Amid factors like soaring inflation, the war in Ukraine and growing fears of stagflation – the World Bank predicted that global growth would slow to 2.9% in 2022, down from 5.7% in 2021.
Hotels now have a decision to make, to press pause on tech investments or double down.
The reality is that whether or not a recession occurs, halting investment in technology for hotels can be an extremely dangerous decision for several reasons:
- Tech is becoming more necessary to operate in any environment, regardless of where the economy stands (especially amidst labor issues…)
- It could derail or delay progress toward long-term goals
- Top hotel companies don’t want to be caught flat-footed or miss the next opportunities to stay ahead of the compset
After speaking with dozens of innovative hoteliers at the show one thing became abundantly clear–instead of pulling back all together, the best leaders in the business are viewing tech as an essential and integrated part of their operation both front and back of house and their technology priorities are geared towards eliminating inefficiencies, streamlining their operations and driving revenue.
Below we’ll dig into 7 key tech trends that serve to be the common thread driving new innovations on display at the show:
- Leveraging Tech to Tackle Labor Issues
- Consolidation of Guest Experience Tech
- AI Based Suggestions & Recommendations
- More Granular Reporting & Insights
- Reduction of Manual Tasks & Data Entry
- More Granular Segmentation to Drive Deeper Personalization
- Spotlight on Digital Tipping
Trend #1: Leveraging Tech to Tackle Labor Issues
Mentions: Cloudbeds, Oracle, RoomRaccoon, GoTab, innRoad, IRIS, Clairvoyix, Smart Host
If you’re feeling a sense of deja vu reading this first trend, you aren’t crazy. This was the top trend in last year’s HITEC recap too. The reality is though that in hindsight last year’s labor issues pale in comparison to this year’s which is why tech providers have doubled down to focus on investing in building tools to help extend the capabilities of the limited staff your hotel does still have on property. They’re finding new ways to automate manual time consuming processes, make staff more efficient and even smooth the onboarding process to mitigate the pain of poor retention and training a revolving door of new team members who need to get up to speed quickly with your tools and processes to mitigate the risk of burn and churn.
Cloudbeds launched Amplify to provide their hotel partners with outsourced digital marketing, SEO and meta-search advertising services by Cloudbeds. Marina Moretti, Owner of Ô de Casa Hostel & Bar explained how much this new offering simplified digital marketing for his property, “As an owner, digital marketing is not my specialty. I have always viewed it as complicated, but it is quickly becoming a necessity to operate a lodging business in today’s market. With Cloudbeds Amplify, the team made the process easy by handling the entire setup and management. Thus far, we've driven 57 additional bookings through our website that might otherwise have been booked via OTAs - without requiring any additional time or effort from myself or staff."
Oracle launched the OPERA Cloud Digital Assistant, a digital assistant to help staff perform lookups and routine tasks through voice or text. Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts have been early adopters of the new feature and commented on the helpfulness of simple information lookups and questions such as quickly finding out room statuses or changes.
RoomRaccoon launched RoomRacoon Housekeeping, a new module to digitize manual housekeeping processes for their hotel partners. Adriaan Liebetrau, General Manager of MINT Hotels, South Africa shared that “Leading a large team of housekeepers with multiple tasks at MINT Hotels has now been simplified with a single solution – RaccoonHousekeeping. It makes it so much easier to connect with our team through the mobile app where I can update tasks at the click of a button. This saves me multiple calls between departments to ensure rooms are ready for arrival.”
GoTab launched it’s Zone Ordering System enabling hotels to create distinct zones for their restaurant, common areas, meeting space, pool or guest rooms to tailor bespoke F&B service models and offerings based on where guests are located on property. Camilo Rivera, General Manager of The Delegate Hotel, highlighted GoTab’s ability to help hotels blend tech and in-person hospitality, “GoTab is the best solution for contactless ordering and payment in the current landscape. It has given us the tools to pivot during this past year, and we’re excited to evolve our hospitality service model to blend technology and in-person hospitality, particularly for our luxury clientele."
innRoad launched Mobile Check-in to help expedite guest check in, capture all required information, and simplify front desk operations. With contactless check-in, guests get to submit their contact info, guest identification documents, credit card information, and sign their registration forms online before arriving at the hotel. With this feature, guests can easily save time when checking in by just getting their room key at reception.
