Alibaba AI Labs is all set to introduce a robot designed specifically for the hospitality sector, in October this year.

“Alibaba AI Labs’ robot is the next step in the evolution towards smart hotels,” said Chen Lijuan, general manager of Alibaba AI Labs, adding that the development will help “bridge the gap between guest needs and the response time they expect”.

From its deployment in October, the new robot will be able to deliver food or laundry to guests, offering a glimpse into the future of hotel service. Guests can talk to the robot, using voice commands, touch and hand gestures. Its answers are powered by AliGenie, the software behind the Tmall Genie smart speaker made by Alibaba AI Labs.

The robot, slightly under one metre in height, moves at a speed of up to one metre per second. It is cased in aluminium and features multi-sense data functionality, along with parallel computing, for fast responses.

Onboard are a semantic map, autonomous navigation system to identify and dodge obstacles, a communications system to control elevators and facial-recognition technology for ID verification.

The global market for service robots is on the rise. Citing the International Federation of Robotics, Alibaba says there the market is growing between 20 and 25 per cent from 2018 and 2020, with sales during that period totaling around US$27 billion for the professional service segment.

After a trial of the service robot at hotels, AI Labs will determine whether it’s suitable for use in hospitals, restaurants and offices.

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OYO Hotels plans to invest € 40 million in the United Kingdom to expand its presence in 10 cities in the county during the next 18 months, marking its first foray beyond Asian markets.

It will start operations with four properties in London that offer more than 80 rooms and by 2020, OYO plans to hire 100 people in cities across the UK and host guests in over 5,000 rooms. The cities include Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, and Edinburgh.

“The UK has been the topmost international travel destination for several years and last year hosted over 19 million tourists from around the world,” said Ritesh Agarwal, founder CEO of OYO.

“Driven by its booming domestic and international travel and budget hospitality needs, the UK presents a multi-billion dollar opportunity for OYO,” he said.

The UK business will be led by British entrepreneur Jeremy Sanders, who co-founded the British restaurant chain, Coco di Mama. “Over the next year, they will aim to build out the team by hiring an additional 100,” people across the country, he said.

OYO will offer guests the OYO Townhouse experience — suited for the needs of millennial travellers, aspiring for high-quality accommodations.

OYO is backed by leading investors, including the SoftBank Group, Greenoak Capital, Sequoia India, Lightspeed India, Hero Enterprise and China Lodging Group.

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Tourism Authority of Thailand’s (TAT) governor Yuthasak Supasorn and Expedia Group’s director of market management Pimpawee Nopakitgumjorn, yesterday signed an MoU to boost tourism to secondary cities in the country, aligned with the TAT’s direction.

As part of the MOU, the collaboration will include the sharing of traveller-centric insights and trends that will boost TAT’s capabilities to plan effective promotional campaigns to attract more travellers and encourage longer stays in Thailand.

From left: Yuthasak Supasorn (TAT) and Pimpawee Nopakitgumjorn (Expedia)

Both parties are also expected to embark on joint destination marketing campaigns to spotlight Thailand’s hidden and unique tourist attractions in its secondary cities, promoting the variety of lodgings to Expedia Group’s 675-plus million monthly visitors globally.

Expedia Group will also launch key programmes in destination marketing and skills transfer to the local hospitality industry in secondary cities. Workshops for local hotel partners will include ways to leverage Expedia Group’s Partner Central platform to accelerate skills development and build revenue and hotel management capabilities among local SME hotels.

Other aspects of the cooperation include a joint corporate social responsibility campaign aimed at enhancing environmental consciousness among hotels in Thailand and reducing the use of single-use and general plastic items in their properties. This is targeted at reducing the environmental pollution and damage resulting from tourism growth.

Pimpawee said, “A large majority of accommodations in secondary cities are still primarily offline which means international travellers cannot find or book them easily. This results in missed opportunities for hoteliers, as they are not capitalising on the growth of inbound travellers.

“We will be launching a series of initiatives to educate them on the value of online distribution. They will also have access to our partner-facing tool, which allows them to effectively manage their rates and availability, online content and guest satisfaction. By improving the digital skills of the hospitality sector, we will play a pivotal role in boosting the local economy.”

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Flying drones in India is finally going to be legal starting December 1, 2018. Until now, flying drones in the country, until and unless specifically sanctioned by the government, was illegal.

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation’s new Drone Regulations 1.0 layout the framework for how unmanned aircraft will be allowed to operate within the country. The drone policy has been made keeping in mind several parameters such as the height at which a drone can travel, the area in which it can be used, registration of the drone and more.

