The blazing Texas heat nor the rains of Tropical Storm Bill could put a damper on the busy show room floor at HITEC 2015 held in Austin, TX June 16-18th.  This year we saw a lot of innovative software including staff/guest interaction technology, applications to assist in increasing direct channel revenue, a 21st century wake-up experience, as well as opportunities to offer unit specific booking on your websites.

 

Benbria highlighted their new technologies adapted around "Get in the Loop", where their product "Loop" offers a variety of ways for hotels to stay in touch with their guests and clients. Loop Hotel Event Solutions offers automated communication between meeting planners and property staff. It's no secret that hotel staff are the lifeline to meeting planners, but they can't be everywhere all of the time and provide high-level service required for events on property. Given the pressure and timely nature of events, meeting planners need instant responses. Loop acts as a lifeline between the meeting planner and hotel staff to ensure all logistics -- planned or unplanned -- are executed and tracked efficiently and accurately for all involved. The hosted web-based solution offers a one-to-one connection where the meeting planner can submit requests via a menu of configurable categories such as F&B, audio-visual, etc via a mobile device, tablet or computer. The requests are routed appropriately to hotel team members for action, reply and closure.

These tickets are tracked in the application along with open/close times.  Clearly, this allows for expeditious resolution to questions and issues raising the quality of service and ultimately, the success of any event.  Benbria's Loop also offers a Mobile Guest Engagement solution where guests can easily input compliments, make requests and raise issues for properties to immediately act upon, allowing hotels to resolve issues before a guest may publish negative remarks on social media or leaving the property dissatisfied. There's no onsite software installation required, fairly simple setup and no IT resources required onsite.  Where guests these days look for instant gratification as well as instant responses, Loop is definitely a tool hotels need to use.

 

NAVIS showcased their Drive+Capture+Convert theory providing software that intelligently allows hotels to capitalize on the reservation calls that go un-booked, which on average is around 70% of calls. NAVIS offers technology to track the "not-booked" calls, leading to effective outbound calling campaigns to assist converting the business.  A part of this process involves capturing key data on travelers to make outbound campaigns fluid, enhancing the caller-agent rapport, and ultimately driving profits by converting more business. The key to driving more direct channel business means less commissions paid to the OTAs thus keeping more dollars from the sale in your property's wallet. In addition, NAVIS works with your staff by offering built-in sales training for reservation agents.  NAVIS likes to highlight their opportunities to allow your team to make improvements towards "First Call Resolution".
Intelity demonstrated  ICE Bedside, which is a modern "alarm clock" impressing guests with a dashboard of time, weather and 100+ stations of streaming international radio stations.  The in-room tablets give guests direct contact to hotel staff without picking up a phone or waiting in line.  Additional modules can allow guests to make room service and housekeeping requests and wake-up calls. The experience can be branded to your propertyand can replace costly in-room printed materials that become out dated. Intelity's ICE is also integrated with Springer Miller's HOST PMS, allowing properties to individualize messaging on the tablets.

 

Cenetic, a familiar face in the HUG community, highlighted some new functionality that many of us from resorts with condominiums would benefit from - the ability to book specific units. As it seems the VRBO-type model of selecting the unit you will stay in is starting to become the norm, many of us with PMS systems, where rooms are grouped into unit types, struggle with this dilemma.  No other vendor has ever built an integration with SMS capable of delivering unique unit numbers from Host to a web booking engine in real-time.  The Host/Cenetic unit specific, 2-way integration delivers rates and availability in real-time to the consumer via Cenetic's Lodging Booking Engine where confirmed reservations are then delivered back into host immediately, also blocking the unit number.  Staffs no longer have to manage inventory daily and block rooms to stay ahead of any unit type overbooking issues they may encounter.  In addition, Cenetic's guest facing booking engine allows users two pathways for visitors when shopping for lodging.  The first path is a search process initiated by entering arrival and departure dates, where results are displayed showing only what is available.  However, the second path leads guests who may prefer to browse all inventory first and then choose available dates.