IRIS launched Open Tab to offer guests the option to pay at the table, order from multiple devices, split the bill and more. Guests no longer have to wait for servers to add to their order or settle their final bill which saves time, increases check size, boosts ordering frequency and more effectively meets the expectations of today’s traveler.
Clairvoyix launched EnterpriseRFP in beta to help hotel sales teams to more with less and improve communication with planners by eliminating manual tasks and saving time with their new online RFP builder wizard that enables team members to seamlessly craft everything from briefs or comprehensive RFPs.
Smart Host launches Offer Management to help hoteliers quickly and easily create beautiful high converting offers based on live availability. The company reported the early adopted Falkensteiner Hotels reduced time spent with offer generation from 10 minutes per offer to 2 minutes per offer, and increased offer conversion rates by 32%.
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Trend #2: Consolidation of Guest Experience Tech
Mentions: Duve, HelloShift, Whistle, INTELITY, Oaky, SABA, MyStay
Convergence of marketing and distribution has been a theme of past years but what was interesting and new to see this year is a serious push towards consolidation of guest experience tech. Providers across staff collaboration, contactless checkin, mobile key, guest apps, upselling, guest messaging, mobile ordering and more are all starting to either build (or buy) new functionality to the point where the overlap across categories is becoming extremely difficult to pick a single category for any product.
Ultimately this trend makes sense when it comes to any guest interfacing tech because the reality is that there are jobs to be done (ie. upsell, communicate, promote, checkin, place requests, etc) and then these need to be offered to the guest across whatever communication channel they prefer (ie. branded app, in-room tablets, web app, messaging, etc). It also makes a lot of sense because when it comes to guest experience, most hoteliers will choose a single guest experience platform to serve as their guest facing tech stack knowing that this will be the tool that they use to interact with guests from a technical perspective.
As a result, app providers like MyStay are rolling out tablets and messaging products like HelloShift are launching check in solutions and we expect that this trend will only accelerate to the point where it wouldn’t be surprising to see only a single unified ‘Guest Experience Platforms’ category on Hotel Tech Report in the next few years where categories like apps, checkin, messaging and upselling are all product modules or features that are offered by platforms which ultimately will help consolidate and simplify guest experience related tech choices for hotels but will mean providers will have more competition and will need to invest more heavily in broader product functionality.
Duve launched Personalized Guest Journeys to help hotels customize and automate guest segmentation in order to personalize offers, messaging and content delivery for each user. Data is collected during the online check-in process, so once a guest arrives at the hotel (and even before), the content provided to them is tailored to their profile and persona.
HelloShift launched Web Check-in to enable guests to check in on their mobile device, scan and upload documents, digitally sign registration cards, receive mobile keys, and have access to all hotel amenities through a guidebook. Contactless Check In is integrated with existing HelloShift offerings -- Guest Messaging, Staff Collaboration, and Housekeeping -- in an all-in-one software. This helps hotels transform into a digital hotel without juggling between multiple apps. Guests can skip the Front desk and complete the check in on the fly, on their computer or personal mobile device with no third-party app to download. The guidebook answers most of the guest questions without them having to involve hotel staff.
Whistle announces being acquired by Cloudbeds to integrate guest messaging as a key part of hotel's communication strategy. Cloudbeds execs claim that Whistle will play an important role in the company’s vision for creating a fully frictionless solution that enables guests to engage with lodging businesses on their own terms. Simultaneously, it will give lodging businesses a unified platform to more efficiently manage points of contact throughout the entire guest journey.
INTELITY launched ID verification and authentication to boost security and fraud prevention in mobile checkin flows via its partnership with Incode. The team unveiled the new partnership alongside its R5 platform update which includes tons of new features from deep links to an all new configuration home that allows hotels to fine tune and personalize the functionality to their needs and makes it significantly easier to set up, customize and manage the holistic guest experience platform.
Oaky announced upselling via messaging via a new partnership with messaging provider HiJiffy. This new partnership allows joint clients to offer personalized upsells from Oaky directly on their guests’ favourite messaging platforms such as SMS text, Whatsapp or Messenger. The goal of this new integration is to give more travellers access to custom offers and increase ancillary revenue for hotels.
