Commingle:Engage Total Customer Engagement Services
Lodging Interactive | November 1, 2018
Lodging Interactive, an award-winning digital marketing and social media engagement agency exclusively serving the hospitality industry, today announced the launch of commingle:engage, a total customer engagement solution for hotels and resorts. commingle:engage is a fully managed service that enables properties, of any size, to effectively build customer loyalty through personal, one-on-one, customer engagement with new and past guests. "Since 2006 we've successfully established CoMMingle as the leading provider of guest reputation management and social media marketing services exclusively for hospitality," stated DJ Vallauri, Lodging ...
The Need for True Careers in Housekeeping
Larry Mogelonsky | October 31, 2018
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.hotelmogel.com) A widespread problem that hotels are currently facing pertains to staffing shortages. Lensing our discussion to the housekeeping department where turnover is often at resource-exhaustive rates, a common thread I've seen and heard from executive housekeepers and human resource directors is that this line of work is not seen as desirable, only attracting those candidates who desperately need a job and who are not motivated to stay beyond the base need for a weekly stipend. Some room attendants end up staying from lengthy breadths of time – decades even – and become cheris...
First Deployment of Volara-Powered Alexa Technology in Mexico Debuts at Viceroy Los Cabos
Volara | October 30, 2018
Viceroy Los Cabos selects Volara to power voice technologies in guestrooms New York — October 30, 2018 — Volara – the voice hub for the hotel industry – has been selected by Viceroy Los Cabos to provide voice technology within the guestrooms at the iconic, award winning resort. Viceroy Los Cabos, located on the Sea of Cortés in Baja California, is the first property in the Viceroy Hotel Group portfolio to enable voice-based conversations with their guests managed in real-time and securely integrated into existing hotel technologies by Volara's software. Volara provides conversation management and secure in...
Knowcross and Percipia Integration to Help Hotels Deliver an Enhanced Service Experience to Their Guests
Knowcross | October 30, 2018
Washington D.C., October 30th 2018 - KNOWCROSS, the preferred service quality management platform of the finest hotels across the globe, is happy to announce the integration of its guest request workflow management system with Percipia – a leader in telephony integrations and in-room interactive display applications. The integration is aimed to deliver a joint solution for hotels to provide an improved experience to their guests. With this integration, guest requests made by Percipia's guest-facing Latitude in-room application or guest personal device running an identical application will be processed or relayed as a guest request...
THE SALES PROCESS: Step Three GAINING COMMITMENT
ProSolutions | October 26, 2018
By Jana Love As we wrap up the third step in the Sales Process Series, your number one goal in sales is to gain commitment from the customer. However, The Sales Board wrote a blog on the research they found stating that, "...salespeople need dramatic improvement in achieving Sales Objectives and Gaining Commitment at each milestone of the sale." Their statistics show that 62% of salespeople fail to ask for commitment. That is a lot of potential sales heading out your door. Gaining commitment is an important element of selling. It consists of closing (checking in) at each step and making conclusions about where your customer is...
How 5 Hotels Compete With OTAs by Showcasing Unique Local Experiences
Nancy Huang | October 25, 2018
By Nancy Huang Today's travelers are no longer content with merely visiting a destination and have the same experience as everyone else. They increasingly yearn for something unique and want to explore the places they visit through a local perspective. This emerging need represents a huge opportunity for hotels. By creating in-depth destination guides, or by hosting their own locally-led tours, hotels can make their properties more desirable to drive more direct bookings. The following post highlights five hotels that are promoting their destinations with engaging neighborhood guides and authentic local experiences. But before diving...
Conrad Indianapolis Launches Intelity Guest Service Platform to Great Success
Intelity | October 25, 2018
The downtown, luxury Indianapolis hotel sees its numbers of engagements, clicks, requests, and orders soar Los Angeles, California (October 25, 2018) – Intelity, the leading integrated mobile and in-room technology provider for the global travel industry, has announced its full guest service platform is now live at the luxurious Conrad Indianapolis hotel. The award-winning hotel, located just a three-minute covered walk from the downtown Indianapolis Convention Center, launched the Intelity Guest Service Platform, which includes in-room tablets, and Intelity's staff-facing service management system along with Conrad Concierge thro...
Sense of Place Has a Human Side
Larry Mogelonsky | October 24, 2018
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.hotelmogel.com) Too often when we refer to the concept of a 'sense of place', our thoughts tend to drift towards the physicality of a hotel – mainly its exterior and interior design elements. Yes, these are both insurmountably important towards creating a unique impression on guests and bringing them into your property's exceptional experience, but they are hardly everything. While next down the list would be guestroom design, staff uniforms, authentically local additions to F&B, lobby or spa treatments and perhaps the keepsakes you give guests at checkout, one area that you cannot overlo...
How Technological Accountability Can Boost Guest Service
Jos Schaap, CEO -Founder and CEO | October 24, 2018
By Jos Schaap CEO and Founder StayNTouch Ask any leader — regardless of industry — what they believe is the key to driving customer experience and exceeding consumer demands, and their answer will likely detail some form of technological transformation. We have long since entered the age of the customer, which means customer experience can now be earmarked as the defining factor in the creation of brand longevity and customer loyalty. In fact, according to recent studies, 74% of respondents believe that digital is reinventing the overall experience that they deliver to customers and improving digital channels is the top acti...