Owners and pilots of the drone need to be registered with the ministry and permission for flying a drone needs to be applied via an app. Digital permits will be given as soon as the automated process is completed.

As per the ministry, during daytime, a drone can be flown up to a height of 400 meters. There will be special ‘No Drone Areas’ such as airports, near international borders and especially in some areas of vital military installations and such. The ministry said that the strict rules are necessary to prevent the use of drones for more nefarious purposes.

The regulations list various categories of drones and all of these except the “nano” type weighing less than 250 gm and those owned by the government and intelligence agencies are to be registered and issued with a Unique Identification Number (UIN). The FAQs released by the Ministry specify that delivery of items using drones is “not allowed as of now.

The ministry believes that drones are a technology platform that has wide-ranging applications and benefits.”Drones range in size from very small and those that can carry multiple kilograms of payload. It was necessary to develop global standard drone regulations that would permit, with appropriate safeguards, the commercial application of various drone technologies.” said a senior ministry official in a statement.

The ministry has stressed on an all-digital process for registering and operating drones. It is called as the Digital Sky Platform and is reportedly “first-of-its-kind national unmanned traffic management (UTM) platform that implements ‘no permission, no takeoff’ (NPNT).” This UTM will be in close contact with the defense and civilian air traffic controllers (ATCs) so that the drones remain on the correct course.

The rules announced are the first in a series of several rules and regulations and such are titled Regulations 1.0. Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha has said that a Drone Task Force, chaired by him, is working on policy regulations for the future which will allow for flying automated drones that operate beyond the line of sight.

Drones have always been considered a great marketing tool for the tourism industry, which is usually one of the quickest to adopt new technologies. With this new draft policy, the ability of travel and tourism companies to produce innovative and affordable aerial videos and photographs will become much more enhanced and hassle-free. Thanks to drones, hospitality and travel marketers will now be able to legally provide their target audience with innovative video content, showing a unique view of a resort, a tourist attraction or a destination.

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Amadeus has agreed to acquire TravelClick from Thoma Bravo, a leading private equity investment firm, for US$1.52bn. TravelClick, which is headquartered in New York City, is a leading global hospitality provider that serves more than 25,000 customers across 176 countries. It provides cloud-based solutions, including an independent and mid-size hotel Central Reservation System (CRS) and Guest Management Solution (GMS), as well as business intelligence and media solutions.

Luis Maroto, President and CEO of Amadeus said, “TravelClick has a great team, great technology and a broad customer base, and we are looking forward to welcoming such a successful business into Amadeus. Our ambition is to provide the hospitality industry with the tools they need to grow their businesses and deliver a great experience to their guests. The combination of our two portfolios will allow us to provide that to hotels of all shapes and sizes across the world.”

While Amadeus already has a strong portfolio of hotels from within the major brands, the TravelClick acquisition gives the company access to a good number of mid-chain and independent hotels that make up almost three-quarters of the market. As part of the acquisition, approximately 1,100 TravelClick employees are expected to join Amadeus.

Image source: Hotel Business

Larry Kutscher, CEO, TravelClick said, “This deal marks the next stage in TravelClick’s incredible journey of success in delivering groundbreaking solutions for hoteliers. I couldn’t be more proud of our team, or more excited about the impact our combined companies will have on the hospitality industry as we begin to deliver the next generation of innovation for hoteliers.”

Amadeus and Thoma Bravo expect to close the acquisition in the fourth quarter of the calendar year 2018, following regulatory approvals. The transaction will be debt-financed and immediately earnings accretive.

Holden Spaht, managing partner at Thoma Bravo said, “TravelClick is an excellent example of Thoma Bravo’s proven investment approach of acquiring a best in class vertical market software company and working alongside talented leadership to implement operational best practices and drive growth both organically and through M&A. We appreciate the outstanding execution of Larry Kutscher and the management team at TravelClick, and believe the company is well positioned to continue delivering innovative software, data analytics and marketing services that maximize revenue for hotels around the world.”

Also read: Amadeus India to groom hotel segment with new tech products.

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One organization that has been tirelessly working on bringing together the unorganised and fragmented homestay segment and increasing focus on this space, is Stay On Skill. The company that tries to find a way to let you travel more while minimising the hit on your credit card, is now launching India’s first marketing accelerator that will help homestays skyrocket their customer base, revenue and brand value in an intensive three-month programme.

Each month Stay On Skill will send three selected travel influencers to a homestay, where they will experience the offerings of the property and promote it on their respective social media channels. Additionally, every month there’ll be Masterclasses by experts on different topics to help them grow their business. From customized marketing strategies, to analysis of online presence, Stay on Skill will ensure that by the end of these three months, the properties would have not only increased their reach but also understood the nitty-gritty of marketing themselves better.