Cendyn unveiled Opentable profiles syncing to provide visibility for hotel-based restaurants to holistic guest insights, bringing a single, unified view of profiles onto the OpenTable restaurant platform. This allows for personalized dining experiences and enables loyalty recognition across the entire guest journey, at the restaurant as well as across the hotel property.
SABA Hospitality rolled out Room Controls through a new integration with Messerschmitt enabling guests to control in-room automation features right from the SABA App. Guests can now use their mobile device for room access, to manage their in-room environment (for example temperature, lighting and curtains), to order room service, or request additional amenities and services, all via a single interface.
MyStay launched In-stay upsell to enable hoteliers to upsell offers and services via app, messaging, tablets or QR codes to drive more revenue. Hotel Impozant in Slovakia commented that guests have already taken to the new feature in short order, "We have been using the in-stay upsell only for a short time, but we have already received an influx of positive comments from our guests, they system is really easy to use and we are looking forward. towards the first round of revenue numbers."
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Trend #3: AI Based Suggestions & Recommendations
Mentions: EasyWay, Pace, Quicktext, UpStay, Pricelabs
AI based suggestions and recommendations are table stakes in the broader tech world whether you look at the autocomplete search box on Google, content optimization suggestions in SEO tools like Clearscope or ad optimization on Linkedin. The beautiful part about AI is that it allows computers to not only run automated analysis that humans couldn’t possibly do (at least not in a reasonable or useful amount of time) but then learn and improve based on its conclusions serving up better recommendations over time.
The first phase of adopting AI isn’t to hand over the reigns to computers all together but instead to create interfaces that allow humans to monitor, train and approve (or adjust) the automated suggestions made by the AI and that’s exactly what tech vendors are building. Whether its to help hotels improve their SEO through content suggestions, automatically respond to message based inquiries or optimize segment based restrictions to drive more revenue, suppliers across the hotel tech stack are leveraging AI to help hoteliers leverage tech more effectively.
EasyWay unveiled Magic Spell, an AI-based messaging assistant that generates automatic phrasing suggestions as you’re chatting with guests in real time. Since Magic Spell deeply understands content and semantics within the hospitality industry, it uses AI to generate fast response recommendations for every guest situation. Magic Spell also works in every language automatically out of the box elevating guest communication for everyone.
Pace shipped Restrictions Management to give hoteliers recommendations of how to manage segment based restrictions to better optimize their business mix. Many hoteliers are still using Excel to manage a limited range of restrictions and manually applying them to their pricing with limited permutations possible. The ability to seamlessly and easily manage restrictions from within your RMS is increasingly crucial as booking windows, guest preferences and market demand have all become more nuanced and dynamic on account of the pandemic.
Quicktext announced Q-SEO, a new feature that analyzes the top queries that were made to your hotel chatbot in 30+ languages on a weekly basis and indexes the 20 top request topics to automatically generate FAQs for your hotel’s website to improve SEO. Every week the content is reshuffled automatically so that Googles sees it as fresh content.
UpStay announced Special Product Offers, a new feature that allows hotels to go beyond just room upgrades and sell both on and off property value add services and amenities via it's upselling platform for things like breakfast, live performances, fitness classes, bike rentals and more. UpStay's AI then recommends specific offers based on which products or services each guest is most likely to convert and purchase and the guest can bid for the items. Ilan Levy, General Manager at Herrods Hotels, noted that, "UpStay helps us provide our guests with an amazing value for their money based on our unsold inventory. The solution quickly generated consistent conversions and revenue from the very first moment it went live in our hotel."
Pricelabs rolls out Minimum Stay Recommendation Engine to automatically adjust minimum stay restrictions dynamically to capture hidden revenue opportunities and boost occupancy.
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Trend #4: More Granular Reporting & Insights
Mentions: Actabl, Duetto, IDeaS, OTA Insight, Mews, Fornova, HubOS, Tripleseat
If you’re someone who feels like there are too many tools, dashboards, metrics and interfaces to manage within your hotel, you’re definitely not alone. Ultimately even small bed & breakfasts have thousands of guests coming through their doors every year and keeping track of preferences, analyzing trends and personalizing communication is extremely difficult especially across fragmented systems with different data structures, user IDs and functionality.
