Hotels, inns, and lodges – one of the oldest businesses that have survived the test of time. In the Middle Ages, inns and taverns were the only places for people to have food and drinks. Taverns then acquired the licence to host travellers for the night, and the concept of lodging came into existence.

As technology evolved, the industry had to undergo several changes like many others. Since the problem they were solving was essential and important, the industry thrived and continues to. Technology made its way into the workings of this business, and we now see the advent of an era where travellers cannot have a seamless experience with the hotel without the aid of technology. With technology evolving and guests gaining access to several social media platforms, it has become imperative for hotels to have a positive online presence, a brand recognition and provide a smooth stay experience. With a plethora of hotel options available online, ever changing prices, and the dynamic nature of customers’ needs, there is only one differentiator that separates hotels from one another – customer experience. Now it has become all the more important for hotels to provide superior customer experience – an experience that their visitors will remember long after they have left the premises.

With great technology, comes great data. As much as technology has eased the regular hotelier’s day to day operations, a greater problem looms – there is too much data! When visitors have a gazillion different places to post opinions about the hotel and their stay, how can the hotel then keep track of each and every feedback?

In such cases, if you are a hotelier, you’d resort to outsourcing your review management needs to an agency. This comes with its own set of challenges –

1. The replies that an agency posts to your beloved visitors’ reviews, are impersonal. They sound as if a robot threw up on the keyboard.
2. Since one agency works with more than one hotel chain, they take more time than is permissible to reply to a review, at times even as long as 15 to 20 days after the review first appeared!
3. The most pressing problem of all – you are not the one in control. Instead of actually understanding the underlying reasons behind customer grievances, or identifying any patterns that may be useful for your business, the agency just makes temporary face-saving measures.

The need of the hour is to use technology to analyse millions of customer data points and churn out intelligent insights – now! If there are 100 monthly visitors of a hotel and even 15 leave negative comments on a review website, which go un-replied for a week, research says that about 80 new potential customers will not visit the hotel after reading those reviews. That’s 80 customers lost!

With the advent of newer technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, we now see a new paradigm in understanding customer opinions – intelligently. An algorithm which can sift through thousands of your customers’ reviews, and identify patterns, identify what aspects of your business are most important to your customers, and highlight what areas of your business need attention. If you could tell a system early on, that aspects you want to measure are, say, ‘WiFi’, ‘Cleanliness’, ‘Staff Service’, and ‘Ambience’, then AI today has the power to identify sentences in thousands of reviews that exactly talk about these aspects, and then suggest ways to improve your service. The good thing is, that AI can be made to work like a human brain. You can seek information on new data pointers as required to identify problems and tackle them. One day you tell it to start looking for mentions of ‘hot water’ in your customers’ reviews / opinions, and you will be presented with all the issues or grievances related to the availability of hot water in your hotels’ rooms, along with week by week analysis and patterns.

(Also read: Amadeus arms DMOs with timely insights about travellers to remove the guesswork)

At Survaider, we built a powerful AI based solution to arm the modern day hotelier with the right set of tools to boost customer experience. The software, which is a quick plug-and-play solution, picks all reviews, posts and OTA mentions, social media, on-site feedback forms, email complaints, and every opinion that the guest leaves on any touchpoint, and all in real-time.
With the modern connected traveller, the data is readily available to act upon, yet we observed that not many were equipped to leverage it for improving the guest experience. Many hoteliers are willing to invest towards guest experience but don’t know where to start. We are bridging that gap by enabling hoteliers to draw actionable insights from the feedback and helping them work towards their business goals.

As the travel industry continues to grow, it will become even more important to make data-driven decisions and make them proactively. Customers trust a brand that listens to them and understands their needs. We have built Survaider so that hoteliers can take a major step in this direction without having to invest heavy resources.

Author

Madhulika is the co-founder and CTO of Survaider, a CX management solution for businesses. Apart from handling technology and product at Survaider, she has an interest in various things – product designing, writing, singing, and painting. She hails from Delhi, where she completed her engineering from DU. Post that, she started up Survaider after a few other entreprenuerial stints, purely because she wanted to solve a real problem of the industry – for hotels to be able to truly understand what their customers on the ground want.

The post Technology changing how hotels interact with their customers appeared first on TravHQ.

Bitcoin is now the rage of the online cryptocurrency movement. Rather than be tied down to traditional government-backed currency markets, people turn to bitcoins for buying and selling. Some even opt to purchase bitcoins for investing purchase. If the price of bitcoin rises beyond what was paid for them, the end result is a nice profit. Some have made significant money dealing — and holding — bitcoins in this manner.

A legitimate question does emerge here: what exactly determines the value of bitcoin?