TravHQ spoke to Arjun Tuli, founder of Stay On Skill, about the programme and the company’s plans of giving homestays across India a much-needed social boost.

1. What was the trigger behind launching an accelerator programme?

Stay On Skill in the last one year has helped numerous commercial properties in different aspects. Duing all of this one thing that we have realised it – hotels and homestays in India are popping up like wild mushrooms. In the city of Ooty itself there are more than 2000 hotels (and these are just the ones that are listed online). Across India, more than 1,75,000 properties are taking online bookings. Amid all of this, the problem is – how do you make people know that you exist? Listing on platforms like Airbnb or Booking.com doesn’t ensure you visibility or bookings. If your property shows up on the second page of Airbnb, you might as well forget that prospective customers will get to know about you. One good way to stand out from the crowd is to create a brand for yourself digitally – through social media, blogging, and video creation. But unfortunately, most homestays or hotels are not much aware of to how to go about it. Our analysis show that many of them in the past have been cheated by fake bloggers and instagram influencers, who either don’t have authentic following or high traffic.

So, at Stay On Skill, we decided to make these things transparent for properties and provide them some real value. The idea behind the accelerator is to help the deserving properties get the visibility they deserve, and the complete three-month program is designed around that. We won’t only be sending curated travel influencers to their property, but also teaching them how to make more revenue through different digital marketing techniques, and how to perform well on booking portals.

2. What according to you are the benefits of having such accelerator programmes in place in the travel industry?

On a broader scale benefits would include –
1) Properties gain visibility.
2) They get access to star influencers who have the ability to make their property go viral.
3) They get access to Masterclasses on different aspects of Social Media, Digital Marketing, Web Booking, so that after the accelerator they can take forward the learnings and start executing it themselves.
4) Build a brand value – when some good influencers get associated with your property, it creates a great brand value for you. (Unfortunately, most properties don’t know how to capitalise on that)
5) Increased brand value and visibility leading to increase in revenue.

3. What are the long-term gains that you see arising from this programme?

In these three months, Stay On Skill will provide the properties a great exposure in terms of visibility and brand value. Although visibility is short lived, brand value is not. If the properties can cash in on this brand value, it will have a long term effect on the kind of customers they attract.

The properties also gain immense knowledge from the Masterclasses. Each Masterclass is designed to provide specific insights to the property owners, that they can use to enrich the experience of their customers, and thereby increase their revenue. The knowledge from these won’t run out with time. If you execute it, you are bound to gain and add a lasting value to your business.

4. Big brands like Expedia and Marriott have already conducted accelerator programmes for their listed hotels, or improving customer experience. Is yours the first-of-its-kind offering for homestays?

If you go through the accelerator program by Expedia, it was aimed at moving hotels higher up in ranking on their own portal by giving an additional 10% cut in the bookings.
There was no addition to the property in terms of brand value, digital exposure or knowledge.

Stay On Skill accelerator is built around a completely different value addition. We are highly selective in the properties that we chose for the accelerator. We have limited them to just 10. The idea is provide them the maximum benefit through exposure and sharing our learning of this industry.

The Stay On Skill accelerator is not just limited to homestays. It’s open to hotels as well, as long as they fulfill our acceptance criteria – there should be something unique about the property – which we analyse basis the different parameters of stay, lodging, food, culture and experience.

5. How is homestay marketing expanding and evolving, particularly in India?

The homestay market in India is expanding at a faster rate than it ever was, especially in the areas of Himachal, Uttarakhand – where the locals are now realising the potential that tourism holds. For locals, getting into the tourism industry also means that you are not investing your time in doing activities like drugs, and tourism has helped a lot in that perspective – giving employment to many.

6. Isn’t there a fear that if the properties don’t get conversions in terms of revenue, despite the huge reach that you are promising, they may come back to you disappointed?

Not really. What Stay On Skill is really good at is providing the properties with immense visibility at a very low cost of investment. Thereby, helping them build a brand and name for themselves in the industry. Along with this, we equip the properties with knowledge required to convert the leads into customers. But if after this conversion doesn’t happen, then it means there’s some other aspect of the property that is lacking, which we need to identify and help overcome – which we shall do.

And this particular batch of the Stay On Skill accelerator is Not For Profit . All that we’ll be receiving from the properties will go towards payment of the bloggers, influencers, graphic designers and social media experts – we won’t be making a profit of a single penny from it.