The good news is that tech vendors are really starting to show that they understand that its not about more dashboards and metrics but rather its about highlighting the most important metrics in real time alongside actionable recommendations and then creating flexible interfaces to allow hoteliers to dive deeper into the data and build their own customizable dashboards to matter the metrics that matter most to their business.
ALICE, Profitsword, Transcendent and Hotel Effectiveness announce the launch of Actabl, the new brand and unified product vision for the recent ASG rollup that sets out to serve as a unified holistic operations and insights platform. The Actabl suite of solutions includes ALICE hotel operations management, ProfitSword’s AI-powered business intelligence technology, Transcendent’s advanced asset management, and the latest in labor management innovation by Hotel Effectiveness.
Duetto launched its New Rate Management Experience (NRMX) to enable revenue teams to work more strategically and efficiently. New features include the ability to consolidate rate publishing pages into one single, unified view and enable bulk updates on rate acceptance. A customizable view of crucial data points, enabling users to click and drag elements of the GameChanger dashboard into a view that best fits their strategy, empowers more confident rate pushes. And improved decision intelligence provides more comprehensive competitive information and quicker filtering to enable revenue managers to focus on the days that most need their attention.
IDeaS shipped its new Channel Forecast Dashboard to provide hoteliers move beyond room revenue KPIs and channel cost reporting to channel cost forecasting. For decades hoteliers have been looking for ways to better manage acquisition costs from their distribution channels. The Channel Forecast Dashboard gives hospitality organizations the ability to monitor past performance and future demand and costs by distribution channel allowing hoteliers to make data-driven distribution strategy decisions.
OTA Insight launched The Overview, its new view of key commercial metrics at a glance featuring a dynamic alerts feed, personalizable settings and built-in team collaboration. Jonathan Cachan, Director of Strategic Development at Astotel, articulated why he starts his day with The Overview, “The Overview is a quick and easy way to start my day with a snapshot of the most important items. I am able to set key dates and action alert items right away. It also brings together the metrics I need into one place, so I no longer spend so much time moving back and forth between systems…it brings so much more efficiency into all the roles within hotels; whether you are in revenue, sales, marketing, operations or even in a position where you just need a bird's eye view of business.”
Mews shipped their all new Product Report, enabling hoteliers to group products by category and better understand guest product consumption behavior which aids in pre-planning and sales of the popular product categories. The new report also allows hotels to now correlate occupancy with product revenue from guests staying at the property versus products sold.
Fornova went live with it’s Distribution Overview Page, it’s all new and fully customizable distribution dashboard home featuring Revenue at Risk (RaR) and Distribution Health Score (DHS) prioritization tools. Users choose what they see, they aren't constrained by preset filters selected by the solution provider. The tools give users any aggregation that they want. The flexibility of this feature involves the ability to drill down into highly relevant data using layers of filters and aggregating the data by different customizable elements.
HubOS launched Energy & Sustainability, an easy way to monitor your hotel’s energy and water consumption and log changes to your property to track ESG impact. Benjamin Gomez, Engineering Manager at Six Senses, commented on the seamlessness of the module’s monitoring capabilities, “Hub OS is a very helpful tool for our daily hotel operations and managing our Energy and Water Consumptions. Benchmarking won’t be a problem anymore! We can review our KPIs, Carbon foot print, utilities consumption and trends instantly after our engineers enter the meter readings while on the go. The Sustainability module is very helpful for tracking our weekly waste in the hotel operations, helping us to keep track of our food waste for composting, recyclables and towards reaching our goal for a Zero Waste operation.”
Tripleseat rolled out it’s Advanced Reporting Platform (TARP), a data analytics tool that empowers Sales and Catering professionals with clear business insights and reporting to inform stakeholders and strategy and turn your hotel’s sales and event data into decision-quality reports and management-ready visuals. Data flows directly from Tripleseat bookings into TARP, ensuring accurate information is used to populate reports and dashboards. Users may quickly fitler the report by data categories, rearrange columns based on preferences, and save those reports for future use and sharing. TARP reduces inaccuracies and saves precious time.
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Trend #5: Reduction of Manual Tasks & Data Entry
Mentions: Duetto, Asksuite, Aptech, SkyTouch Technology, MeetingPackage, Akia, SmartHotel, Aleno
It wasn’t so long ago that hoteliers tracked everything from arrivals to budgets on pen and paper until they discovered their new best friend, spreadsheets. Spreadsheets helped hoteliers run calculations automatically with formulas and update them by just copy/pasting in new data saving hours of time and unlocking new insights.