The scarcity of bitcoin contributes to its value. Contrary to what some might assume, bitcoin does not exist in an infinite volume. There is only a limited amount of bitcoin produced for the world market. 21 million is the generally noted number and, since there are limited volumes of bitcoin, the supply access can decrease when bitcoins are taken out of the market and held. Of course, demand could far exceed available coins as well.

The growth of security features further enhances the value of bitcoin. One concern over using a virtual currency is the notion the currency could be taken right out of an e-wallet. Such fears are understandable. As more security systems are developed to protect the bitcoin placed in a wallet, the more fears are put to rest. Interest in using bitcoin increases as a result and supply and demand factors commence.

The way “bitcoin miners” contribute to the critical distribution of bitcoin aids the value determination. Supply and demand really only has value if those wishing to procure bitcoin actually can do so. Bitcoin miners aid in moving bitcoin by processing transactions. Consistent access to reliable transactions definitely boosts the chances of seeing bitcoin maintain a reliable value level.

Publicity definitely helps quite a bit. When the media gives bitcoin attention and, if the public sees bitcoin in a positive manner, then the value might increase. Mainstream publicity that reaches “non-techie” audiences helps the cause.

Ultimately, supply and demand contributes to the process of increasing or decreasing value. All the various factors impact the basic concept of supply and demand.

Travel isn’t left behind in this development either. Various airline companies including easyJet, Virgin and British Airways are either accepting or plan to accept bitcoin payments. Expedia was among the first ones to make a move in this space. With bitcoin, travellers get the added advantage of not having to deal with currency conversion fluctuations or charges. As the adoption, both on consumer and provider sides, increases, the advantages will continue to go up.

This is a sponsored post. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect views of TravHQt 

The post Bitcoin is the next big. Here is what you need to know about it appeared first on TravHQ.

As a startup founder (in my second innings now), I recall hearing what can’t be done (because of some archaic regulation or protectionist policy) more often than what is allowed under the rule of law. Sometimes, these chains weigh in on the mind so much that they prevent innovation and original thinking, and at best, your idea becomes a ‘me too’ of a global precedent in your chosen field (which investors seem to love, by the way).

Although still figuring out the right way to innovate at my new venture (within the rule of law), I’m glad it has nothing to do with anything I’ve done in the past and I’m happy to get to work every day to try and challenge (read trying to circumvent) most guidelines that have been made by the authorities in some of the most heavily regulated industries (Foreign Exchange, Insurance & Telecom) we have in India and also across the world.

Multiple times, I’ve seen global startups popping up in various countries evangelizing an innovation that we had to abandon because of a certain regulation, only to feel good about being on the right track and thinking that our time too shall come.

These are times in the developing world where one tends to leapfrog from Innovation A straight away to Innovation C (like we did in India from Desktop to Mobile, skipping laptops), changing behaviors and creating a massive impact like never before. From spending about USD 1000 on a desktop 10 years back, one can get a more powerful smartphone now within USD 100 (well, USD 4 if we talk about Ringing Bells!). Imagine all that computing power in a six billion palms worldwide in a few years.

India is a billion mobile phone user market, but think about how many Indian firms were able to take advantage of this? Had the Indian electronic manufacturing sector been able to grow to fulfil the needs of the Indian consumer, Apple would already be manufacturing in India and they’d do it out of simple economic considerations (right now, we’re bending backwards to try and get them to come, but they politely decline each time because our current eco system won’t be able to cater to their needs).

A similar leapfrogging is quite possible in currencies, heck, it’s already happening, India and Africa are skipping plastic and straight away going from cash to digital (hello, Bitcoin!) on a massive scale (recall the PayTM karo ads for making payments to the local kirana and the auto-wallah)! While we can think about our wallets (and all that plastic) going away, one can hardly fathom the thought of parting with their phone. This emotion portends the future quite tellingly and it’s just a matter of time when we’ll be using our phones to pay at NFC (or some other cool sounding wireless tech) enabled POS terminals at retail stores around us, using the in-built (Aadhar linked?) fingerprint scanner for authentication instead of the somewhat cumbersome OTP/ PIN based authentication we currently have.

As a startup operating in this space, we keenly look out for developments on currency regulation and although UPI will be a big game changer on the payments front (kudos to the RBI for taking the lead on that), in the currencies space, what will decide whether the next blockchain/ currency startup will be founded in New Delhi or London won’t be the availability of the talent pool, but the policy route taken by the lawmakers and how heavy (or light) they’d keep the regulations for such digital transactions. The decision to be made is whether we want to encourage building a nation of innovators and challengers of status quo, or are we simply going to wait patiently for a disruptor from the west (or shall I say, knight in shining armour) to come and give them a ready market of a billion people on a platter. The time is NOW…

Author

Rishabh Sood, CEO & Co-founder @YuMiGo, is currently working on his second venture which is at core a travel tech startup with a strong fintech angle. He completed his Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering and Master’s in Financial Engineering from NYU Tandon as an Honors Student before moving back to his hometown of New Delhi. Post NYU, he started off in a space that was very close to his heart and built a venture in renewables, scaling up to revenues of USD 2 million and a team of 50, before deciding to move on due to heavy capital requirements and very little differentiation from the competition, searching for a space where he could make a 10x impact.