7. What are Stay On Skill’s future plans regarding this programme?

We started the Stay On Skill accelerator as medium to share our knowledge and expertise with the properties and help them benefit from it. If we are able to make it happen at a small scale of 10 properties, next time around we’ll try to make an effort to reach a wider audience and help more properties benefit from it.

The application for the first batch closes on August 31. If you are a homestay or a hotel looking to increase your digital presence, apply here – http://stayonskill.com/accelerator.html.

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Amadeus India, a GDS (Global Distribution System) and travel software and technology solutions provider, with more than 50% market share in the country, is working towards improving its business from the hotel segment by providing improvised end-to-end services in terms of hotel bookings and distribution. The company plans to add more products from the aggregators and offer convenient options for bookings on its own platform.

Rakesh Bansal, CEO, Amadeus India, stated in an interview that the company, which earns more than 90% of its business from airline ticket bookings, is now focusing on improving its other business models such as hotel bookings and distribution and has undertaken large investments in ancillary travel services like booking seat, meal and baggage in last two years.

As far as latest initiatives in terms of business expansion go, Bansal said that the company has come up with ACUS (Airport Common Use Service), a solution provider product for airports, and for the same Amadeus is in talks with few airports listed under UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik) scheme. The company also plans to increase the number of airlines onboard Amadeus India platform from 79 to 100 by the year-end.

Throwing light on Amadeus India’s newly launched products in the market, Bansal said that among all the latest products launched in the last two years, Amadeus Auto Ticket has seen a high-adaption rate among partners as it allows automated ticketing for IATA agents, providing them a convenient option to book, cancel and re-book airline tickets with lesser time taken as compared to any other GDS platform. According to him, big players like Thomas Cook, who regularly handle corporate travel bookings, find this tool quite effective.

Another product that is gaining good market share is Amadeus Quality Monitor which favours consumers, allowing them to demand a particular service and forcing the travel counselor to deliver it without altering the quality.

The company has also developed software for front office solution named as Amadeus selling platform connect (SECO) which is a professional booking and fulfillment platform that trains the travel agents with a set of core features which are needed to perform key booking tasks. Bansal said that SECO is tailored to specific needs for air, hotels, cars, insurance and rail and anyone can access the software any time and from any machine with latest internet browsers.

Amadeus India is also looking to tap the LCCs (Low-Cost Carriers) by providing LCC solutions through Navitaire, its recently acquired company which specializes in providing technology and business solutions to low-cost and hybrid carriers.

In terms of marketing and promotions, Bansal said that the company enjoys the network of 10,000 travel agencies and has close relationships with airlines which help in word of mouth publicity. Alongside, in every six months’ Amadeus organizes product roadshows and refresh courses for updating its partners on updates in the features and products. For the second half of 2018, the company has planned a series of roadshows across the country starting from Kolkata in late August, followed by Delhi, Mumbai and Pune in September and October.

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Hotel Technology is one of the fastest growing segments in the hospitality industry. The development of affordable applications that make advanced technology accessible at scale, rather than it being the prerogative of luxury hotels is another important development. Aiding this change is AxisRooms, a technology-based channel management system that helps hoteliers improve their distribution, both for online and offline channels. Whether it is getting adequate exposure for the property or allocating the correct price for rooms in time, AxisRooms’s single dashboard gives hoteliers a seamless experience in inventory management.

Using this, hotels have a better visibility of the demand and are able to serve guests better. Currently, it has 6500+ hotels on its platform spread across 20+ countries including brands like CGH Earth, Leisure Hotels, OYO Rooms, FabHotels, Keys Hotels, Park Regis, ITC WelcomeHeritage, and more. It is backed by Seedfund, India’s leading early-stage venture capital fund.

Here are some excerpts of an interaction with Anil Kumar Prasanna, Co-founder & CEO, AxisRooms.

1.Can you tell me something about the history of company?

We started out in 2011, February. We understood the complexity behind the whole inventory allocation system, which is mostly like a quota-kind of system; not good for business in the long term. So, we thought why not build a platform like this that would overcome the difficulty of managing inventory, provide real-time availability, dynamic pricing, and help hotels optimize revenue management. We wanted to change the way the hotels are working currently.

2. How many people started this and how big is the team now?

We started with three people and now we’re more than 50 people in the organization.

3. What is driving this market – channel and revenue management, and hotel property management?

Our success has been the channel management system and the revenue management system. You do have a couple of other platforms of course, but most preferable-to-use platforms are these two.