The downside to spreadsheets was that once hoteliers created enough of them, they got unwieldy to manage and sync and of course they didn’t contain live real time data so they still required manual updating. Even so, there isn’t a soul on the planet who wouldn’t choose spreadsheets over pen and paper.
That same phenomena happened from spreadsheets to cloud based SaaS to the point where it was (and is) great having access to real time data, but this data was locked inside of each system which meant a lot of exporting and importing into other tools (or back into spreadsheets for comparative analysis) which requires a lot of manual work, data entry and consequently–room for human error.
What we’re seeing in the market now is a shift in focus to really help hoteliers chip away at manual data entry and rote tasks that can (and should) be done automatically by computers. Providers are launching new workflow builders, event based automations, app integrations and more to help hoteliers rid themselves of manual data entry and rote tasks to get data from one system to another once and for all.
Duetto launched its New Forecast & Budget Builder in ScoreBoard, which enables revenue managers, finance, and operations teams to generate forecasts and budgets more quickly and accurately, whether by property, brand, or at a corporate level. The New Forecast & Budget Builder UI reduces complexity in revenue operations while improving data accuracy and data sharing. New features include the ability to forecast based on physical inventory and net out-of-order rooms, as well as being able to drill down to the business mix of forecasted values to better project actuals, including ancillary streams.
Asksuite launched its Omnichannel Email Integration to bring transactional booking emails into the Asksuite website live chat conversation stream to simplify and streamline booking inquiries. The upgrade also offers a new way to compose emails, giving extra agility to reservation teams with a direct link to the booking engine, real-time quotes, images, and descriptions.
Aptech rolled out Invoice Automation to put an end to paper invoices and manual data entry with invoice scanning, automation and an outsourced workforce to ensure 98%-99% accuracy. John Reilly, General Manager at The Naples Bay Resort & Marina, attested to the increased efficiency as well as major time and cost savings: “We used to have a team of five accountants; now we have two. We needed a way to streamline the accounts payable process and remove a lot of the mundane data-entry tasks associated with invoice processing. Now our accountants are optimizing their time more efficiently and getting more work done in less time.”
SkyTouch Technology launched GT Digital Registration to help hoteliers ditch manual pen and paper registration at the front desk with the new SkyTouch GT tablets. The SkyTouch GT Digital Registration process decreases check-in time, ensures accuracy of guest information, and reduces labor devoted to record keeping and storage. Hotel policies are displayed to guests directly on the tablet. Easy for the hotel to update policies as needs change, we offer self-installation and set-up.
MeetingPackage showed off Venue Sales Management Automations to help sales teams remind customers and staff automatically about important Meetings & Events inquiry deadlines. Tomas Sabolt from The Loft Hotel in Bratislava described the digitization of his team’s processes by leveraging the tool, "Initially, we didn’t see any problems in our M&E sales but once we got to know MeetingPackage we decided to switch from our previous system as MeetingPackage is so easy to use. In the end it was an easy decision once we saw how to manage Meetings & Events sales with MeetingPackage software.”
Akia shipped Automated Workflows to empower hoteliers to leverage guest authorization as an event to trigger actions in 3rd party apps. Tony Heim, InnKeeper at Commonwealth Hotels, described the benefits of leveraging workflows to trigger digital keys to be made, “Switching to Akia was an incredible decision for our property. They’ve streamlined the check-in process both for our guests and our associates, shaving off valuable time for every party involved. The process is smooth, and because of their integration with FLEXIPASS we’ve been able to deliver unique door codes quicker than ever.”
SmartHotel launched Payment Links, a tool for hoteliers to create dynamic payment links based on customizable rules. The rule based easy to configure system helps hoteliers automatically create payment or credit card guarantee links based on rate code and other variables (ie. x days before arrival) and sends out personalized emails to guests. Deposits or tokenized credit cards are directly reported back into PMS of choice.