The post Disruption in India – unlock the handcuffs to let enterprises bloom appeared first on TravHQ.

Using a product involves making decisions. And when we give users a choice, we often have a vested interest in them choosing one option over another. Because we know it’ll make their experience less complex. Because we know they’ll save time that way. Or even because it’ll improve the experience for other users.

When we confront users with these decisions, asking them a simple yes/no question will help them choose the best option.

Let me tell you how I found this out…

At BlaBlaCar, our product is a peer-to-peer ridesharing platform. We connect people who need a ride somewhere with car owners going the same way. Car owners offer a ride, co-travellers book a seat with them. Pretty simple concept.

But when car owners offer a ride, there’s a divergence in the way they might want their experience to go. Do they want co-travellers’ bookings to be approved automatically? Or do they want to choose which co-travellers they travel with, by approving or declining each booking themselves?

A seamless experience

We want our members’ travel experience to be seamless. They need to have as few interactions with our product as possible, and little to no waiting time.

So for both car owners and co-travellers, the most seamless experience is clearly to have bookings approved automatically. But in some of our markets just 1 in 4 car owners were choosing this option.

You might think, why not just remove the option to approve or decline bookings, and force “automatic approval” on everyone? But remember, our product connects people who’ve never met so they can share rides together. It’s a new concept for many people, and one we need to make them feel comfortable about. Allowing new car owners the option to choose exactly who they take in their car is a way to break down that first barrier, so there was never any question of removing it entirely.

However, we know that once a car owner has shared their car a few times and has become comfortable with the idea, automatically approving bookings will greatly smoothen their experience. So we wanted to increase the number of car owners choosing this option.

But before we could find a solution, we had to identify the cause of the problem. Why were more of our experienced car owners not choosing to automatically approve bookings?

This is the original screen-Manage booking requests? Automatic Approval? Manual Approval? What does this all mean!!

One of our hypotheses was that car owners just didn’t understand the benefits of approving automatically — this was based on two assumptions. Firstly, that they were scanning rapidly over the screen (as the majority of us do with any online product) and the content wasn’t obvious enough for them to see the advantages of choosing that option. Secondly, that they didn’t understand the question, or the answers. “Automatic Approval” and “Manual Approval” are terms we invented, terms specific to the BlaBlaCar product, and not at all intuitive.

So, we changed the question, and we changed the answers. The hypothesis was that car owners weren’t fully understanding the options in front of them, so we went for simple. Really, really simple.

This is the new screen. Now we ask car owners a simple yes/no question. And they get it.

Yes or no?

How many times a day do you ask yes/no questions? Do you want a cup of tea? Yes or no? Do I really need to come to your 3-hour strategy meeting? Yes or no? Will you proofread my Medium article? Yes or no?

We do it a lot, and we do it because it’s very precise. A yes/no question leaves very little room for misinterpretation or for a vague answer. So that’s why we decided to ask our car owners, “Automatically approve bookings? Yes or no?”

Of course this design was purely based on a hypothesis, so we AB tested it. And the results quickly gave us the proof we needed — as many as 37% more car owners were choosing to automatically approve bookings.

A better-informed decision for a better experience

This improvement happened because we asked a simple question. The simplest question. The content changes were of course accompanied by visual design changes, but the goal was the same, to simplify the screen and get the user focused on the question being asked.

Simple content always helps users use your product in the right way. And when there are two ways of using your product, simplicity can also help them make a better-informed decision, for a better experience.

Author

Paul Stairmand is Content Specialist at BlaBlaCar, the peer-to-peer ridesharing platform. He’s a designer… of words. He crafts the words for the BlaBlaCar website and mobile apps, creating the content that makes the UX design work. He believes that good content makes users understand things without knowing there was anything to understand.

This post first appeared on Medium and has been republished with author’s permission.

The post The power of simple questions- Another interesting case from BlaBlaCar appeared first on TravHQ.

At BlaBlaCar simplicity is in our blood. We spend our days designing and building a product that’s easy, that’s simple to use.

Content plays a huge part in this. In my role as Product Content Specialist, I hold a large part of the responsibility for making our website and app as simple as possible. When you use BlaBlaCar to find people to share a city-to-city car journey, we need you to understand our words and understand them straight away, with no effort.

