Westin Buffalo Becomes First Hotel to Allow Guests to Connect Personal Accounts to Echo Devices
The Westin Buffalo, located within Delaware North’s global headquarters in Buffalo, New York, and one of the upper-upscale properties in the Starwood collection, has been an early technology adopter since it opened in September 2017. Just a few months after opening, for example, the hotel, which occupies the first five floors of the 12-story hotel and office tower, added robot butlers to the hotel staff.
It was the first hotel in New York State, and one of just 20 hotels in the country at that time, to employ a Relay robot, manufactured by California-based Savioke. The Savioke Relay, nicknamed Chip, is programmed to provide automated service to hotel guests, from bringing a cold cocktail to their room to delivering extra towels or dropping off a complimentary toothbrush and tube of toothpaste.
Now, a year and a half later, the Westin Buffalo has become the first hotel in New York State to deploy guest-servicing Echo devices in each of its 115 guest rooms, where guests can now connect their own Amazon accounts with their personal music playlists.
Infor Launches Hotel Price Optimization Solution, Unveils Enhancements to Its HMS Product Suite
Hoteliers have a lot of challenges. Among these challenges are fluctuating variables that often create uncertainty in pricing decisions.
What price I should sell my hotel rooms at today? Should I follow my competitors’ pricing? Is there a price war going on? How do I shift bookings from OTAs to internal? What is the correlation between the change in my bookings and competitor prices?
One of the solution providers addressing these challenges is Infor, which is introducing a new solution, dubbed Infor Hospitality Price Optimizer (HPO). The cloud solution, which was just announced today and will be generally available this summer, is designed to deliver better pricing decisions for hoteliers.
The solution works by considering the pricing process from the guest’s point of view, including what sources a guest looks at, and compares, to make a booking. Infor expects that HPO will help hoteliers make better decisions more quickly, confidently price rooms left to sell, and increase bottom-line profits.
ALICE Unveils Its Solution to Streamlining Hotel Housekeeping Operations
As many as 4 out of 5 guest would abandon a hotel booking due to an unclean guest room, according to a recent survey. Another study found that 80 percent of guests would leave a hotel if their guest room failed to live up to their own cleanliness standards.
And cleanliness is not the only aspect of housekeeping that can have a profound impact on the quality of the guest experience. Housekeeping efficiency also factors into the equation. After all, long check-in lines at the front desk and waiting periods are often caused by a backlog of rooms not yet prepared for arriving guests.
Because the housekeeping function touches on one of the other biggest areas of opportunity for improvement in hotel guest services, a housekeeping solution deserves a lot of serious attention.
Now ALICE, which offers a hotel operations platform designed to improve guest relations and experiences by facilitating communications and workflow management system, has jumped on the bandwagon, announcing this week the release of ALICE Housekeeping.
3 Ways Technology Can Transform Waste Management At Your Hotel
Whether you run small boutique hotels or a series of larger chains, you have a great deal of responsibility to keep day-to-day operations running smoothly. You’re consistently looking to boost your bottom line, enhance customer service, make sure your space is in tip-top shape and find ways to streamline operational efficiencies.
One area that may fall to the back burner is waste management — but in an environment where a merry go round of guests visit daily, it’s one area that should remain a top priority. Working with a managed service provider can help save you time, money and stress by pinpointing waste needs, increasing waste efficiencies and utilizing the latest technology.
Martello Joins Forces with GuestTek to Deliver Reliable High Speed Internet Access for Hotel Guests
Martello Technologies Group Inc. (TSXV: MTLO), a leading provider of solutions that deliver clarity and control of complex IT environments, has announced a partnership with GuestTek, a global leader in broadband technology and interactive solutions for the hospitality industry with operations in 85 countries and serving more than 3,500 hotels. Together, the two companies are delivering reliable high speed internet access (HSIA) to more than 25 hotels, including some of the world’s most recognized brands.
PLI Introduces Hospitality Key Cards Equipped with NXP’s MIFARE RFID Solution
PLI Card Marketing Solutions, a global provider of key cards and hospitality marketing programs, has announced the introduction of guest key cards equipped with new NXP’s MIFARE® Hospitality IC.
MIFARE Hospitality can be integrated with most hotel lock systems and is now available from PLI in branded, custom-printed, and generic RFID guest room key cards.
NXP’s MIFARE Hospitality RFID solution was developed specifically to address the need for improved guest safety through 3DES security, as well as an enhanced guest experience through additional NFC functionality, at a cost structure that addresses the concerns of hotel operators.
GCH Hotel Group Implements apaleo in Less Than a Day, Enhancing the Guest Journey and Improving Operations
Most hoteliers know that getting a new property management system (PMS) up and running isn’t always easy – the project can take time and cause headaches for staff members learning the new system. GCH Hotel Group, one of the leading hotel management companies in Europe knew it was necessary to move away from the legacy system that was the backbone of its new ibis Styles property, but its requirements came with at a cost: migration to a new system should happen in less than a day.
The newly-branded 126-room ibis Styles Berlin Treptow also needed to build out an innovative digital guest experience, have advanced reporting to analyze business KPIs, and, of course, be fully PCI compliant. Was this wishlist a pipe dream, or could it become a reality? One provider was up for the challenge. apaleo, the world’s most open property management system, partnered with GCH Hotel Group to get all systems up and running.
New CMS Feature from Vizergy Keeps Hospitality Clients Ahead of the Competition
Vizergy, the hospitality industry’s leading provider in digital marketing software solutions, just released a feature that will keep their clients ahead of the competition.
The new feature, Vizergy’s Website Performance Analysis, is built directly into their proprietary Content Management System (CMS) to quickly analyze websites for any performance issues. Website pages are loaded dynamically into the latest Google Chrome web browser to be analyzed and then a detailed audit report is automatically generated with any performance issues found. The performance analysis focuses on general issues such as JavaScript and 404 errors, SSL issues, accessibility/ADA issues, and page speed.
published by Starfleet Media, is the hospitality industry’s premier source of information and insights related to technology innovation at the world’s leading hotels and resorts.
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