BeyondTV Solution Awarded U.S. Patent for Advanced Guest Data Protection and Privacy Technology
Hotel Internet Services, Inc. | October 24, 2018
United States Patent Office (USPTO) recognizes Hotel Internet Services for security protocol developed for the BeyondTV Entertainment Streaming Solution CLEARWATER, Fla. — October 24, 2018 — Hotel Internet Services (HIS) has been awarded a patent by the USPTO for the guest data security protocol used in its BeyondTV solution, an industry leading platform that allows hotel guests to access content from online streaming subscriptions or wirelessly cast from personal devices onto guestroom televisions. Issued with patent No. 10,097,864 and officially named 'Guest Personal Data Protection,' the technology provides guests with th...
The Top 25 Most Haunted Historic Hotels for 2018 From Historic Hotels of America
Historic Hotels of America | October 23, 2018
These "spirited" guests may have checked out, but never left these historic hotels WASHINGTON, D.C.—October 23, 2018 Historic Hotels of America® has over 300 hotels with long and storied histories representing over 36 decades in American history. From a former Carmelite convent to hotels that are adjacent to battlegrounds and a hotel that was once a morgue, many of these hotels have "spirited" guests that continue to haunt the halls long after they have checked out. Here is Historic Hotels of America's Top 25 Most Haunted Historic Hotels for 2018 along with some of America's spookiest hotel ghost stories: Concord's Colonial In...
Ways To Improve Business Travelers’ Guest Experience
| October 19, 2018
by Emilia Jaakkola The hospitality industry is constantly exposed to new demands from business travelers, particularly as tech-savvy Millennials have grown up into that customer segment. New technologies - like artificial intelligence and IoT - are revolutionizing hotel guest experience permanently. This brings us to a question many hoteliers are pondering: how have business travelers needs changed and how to update the hotel for them to maximize guest experience? To help you do this, we've compiled some of the most relevant needs and ways to satisfy them: 1. Streamline the check-in process. Upon arrival business travelers value a fast...
Volo Hospitality Systems Enters North America Markets
Volo Hospitality Systems | October 18, 2018
Austin, TX (October 22, 2018) -- Volo Hospitality Systems is bringing their in-room tablet system to the top 30 North American markets - and if you are a "top 30 under 30", meaning your property meets Volo's quality standards and is a small boutique hotel in the neighborhood of 30 rooms or less, you have a chance to win big. Volo is offering their Digital Hotel Directory™ service on customized Apple iPads for free for life to one of their favorite small boutique hotels in each market - first come, first serve. Each week Volo will showcase a handful of select properties from a North American market, and the offer stands to the firs...
Adjusting to a Hotel Labor Shortage
Larry Mogelonsky | October 17, 2018
By Larry Mogelonsky, MBA, P. Eng. (www.hotelmogel.com) Not necessarily specific to the hospitality industry and certainly not applicable to every geographic territory, but there appears to be a rising labor shortage that will come to affect all manner of jobs in a hotel workplace. With such a diverse array of back-of-house ranks for both university-educated individuals as well as those without a college-level diploma, we must now fight to keep every team member lest we suffer from the long-term consequences associated with increasing onboarding costs, guest service gaps and lack of proper succession planning. Especially in major Western...
Volara Adds Accuracy Engine to Better Interpret Hotel Guest Requests of Alexa
Volara | October 16, 2018
Patent-pending technology provides a translation layer between what Alexa hears and the request shared with the hotel New York — October 16, 2018 — Volara – the voice hub for the hotel industry – has developed a patent-pending technology that will help Amazon's Alexa excel in the complex hotel environment. As hotel guests bring their own colloquialisms, accents, and verbally convey their intents to hotels in a myriad of ways, Volara's new Accuracy Engine enables Alexa to satisfy their commands appropriately and with greater precision. Volara's Accuracy Engine leverages robust data sets, contextual awareness, AI ...
Horizontal Hotel Technology vs. Best of Breed in Emerging Markets – What Is the Best Approach?
Binu Mathews | October 11, 2018
By Binu Mathews The hotel Industry is constantly evolving. This evolution is being driven by the never-ending changes in consumer demand. A hotelier needs to accommodate today's pace of change and create a memorable guest experience. Thus, it becomes essential to support hotel operations with the introduction of technology advancements and innovation so as to keep up with the guest's preferences and choices. Over the years, there have been technological advancements that have defined our industry. Changes regarding the operational aspects of a hotel, changes in the way hotel's market and sell their rooms and changes that now...
StayNTouch and OpenKey Create Innovative Benefit for Hotel Staff and Guests
OpenKey | October 11, 2018
Automated Mobile Key Delivery empowers hotel staff to put the Guest Experience first DALLAS, TEXAS (October 11, 2018) – StayNTouch, an innovator in mobile technology and Property Management Systems (PMS) for hotels and lodging, along with OpenKey, the industry standard for universal mobile key in hotels have introduced Automated Mobile Key Delivery to their existing platform solution. Automated Mobile Key Delivery makes it incredibly fast and convenient for front desk agents to manage guest reservations and issue mobile keys. With this freedom comes precious time that can be focused on ensuring hotel guest needs are met. Many hot...