There are many ways we do this — keeping each sentence short, sticking to one message, limiting the number of possible actions, using consistent terminology. But the thing that has really made the difference for us, is keeping it obvious.

Being obvious is about being precise, being unambiguous. But most importantly, it’s about not allowing the user to make any assumptions. If you leave them in any doubt, you can easily find them using your product in completely the wrong way.

And I know this all too well. Let me tell you the story of one of our most recent features, and what happened when we didn’t make our content obvious enough.

The feature in question is Govt. ID verification. We recently developed this feature so that BlaBlaCar members could upload an identity document, which is then verified. Their BlaBlaCar profile then shows that they’ve verified their Govt. ID, and increases their trustworthiness in the eyes of other members — an essential attribute for a user of our peer-to-peer ridesharing platform.

On our mobile app, we built a flow to allow members to upload their Govt. ID in three steps. First, we told them what types of Govt. ID they could use. Second, we showed them their name as it appears on their BlaBlaCar profile, and asked them to make sure it matched the name on their ID. Finally, we asked them to take a photo of their ID and submit it for verification. This is what it looked like:

Step 1 — Get your ID

Step 2 — Verify your name

Step 3 — Take a photo

Our users did something we never expected.

So it seems pretty simple, right? But remember, you’ve got the context. I’ve just explained to you the whole purpose of the feature and how it’s supposed to work. The first members who used this feature didn’t have that much detail. And they did something we never expected.

Take a look at the flow again — any idea where and how they went wrong?

Well, they took selfies. Photos of themselves, instead of photos of their Govt. ID, which they then submitted to us. And when you look back at the third step, you can see why. The call-to-action button was asking them to take a photo.

So they did.

By focusing too hard on giving a direct explanation of the next action the user would have to take, we left room for them to make assumptions. And the most common assumption was, “I have to take a photo now, that must mean a photo of me”. And when you consider that most users scan screens at the speed of light, especially in one-screen-one-action flows such as this, it’s hardly surprising they made this assumption.

So how did we fix the problem? Well, we simply changed the wording on the call to action of step 3 to “Upload my ID”.

Making the content more obvious made for a simpler product and a more successful user experience.

Whereas the previous “Take a photo” had led to incorrect assumptions, its replacement “Upload my ID” leaves no doubt. It may not tell the user exactly what’s going to happen next, that they’re going to be taken to a camera functionality, but that doesn’t matter. They’ll realise that when they get there. At least now, they’re in no doubt about what we need them to take a photo of.

And it worked! The number of correctly uploaded IDs increased by 140%. Making the content more obvious made for a simpler product and ultimately a more successful user experience for our members.

You’ve really got to make it obvious. Often far more obvious than you think. If you leave any room for doubt, users make assumptions, and interpret what you’re telling them based on their habits, their intuition, their initial split-second reaction. But if your content is obvious, if it can only be interpreted in one way, your users will get the best possible experience out of your product.

Author

Paul Stairmand is Content Specialist at BlaBlaCar, the peer-to-peer ridesharing platform. He’s a designer… of words. He crafts the words for the BlaBlaCar website and mobile apps, creating the content that makes the UX design work. He believes that good content makes users understand things without knowing there was anything to understand.

This post first appeared on Medium and has been republished with author’s permission.

The post Obvious content, Simple product- An interesting case from BlaBlaCar appeared first on TravHQ.

How often do you see guests walking into your hotel deeply engrossed onto their smartphones? Chances are, it happens all the while. Over the last few years, a silent mobile revolution brewed around us, while hoteliers focussed mostly on mobile bookings. PhoCusWright in its annual Online Travel Overview reported, ”In 2015, Americans will book $39.5 billion worth of reservations on their mobile devices, accounting for 12% of all travel sales.” In 2016, the number of mobile bookings and guests expectation for Mobile Guest Self Service Portal in Hotels is expected to grow exponentially.

As the mobile generation progresses, hotels need to integrate Mobile Guest Self Service Portals with their Hotel Software to attract more Tech-savvy guests.

Progressive hotels realise the need to engage and interact with their guests beyond the regular  front desk and other face-to-face interactions. The Guest service portal is a perfect way to engage with your guests, upsell on-site amenities and at the same time demonstrate a positive attitude. That’s why technology-first hotels are providing Mobile Guest portals to their tech-savvy guests and are boosting incremental revenue from onsite amenities. A robust guest service portal integrated with the hotel property management system is a powerful tool for hoteliers to drive revenue, manage guests and enhance guest satisfaction. Here are some of the amenities which can be extended to the guests through guest service portal:

Self Check-in:

According to TripBarometer by TripAdvisor, “34% of Connected travellers want mobile check-in, with just 11% of accommodations offering the time-saving convenience.” Provide self-check-in services and circumvent the tedious manual check-in processes. It will not only give guests good control but also a better first impression. You may also take a step ahead and give them the option to choose the room they want to check-in to. Self-check-in is poised to be a standard in a few years with the airline industry leading the way. Along with regular bookings, some guest portals like eZee allows you to effortlessly manage group reservations where group owner can manage whole group requests whereas group individuals can manage their own reservation requests.

