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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OTT Entertainment Gets Personal

10/19/2016

by Mike Bitz

Entertainment makes us laugh and cry, gives us fodder for the water cooler, and brings us together, and yet it’s also a highly individual experience. Despite 21 years of marriage and a multitude of common interests, my wife will never share my obsession with Game of Thrones. In fact, everyone in our household has their own favorites – the boys like Dual Survival and YouTube videos of puzzle solvers (respectively – don’t get it wrong!), and my wife looks forward to a few quiet hours watching The Bachelor each week (which frankly I will never understand).

You likely experience the same in your own household, just as the same could be expected of other families and groups. For example, millennials, a rapidly growing demographic of much interest to the hospitality industry, often get lumped together as one. In reality, they are individuals who are making personal choices in all aspects of their lives, including entertainment. With online reviews and the preponderance of social media, their voices are loud and should be heard. But in hospitality, other voices matter too:

Visitors from locations around the world who want news from home, in their native language
Sports fans wanting to watch their team when they can’t cheer them on in person
The investor, preparing for the annual board presentation
Parents of boisterous young children looking for a few moments of silence to unpack
The business traveler who wants to enjoy that missed season finale before accidentally seeing the plot twist on Facebook
The grandparents who want to relive highlights from their day at the beach with the grandkids

Hotel guests are you, me and everyone, and we each have our own favorites. Some choices intersect while some contrast. With no two guests wanting exactly the same thing, how do we provide meaningful, personalized stays?

It Sounds Complex
When personalization is mentioned, it’s hard not to immediately think of massive databases, complicated CRM solutions, large integration projects, big development efforts and even bigger price tags. Plus, the questions begin:

How does this tie into our loyalty system?
What’s the user experience?
Are guests willing to not only opt in, but also provide enough information so that recommendations are meaningful?
How can a personalized experience be created while controlling capital and operational expenses?

The Solution is Quite Simple
Guests curate their own content daily (or even more frequently) based on advertising, friends’ recommendations, social media and other influences. With over-the-top (OTT) entertainment options increasing so rapidly, this personal content curation becomes that much more specific.

Rather than building a complicated, costly new system that pushes (hopefully) relevant information at a time when your guests are (hopefully) awake, use the personal content mining that’s already happening and give guests the control. Leverage what they already know – Chromecast, a ubiquitous consumer technology built by Google, enables guests to enjoy their OTT content on the biggest screen in the room. Content is controlled using personal devices like tablets and smartphones, which have become the “remote controls of our lives,” enabling everything from booking reservations and checking email to paying for merchandise and accessing video streaming subscriptions. Now add casting to that list: guests simply open an app and cast their favorite content to the TV, seamlessly, without entering any personal information.

With over 30 million devices sold, Chromecast is familiar technology at home, and with appropriate security and installation, can be added to virtually any existing in-room setup to deliver personalized casting experiences – for each and every one of your guests, no matter the age, no matter the hometown.

The End Game: Self-service Personalization
Change is happening. Chromecasts can already be found in thousands of hotel rooms across the United States and Canada, and guests are making it personal:

Over 210 apps cast in just 9 months
Unsurprisingly, Netflix, Hulu, HBO GO and YouTube are very popular
Sports fans (NFL, MLB), parents (Disney Movies Anywhere, YouTube Kids), international travelers (BBC, Hulu Japan, On Demand Korea), and gamers (Monopoly, Angry Birds) account for over 25 percent of usage
The music service Tidal was cast in hotel rooms the day after it debuted in app stores
Guests are spreading the word in social media posts, on comment cards, on TripAdvisor, to general managers, anytime they connect with the world.

A personalized entertainment experience is quickly shifting from ‘nice surprise’ to ‘required amenity’ and is becoming the new path to higher guest satisfaction, continued occupancy and revenue growth. Chromecast enables millennials and others, individually, to choose their own entertainment now, without requiring hotels to build costly, time-consuming solutions.

Best of all, when I travel for business, I can binge watch Game of Thrones without someone rolling her eyes – it's even better than at home!

About The Author

Mike Bitz
Vice President of Business and Technology Development
SONIFI

Mike Bitz, vice president of business and technology development at SONIFI, is focused on fostering partner relationships. He joined SONIFI in 2000 and most recently led the engineering team. Mike holds a computer science degree from Dakota State University and is based in SONIFI’s operations headquarters in Sioux Falls, S.D.