Aleno unveiled Guest Preference Sync to help hoteliers sync guest F&B preferences to build richer guest profiles in your PMS. Jonas Ritscher, Front Office Manager at Suvretta House Switzerland, spoke to the time saving benefits of having customer data synced between PMS & POS, “With the integration of aleno and PMS, we optimize processes and internal communication. No more lists and everyone always has up-to-date information.”
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Trend #6: More Granular Segmentation to Drive Deeper Personalization
Mentions: Hapi, VenueLytics, Duve, dailypoint, Gauvendi, Inspire, Laasie
If you’re thinking to yourself that personalization really isn’t a new trend, we completely agree. The shift in the market right now though is how personalization is being viewed and the vector with which it is being built.
Previously vendors have essentially looked at the vast pool of data that hotels have and tried to build ways to group customers into segments so that hotels aren’t communicating with guests via shotgun mass outreach but instead, to tailor to groups or segments of customers to build more personalized relationships that convert and retain more loyal customers. The crazy thing is that so many hotels still send out mass communications to their databases when it has been clearly researched and documented that this not only performs worse, but it also frustrates consumers.
The new approach in the broader tech world is to leverage customer data to deliver personalized 1-to-1 communications through marketing automation by setting up triggers and actions based on timing, events and customer data to create an automated orchestration of your customer journey that can personalize on an individual level at scale. Obviously there will always be a place for segment based one-off promotions and offers to drive demand, but the reality is that the goal of your customer communications should be that (a) they are automated and (b) each message feels as close to a 1-to-1 communication with each customer. These two goals might seem to conflict with each other but that’s what tech providers are building tools to help you achieve.
Hapi rolled out Hapi Guest for Marketing Cloud for hotels to be able to use Salesforce as their CRM by leveraging Hapi to clean and sync your portfolio’s data to run personalized campaigns. Shrikant Shenoy, Senior VP of Digital Strategy & Innovation at Langham Hotels described why Hapi Guest is a critical component to personalizing communications and marketing for Langham, “The business objective is to make sure the guest knows they are staying with us and feels those moments of engagement, so they enjoy their stay more. This will also usually motivate them to spend more with us and we can make sure they come back. A big part of doing that is being able to personalize the service, so we treat you like an individual – we know a little bit about you.”
VenueLytics launched RevAccelerator to more effectively curate and deliver targeted offers at optimal times to personalize the guest experience and drive more revenue. Hotels using VenueLytics RevAccelerator can automatically push out offers to guests for Early check-in / late checkout, room upgrades, F & B, Spa / Fitness and retail. Additional revenue can be generated with offers for tours, activities, tickets and admissions outside the hotel.
Duve launched Personalized Guest Journeys to help hotels customize and automate guest segmentation in order to personalize offers, messaging and content delivery for each user. Data is collected during the online check-in process, so once a guest arrives at the hotel (and even before), the content provided to them is tailored to their profile and persona.
dailypoint™ showed its Content Bot that helps hoteliers create personalized newsletters for guests. The Content Bot enables hoteliers to make most of their guest data and use it for individual and targeted communication that increases direct sales and revenue.
GauVendi shipped their Sales Engine to unlock attribute based selling and a customizable booking experience to drive more revenue. Florian Ultsch, COO of Harry’s Home and Adler Hotels, described the benefits of attribute based selling, “If you buy a car, you can decide the color, the interior, all the extras. This is what GauVendi helps guests to do when they book a room with us. In the past, our reception and reservation teams wouldn’t have time for this, but their automation opens new possibilities.”
Inspire launched Loyalty CardLink, a loyalty card that guests can use throughout property outlets to collect loyalty points and rewards to encourage guest spend. The member securely registers their payment card when registering for a branded loyalty programme and receives instant points for their spend in any hotel area.
Laasie showed off its Call Center Rewards to enable call center operators to boost conversion and bookings by offering callers rewards. While laasie has traditionally supported rewards delivery via web and mobile booking channels, they recently added support for call centers to drive additional revenue by boosting call center close rates.
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Trend #7: Spotlight on Digital Tipping
Mentions: eTip, Canary, Unifocus
It was hard to turn a corner of Orlando’s Orange County Convention Center without catching wind of a new digital tipping app. The problem is straight forward, fewer and fewer people are carrying cash around and that means less tipping which hotels used to rely on as a retention tool to boost compensation for employees. The double edged sword is that staff are getting less tips than ever as a result which only compounds the labor challenges in today’s market.