Build Guest Profile:

Allow guests to fill their details and preferences in the guest portal ahead of check-in. This will allow you to segment guests and serve them based on their preferences. Wouldn’t it be a great idea to surprise a valued guest with a cake and a bottle of wine on his birthday. (Wink! birthday details from his self-filled guest portal profile). Guest portals can actually take guest engagement to an altogether different level.

Upsell in-house amenities:

Provide your guests with customized hotel information and offers anywhere in the hotel. Drive incremental revenue by delighting them with exciting offers on dining, spa and other recreational activities. Add your restaurant menu cards with beautiful images of culinary delights of your hotel on the guest portal and witness higher restaurant sales. A great way to persuade guests to eat in-house. You can allow also provide the option to book taxis on the guest portal during the stay or for pickup before check-in. Throw in some special offers and happy hours and see your spa revenues go up.

Hotel Information:

On the guest service portal, you can provide directions to your hotel from the airport, railway station and help guests locate your property easily. You can also provide maps, details about nearby attractions and help guests explore the city and the locality in particular.

Guest Management and Reviews:

To achieve highest guest satisfaction, you must offer an exceptional guest service. Using the mobile guest portal you can allow your guests to modify their booking, room type, the number of arriving guests or even cancel their booking if need be. You can take guest delightment to an altogether different level by allowing guests to order extra pillows, modify pickup/drop off time from their smartphones. The portal updates the front desk staff regarding the modification in real-time allowing you and your staff to take immediate action on all those requests.

Assisted Checkout:

Your guests can check the estimated bill on the guest portal before checkout. What’s more, you can send them paperless bills through the guest service portal. They can also request for concierge services before departure.

It’s just not the millennials who are driving the do-it-yourself trend but a large number of young families and business travellers too who prefer self-service portals.

It’s time you add a guest service portal integrated with your hotel’s property management system.

Author

Harshdeep Khatri is the head of cloud solution at eZee Technosys and looks after technical operations and challenges related to eZee’s web solutions. In his free time, he likes to write classification blogs related cloud solutions and their impact on the hospitality industry.

eZee Technosys, founded in 2005 to provide technology driven solutions for the hospitality industry. The brand achieved quick success with its flagship product- eZee FrontDesk PMS. The company has now grown into a global software solutions enterprise serving over 5500 clients spread across 140 countries. You can find more details about eZee Technosys and the solutions they provide at www.ezeeabsolute.com You can also reach them at hello@ezeetechnosys.com. This post first appeared on their blog.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect views of TravHQ.

The post Here is why your hotel should have a mobile guest self service portal appeared first on TravHQ.

Over the last decade, the hospitality industry witnessed a plethora of innovations and technological advancements, most of them designed to snatch the decisive powers from the hands of the hotelier to the smartphones of guests. As a hotelier, you strive hard to take care of your guests and a little misfortune gets you a bad review on TripAdvisor, Yelp and numerous review portals which have sprung up. While the reviews ensure that the staff is always on their toes to provide the best guest experience, sometimes it makes me wonder if we have given too much power in the hands of the consumer(aka guest). When mistakes (mostly unintentional) happen, bad reviews pour in, snatching away business. When we looked deeper into it, we realized technological innovation happened mostly in the B2C space and hospitality technology played the catch-up game.

The reason of all reasons

We knew, we had to bridge this gap and that’s how eZee was born. We started eZee in 2005 on a simple belief: “The software you choose should go with your business; not the other way round.” This is the mantra which drives us till date. We ensured that all our products are built with a single focus of simplifying processes for hospitality businesses. We have come a long way by creating robust products for the hospitality industry which are simple to use and integrate with all the systems used in a hotel.

Traditionally, the PMS had been the heart and soul of hotel operations. As time progressed we witness the rise OTA and at present there are more than 1000+ OTA selling rooms like commodities as we speak. As a result of the advent of online distribution, the PMS now had to double up as a distribution tool as well, integrated with other tools like web booking engine, channel manager, revenue management system and many more. Despite this, there are chances that the Front desk agent sometimes forgets to login an offline booking and the OTAs overbook, thereby attracting penalty and guest’s wrath. It puzzled me that when OTAs aren’t able to sell the rooms, why we aren’t able to automatically open room inventory to channels which are doing well? The whole thing was too chaotic, complicated and desegregated.

