Tech Talk

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Definitely Doug 6/9/23: Hotels Fighting Trafficking: The Role of Technology
Posted: 06/09/2023

This week I want to address an important issue for the hospitality industry, albeit one that technologists have not historically had on their radar. They can potentially play a significant role in addressing the issue, which is human trafficking, and more specifically sex trafficking.

In my last column, I reviewed some key trends in autonomous mobile robotics for hotels, and dove into three categories of delivery robots in more detail – room delivery, food delivery, and heavy-lift robots. This week I will round out the topic with several other robot types and applications, as well as general guidance for evaluating, acquiring, and adopting mobile autonomous robotics. If you have not yet read part one, I recommend going back and doing so before continuing below, as some of the introductory material is important background to what follows.

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Best Practices for Hotel & Resort Operators in Pool Season 2023
Posted: 05/25/2023

With the arrival of warmer weather and summer fast approaching, hospitality operators are gearing up for another pool season. This year, technology is at the forefront of driving booking revenue and taking operational efficiency to the next level. Modern technology platforms (such as hospitality’s newest technology category – the Property Experience Management System or PXMS) are providing brand new capabilities that unlock new strategies and approaches to filling the pool with satisfied guests.

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The Growing Role Technology Plays in Hotels and Restaurants
Posted: 05/25/2023

In the past few years, hotels and restaurants have grown into hubs for entertainment, leisure, and human connection. In an effort to best serve their guests, operators have begun rethinking their technological investments and working to adapt to recent shifts in consumer preference and operations. To ensure that guests have the best on-site experience possible, brands are increasingly looking to new technologies to make their experiences more convenient and comfortable. Advanced property management systems (PMS) and point-of-sale (POS) systems can increase operational and staff efficiency, while also meeting changing customer expectations for a high-value but relatively low-touch experience.

This week I will return to a topic I have covered before, because it has, within the last 12 to 18 months, become one of the hottest-growth categories in hospitality technology. That topic is autonomous mobile robots – specifically, ones that can move around the facility as well as perform specific tasks. Many of these products were launched pre-Covid but were often seen at the time as more of a marketing gimmick than a legitimate operational solution.

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Why Google's Mobile-first Indexing Strategy is Crucial for Your Website

04/09/2018 Tagged as: mobile indexing, search engine optimization, SEO

by Nimesh Dinubhai

In the mobile-first era, it is certainly crucial to have effective search engine optimization (SEO). Most people use a mobile device to access the internet. In fact, about 50 percent to 60 percent of search queries come from smartphones and tablets. As the majority of search requests increase by mobile device, Google will be switching to mobile-first indexing in the near future. This was announced in 2016 during an interview with Garry Illyes, a well-known Google webmaster trends analyst. Illyes informed that, even though Google had not set any specific dates, the mobile-first shift is expected to happen in early 2018.

However, a large number of phone users complain that a bad phone surfing experience has made them less likely to engage with certain websites. It’s important to make sure your business would not be left behind by not optimizing your websites for smartphones and tablets. Google has introduced a very crucial transition to the mobile-first index to improve the experience of phone users. Right now, Google indexes a website based on its desktop version to rank both the phone and desktop version, but with the implementation of the mobile-first index, this will be going to change and for good reasons.

Soon, Google will crawl similar to a mobile user's point of view and will catalog sites according to the mobile phone version. But, these updates will be implemented slowly and the changes would not be noticed externally at the start. If you are using a responsive design for the site, you should be aware about this update. While mobile-friendly sites work the same way across all devices, responsive ones are altered according to the size of the screen. Moreover, desktop and phone version of a site generally have similar content being easily accessed on both devices. However, if you are using different content on mobile sites or using different mobile URLs by means of dynamic serving, then you should be very attentive.

A responsive design will offer you many benefits such as improved usability, lower bounce rates, less duplicate content and more. With the rise of mobile-first indexing, webpage loading speed will become the main deciding cause in driving quality customers to your website and getting them converted. In fact, Google has been experimenting with this latest update for quite some time and you will surely get quality output from this update.

About The Author

Nimesh Dinubhai
President
Websrefresh

Nimesh Dinubhai completed his studies in 2003 and launched Websrefresh to help businesses grow their ROI. He also owns two Arizona hotels, one of which earned the Historical Hotel Award in 2014.