While it's still too early to know the adoption and engagement with digital tipping, it definitely makes sense why products are popping up to try to help revitalize this employee retention mechanism as a way to hire and retain staff.
Canary unveiled its new Digital Tipping functionality to encourage tipping by prompting hotel guests at key points throughout the guest journey. Canary's Digital Tipping is available as a standalone or fully integrated solution with Canary's larger Guest Management System that includes Contactless Check-In, Contactless Checkout, Guest Messaging, Digital Upsells, Digital Authorizations and Digital Contracts.
Unifocus launched Gratitude, a digital tipping solution that integrates with Unifocus’ time & attendance solution. With Gratitude, hotel employees are able to reclaim lost wages from declining tips by receiving tips digitally.
eTip showed off its Cashless Tipping solution to bolster staff retention through cashless, appless digital tipping. The company claims that staff using their solution have seen a 5x increase in tip frequency and an average $4.50/hr increase in compensation.
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Other Notable Innovations
Mentions: ASSA ABLOY, Goki, Zaplox, HotelRunner, Eviivo, M3, Book Me Bob
ASSA ABLOY GLOBAL SOLUTIONS unveiled VingCard Novel, its sleek redesigned door locks with all component modules embedded within the handle. VingCard Novel serves as an advanced, yet cost-effective solution that combines heightened security, functionality and sustainability into an attractive and easy to install door lock handle design. Its scalable components and enhanced durability provide hoteliers with a long-term solution that reduces costs and that stays a step ahead of new advances in technology. With a simple software update and/or licensing agreement, VingCard Novel bypasses the now unnecessary need to add or replace hardware whenever a new functionality or feature is desired.
HotelRunner announced Wix Hotels Powered by HotelRunner, the website design powerhouse’s exclusive partnership with Hotel Runner that enables hotels to build true purpose build end-to-end drag and drop hotel websites with direct on-site (commission free) bookings, channel management, online payments, instant invoicing and more. Wix’s comprehensive online platform combined with HotelRunner’s end-to-end travel technology provides the ability for users to create a website, manage their property, guests, bookings, and sales channels all from one platform.
Goki rolled out its SmartLock Pro which automatically issues a SmartKey & DoorCode to every guest. Nomads World Hotels commented, “The SmartLock Pro will enable us to run the enitre group from one central location - without needing to physically be at the property. We can run lock audits, pull battery status, revoke access and remotely open the doors, none of which was possible before the SmartLock Pro.”
Zaplox shipped its new Key App, to add digital keys to hotels’ existing web checkin flows. Chris Shroff, CEO of Myrtle Beach Seaside Resorts, explained his selection process, “We were looking for ways to improve the guest experience, speed up the check-in process at our resorts and reduce congestion at the front desk, Maestro and Zaplox were able to provide a seamless mobile guest journey that was tightly integrated with our Maestro PMS and delivered true value to our guests and the service they expect.”
Eviivo rolled out a new Mobile App making their entire suite of solutions now enabling hoteliers who are wearing more hats than ever due to the labor shortage to do everything from checking availability, managing rates, checking housekeeping statuses and monitoring payments all on the go. Louise Creane-Smith, Owner of Rosslyn House, noted the benefits of having mobile access to key functionality, "When I get telephone enquiries I can just open the app wherever I am and advise on availability. No having to ask the caller to wait while I get on the PC or call back when I get home. I get notifications imeediately as the booking comes in, meaning I can send "thank you" texts and request information straight away, which leaves a good impression with the guests."
M3 launched native language translations to it's time and attendance product to help simplify core workflows for non-english speaking staff. This new functionality now allow non-english native employees to set their personal language preference while displaying all of the same information and features on the app as it would appear in English. Punch collection will allow hotel employees to submit time punches from their mobile devices with unique selections for property and job assignments when necessary. This new feature functionality aims to streamline the clock-in-clock-out process for employees on every level. The request time off portal will allow hotel employees to request PTO (Paid Time Off) and managers to approve the request within the mobile application.
Book Me Bob announced it's integrated vouchers functionality via a partnership with Aiva. This new functionality gives hotels the ability to offer fully branded discount, incentive, value add or gift vouchers commission free on their own website with no initial cost or set-up fees and pay-as-you go pricing.
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