Eureka!

Sitting here today, reminiscing the past it is truly remarkable how we realized the solution so simple- the answer was an integrated hotel management systems! We thought of uncomplicating life and getting rid of the multiple independent systems like PMS, web booking engine, channel manager, revenue management system, guest feedback system, POS, KoT and many more. Replace it with a robust PMS which integrates with all the systems in a hotel, communicating with each other and updating in a real time.

It was important to provide integrated solutions to our customers. We created an open API for our web booking engine which is being widely used by hospitality businesses worldwide to get direct bookings through their site. Customisation options also play a key role as offering our customers a wide array of customisation options gave them more control and enabled them to tailor the interface in sync with their websites. With the rising number of young travellers, the hoteliers have to be prepared to cater the tech savvy customers. People no longer want to spend time in front of the front desk. Introducing a Mobile Guest Portal gave them the ability to engage and interact with the tech savvy travellers.

It is crucial that all the solutions work in tandem with each other to offer a seamless experience. To ensure that, step by step we connected all our solutions. Starting with booking engine and distribution system, we streamlined all major hotel operations. We further connected our Restaurant POS, Feedback management System and Digital Menu. This minimised the efforts for our clients and gave them more opportunity to focus on other aspects of their hospitality businesses, resulting in better customer experience in the long run.

The closing act

The biggest learning we would like to share is that it is very important to maintain constant communication with the clients. They have been our best source of innovation. We listen to their suggestions, understand their requirements which in turn gave us great insights into the workings our beloved hotel-travel industry. Through our simple to use, robust integrated hotel management systems like eZee Absolute, we have transformed how hotels of all sizes run their operations. We are proud to partner with progressive hoteliers from around the world to unlock the next level of profitable growth with the best in class hospitality technology.

Author

Vipul Kapoor is the CTO and co- founder of eZee Technosys. He has been the driving force behind eZee’s products and solutions since the company’s inception. He is also responsible for eZee’s technical vision and leads all the technological development.

eZee Technosys, founded in 2005 to provide technology driven solutions for the hospitality industry. The brand achieved quick success with its flagship product- eZee FrontDesk PMS. The company has now grown into a global software solutions enterprise serving over 5500 clients spread across 140 countries. You can find more details about eZee Technosys and the solutions they provide at www.ezeeabsolute.com You can also reach them at hello@ezeetechnosys.com.

This is a sponsored article by eZee Technosys. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect views of TravHQ

The post Re-defining Hospitality Technology. The What? Why? And How? appeared first on TravHQ.

Last year we heard and read a lot about budget hotel aggregators and how they are stirring up India’s travel industry. Following OYO Rooms, many startups with similar asset light models emerged from different parts of India all claiming to offer quality experience at a small price. Soon the same was seen in other Asian countries where travellers face similar challenges as India. While the claims are bold and the list of amenities promising, do they really delivery on the promises? One of our readers recently travelled to Indonesia and decided to try out two of the budget hotel aggregators for his stay. He shared his experience with us to give an ordinary traveller’s perspective of the budget hotel scene in Indonesia rather than one tailored for PR and here is what he has to say.

My first experience with such hotels started as I was planning my trip down to Indonesia. There was so much hype about Zenrooms, Reddoorz, Nidarooms, Airyrooms.

Booking process was a breeze, like any other hotel’s website. I had book Zenrooms Thamrin Kebon Sirih for the first night. Booking confirmation was forwarded to my email address with

1) Hotel name as Zenrooms Thamrin Kebon Sirih

2) Address location – Thamrin kebon sirih I 3, Jakarta

Landed in Jakarta Airport on Sunday morning (just to avoid the notorious jam), boarded the taxi with the address. When we got on the street of Taman Kebon Sirih. We were lost. We were trying to locate Zenrooms signage to my hotel. As the street was planned in a way of even numbers on one side and odd on the other, both the driver and I had to focus on one side of the street trying to locate the hotel.

At one point, we had to stop at the side of the road trying to ask security guards of offices for directions, to no avail. Nobody knows where the hotel is located. As I am not local and without any data roaming, I could not rely on GPS to get the exact location of the hotel.

Finally with some help of directions from the locals where the address might be, we arrived at a hotel place named: Take’s Mansion. Not being sure is this the right place / location, I had to hold the taxi outside and rush into the hotel counter to verify.

At the counter, I was looking for branding / signage of Zenrooms but to no avail. I was greeted by the hotel staff. I asked: ”sorry is this ZenRooms Thamrin kebon sirih?” she responded looking clueless and replied, “This is Take’s mansion. “  I then asked: “Is this address correct?” she responded: “Yes, sorry sir did you book from a travel agent and can I have your name please?”. I responded “Maybe, my name is XXXX,” “Oh sir, you have booked from Zenrooms, they are our travel agent. Did they not tell you our hotel’s name and location?” “No, and I have spent 45 mins in the taxi on this street trying to locate your hotel and my taxi driver is still waiting outside, hang on a moment and I will be right back”

Fast forward to the room, the rooms looks okay but very different from the photos. “Well we all know the magic of Photoshop which is not surprising.” Quickly inspected the room and asked. “Zenrooms promised this showing the photo.” The photo shows a nice ZenRooms pillow and their amenities.

The hotel staff only replied: “They came here took photo with the pillow and took it back and for the amenities, our hotel do provide.” Knowing that the hotel staff is clueless what is happening.

Decided to let this matter to rest, however after 15mins being in the room, I begin to smell a “funny” smell. The sewage / old drain kind of smell beginning to fill the room. This is when I tried to find the source. First suspect is the WC in the toilet. Nothing is in there all is fine. After walking around the whole room, I realized that the smell is coming from the sink beside the refrigerator. I tried to get rid of the smell by letting the water run but to no avail.

Started to call up the front desk to request for a change of room. Their reply is “They have to check first”, immediately I asked what you mean by you have to check first, this is your hotel. They started replying that: “Oh Zenrooms only have few specific rooms in our hotel to offer, for you to request change of room, I need to ask for their approval.” In my mind I was thinking what is this and how long is this going to take and today is a Sunday.”

I totally gave up and told the reception to forget about it as I am going to be here just for 1 night.  Eventually, I went out to get a body deodorant and blasted the room with it.

I guess what you call: “You pay peanuts, you get monkeys theory. When things are too good to be true, likelihood of it being a gimmick is high.”

There were still question marks in my head, how these guys operate and work.

1) If they are a travel agent (which hotels regard them as) why do they try to promote and sell the hotel as their own? And with gimmick?

2) If they are a travel agent, why are they allowed to be promoted in booking.com and Agoda under their own hotel name misleading consumers and guest? (Take’s mansion are also listed in these online travel agent)

3) Why would hotel owners do it as they are fighting and competing on online travel agent’s site against the hotel themselves?

Part 2 – Reddoorz

After a full day of meetings and around 9pm, my local friend decided to give me a lift to my hotel. This time was Reddoorz @Kelapa Dua Kebon Jaruk, got smart this time round, rather than trying to locate and search for the hotel itself we decided to call their customer service for directions.

Manage to get through to their customer service hotline easily. When the line pick up, the person spoke with a strong Singaporean English accent asking how can they be of assistance.  I replied asking for directions to the hotel we booked. After putting me on short hold, the customer service person asked for our contact number and mentioned someone will get back to us. There is no other option than roaming around trying to locate the hotel. We had to stop the car by the side of the road and wait for the return call.

After waiting about 10mins, someone returned the call, addressing himself as the General Manager of Rizen Hotel. We verified that it is from Reddoorz and he confirmed.

When we got to the hotel, as expected, there were no sign of branding.

Check in process was swift and I was showed to the room.

The room looked decent and close to the photos and there were amenities provided.

Had a good shower and was prepared to do some work.

Called the front desk for the Wi-Fi password. After many attempts of trying to login, their Wi-Fi does not work. Returned a call to the front desk to verify what is happening, their reply is: “Our Wi-Fi had been like that all along. If you want a stronger signal you have to come to the lobby.”

Thought this hotel was much better than previous ZenRooms experience, this was the first disappointment.  When I turned on the T.V looking for some entertainment. The cable does not work. Even after multiple times of sending the hotel engineers into my room, they fail to rectify the problem. I gave up eventually and turned to reading my book.

30 mins gone by, the room temperature does not seem right. I checked the controller on of the air-con which displays 16 degrees. However, it did not seem to be 16 degrees. It was hot. The air-con is working, there is the sound of the fan within but it is not cooling.

By this time, the hotel staff is probably annoyed by my request; I summoned them to my room to check on the air con. They came meddled with the controls a little and just brush off the issue by saying the air-con is working and there is no problem.

It was getting late and feeling too tired to do anything more but to live with it. I slept the whole night at “16 degrees” without even the use of my blanket.

Final thoughts:

I will never ever use any of such service in the future ever. I should have thought so that some things are just too good to be true. It is sad to say that more and more of such business are popping everywhere in Asia.

Are they really adding value to customers and the travel industry or just a gimmick / scam shop?

Probably there will be some customers that can deal with all the flaws of “their hotels” (technically not, just rebranded to look like theirs).

Morally, I feel that it is not right to oversell and mislead your customers on the photos and other “standard promises”

– Amenities (technically yes. But not what you see in the hotel)

– Wi-Fi (technically yes. But they did not promise it is working)

So when there are issues, who do you go and sort it out with? These companies themselves because they are (Travel agents / they run and operate those rooms) or the hotel themselves?

So if in the end, I have to deal with all this issues, why can’t I book the hotel directly?

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect views of TravHQ.

The post Why will I not trust any of the “Budget Hotel Aggregators” and book direct? appeared first on TravHQ.

Involvement of a mobile population has become easier & consistent with the Internet; the access of the World Wide Web has turned would-be vacationers into their own travel agents. The use of smart phone / tablet technology, social media and apps is growing rapidly, to the point where online use from mobile devices has outstripped traditional internet use. Technology is revolutionizing the travel cycle- Visitors are better connected to and greater influenced by other tourists. They have an endless supply of information, available in an instant at the touch of a finger.

There are also opportunities for tourism businesses present in this revolution-

#1- Real Time opportunities through Social CRM

Tourists are increasingly connected 24/7 and can share their unique experiences via social media during a holiday in an instant, providing real-time coverage from a destination. Using a social CRM (customer relationship management) strategy, tourism businesses are empowered to retrieve background information (e.g. demographics, interests, preferences) about visitors and potential visitors as well as to identify and monitor social media conversations about their business, competitors or destination. This in turn means that tourism business can virtually create a ‘nervous system’ which picks up on dynamic changes in customers’ wants and needs.

#2- Mobile Payments

Driven by the rise of the smartphone, it is forecast that digital currency will replace cash in the next decade. For tourists, this will bring the benefit of not having to carry cash on holidays; But significantly for tourism businesses, it will offer another way of collating data for CRM purposes. Technology group, Amadeus, refers to this as collecting ‘digital breadcrumbs’ – a record of “who, when and where” which can be used for marketing promotions and customer profiling.

#3- Enhanced Engagement

Rapid advancements in augmented reality and gamebased apps will give tourism businesses a platform to create unique travel experiences and drive customer engagement. As such, more and more tourism businesses will allocate a larger proportion of their advertising budget to app development as opposed to traditional media.

Author: Munnmunn Marwah is the General Manager of Think Strawberries With a career spanning over 20 years  of rich experience in sales across India, MunnMunn Marwah’s core competence is to understand and leverage distribution channels, Outbound Travel companies (wholesalers & retailers), specialized Incentive houses, airlines, key corporate companies.

Apart from her sales experience, MunnMunn has experience of working with various outbound travel companies,cruise lines and airlines in both sales and operations, promoting new products, educating agents as well as meeting targets. An avid planner, MunnMunn is great at ‘getting the word out there’. Her ability to lead teams and provide solutions is what sets her apart.

The post The importance of CRM in travel marketing appeared first on TravHQ.

Technology, no matter how cutting edge, finds value only when it makes a difference in the lives of people.

Fortunately, travel industry is witnessing a quality surge of applied technology which is optimizing  right from planning,  customizing and finalizing travel, it is also making the jobs of millions of people (travel industry is the largest employer in the world) more fulfilling and better paying.

Internet has brought one of the biggest revolution in industry. Earlier while travelers depended on brochures and third party information on destinations (especially foreign) and other things related to itinerary, now people go online and search for themselves, more often than not from trusted and official sources. According to a Google finding, 78% holiday travelers used internet for destination research.

Internet is also helping in bridging the demand and supply gap. Couple of years back, there were quality agents who provided super value on the packages they provided. Problem was, they were not using the internet to connect with travelers browsing online. The traveler picked up inflated packages.  TravelTriangle, the first mover in the online holiday marketplace was the first entrant. We have now helped travel agents who were earning a couple of thousand rupees a month to scaling up their businesses 100X.

Prabhat Gupta, Co-Founder & CTO, Travel Triangle

India is today 3rd largest smartphone market in the world and will have 314million mobile internet users by 2017. This means more value and customization both for travelers as well as travel agents.

The mobile internet also means Apps. An app is even more convenient method than a website and is accessible anytime. With weekend getaways on the way of becoming impulse buy, App will play a bigger role in holiday planning.

A Google map today ensures that you are not lost in a new place and your mobile wallet ensures that you don’t have to worry about the cash and card you carry on your holidays.

To sum it up, technology is making travel easier, faster and more convenient and it will get better with time.

Author: Prabhat Gupta is the Co-Founder and CTO of TravelTriangle. An IIT graduate, Prabhat comes with experience of working with big technology brands like Oracle before he joined hands with other co-founders to start TravelTriangle. TravelTriangle offers customised tour packages to customers with the help of multiple local travel agents.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect views of TravHQ.

The post Technology changing the face of Indian travel appeared first on TravHQ.