4. How often do you feel the need to upgrade or innovate technology and how do you do it?

It’s constant. We need to keep working on new things. We have to keep innovating because you know things are changing, technologies are changing, competitors are changing their technologies. Today, our training management systems help hotels in so many ways. For instance, I can probably handle 300 different types of customers, but my hotels can’t handle, so I have to make a training system for that, and we have to constantly update our platforms. We need more and more data to achieve this and new algorithms might be a factor for everything.

5. Do independent hotel also come to you?

My biggest customer base, is in fact, independent hotels across India. We also work for chains across Sri Lanka, Dubai, Thailand. We also have big partners in Sri Lanka and Bhutan.

6. What according to you are the best practices to manage hotel distribution channels?

I think the simple thing that a lot of people don’t do, especially from the Indian market perspective, is that they don’t open their inventory fully. And second thing is they are very short on plans. They don’t plan ahead. If you look at international markets, they plan for the coming year also, so there is no pressure later. These are the basic things that a lot of hotels should keep in mind. Holding back inventory impacts the business.

7. Why do you think that happens?

In India, October to March is peak season, and then monsoon is considered off season. However, dynamics have changed. Airlines take you everywhere, there are so many airports, the way people travel has changed. But old-school hotel managers are not changing the way they work.

8. Do you sort of counsel these hotels who work on an old legacy system?

Very much. Today in fact systems are so fragmented. Large partners, like 5-star hotels are also fragmented. They do have multiple systems, but they do not work in an integrated way. The systems are broken.

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Sabre Corporation, the leading technology provider to the global travel industry, has signed a new agreement with Booking.com, the global leader in connecting travellers with the widest possible choice of incredible places to stay. Under the agreement, Sabre agency customers will have access to all Booking.com listings, including its alternative lodging listings, through the Sabre Content Services for Lodging.

Sabre Content Services for Lodging is an industry-first technology solution that integrates multi-source, multi-representation of GDS, aggregator, and agency-sourced hotel content into the Sabre GDS. TMCs and corporations will be able to more efficiently shop, sell and service millions of hotel options as active GDS bookings.

“We’re constantly working to expand our lodging offerings and bring even more options to our agency customers,” said Traci Mercer, senior vice president of lodging, ground and sea for Sabre Travel Network. “Our collaboration with Booking.com allows us to offer a comprehensive set of interesting and unique properties to our systems. Adding the Booking.com portfolio to Sabre’s lodging offering will allow travel buyers to meet the growing demand for alternative lodging options and deliver even more value to their travellers.”

One of the leading digital travel platforms globally, Booking.com offers more than 28 million listings including more than more than 5.4 million reported listings in homes, apartments and other unique places to stay, and facilitates bookings for more than 1.5 million room nights every 24 hours to over 135,000 destinations around the world.

“As our mission at Booking.com is to empower people to experience the world, this new partnership with Sabre will enable even more travelers to quickly and easily find their ideal place to stay,” said Ripsy Bandourian, senior director of partnerships and business bookers at Booking.com. “Working with Sabre enables us to expand our reach to their global network of high-value travel buyers, instantly connecting all of their customers with the unparalleled depth and diversity of our accommodation offering, including everything from great business hotels to convenient city apartments and boutique B&B options in every corner of the globe.”

Officially launching later in 2018, the new lodging solution will be available via Sabre APIs as well as the Sabre Red Workspace, GetThere and TripCase. The solution will help drive more efficiency and revenue with increased lodging choice as well as enable improved optimization capabilities to better manage chain, property, and rate-level preferred content.

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Chinese guests at Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel chain, will soon be able to check in with a quick scan of their facial features.

The Joint Venture of Alibaba Group and Marriott International has announced it is spearheading Marriott International’s facial recognition check-in pilot with Fliggy, Alibaba’s travel service platform, as it aims to continually elevate the travel experience for tech-savvy Chinese travellers.

“We are excited to partner with the joint venture yet again to offer an innovative and convenient check-in alternative for Chinese travellers. Marriott International has a track record of embracing cutting-edge technology to create memorable experiences for guests,” highlighted Henry Lee, COO and MD of Marriott International Greater China and Board Member of the JV. “With technology, our hotel associates can work more efficiently to do what they do best – delivering personalized service to our guests.”

Image source: Channel NewsAsia

With Fliggy’s expertise in facial recognition technology and the joint venture’s hospitality insights, the pilot will kick off from July 2018 at two Marriott International properties in China – Hangzhou Marriott Hotel Qianjiang and Sanya Marriott Hotel Dadonghai Bay, with the goal of global rollout across Marriott International’s properties in the future. This move is set to position Marriott International as a pioneer global hospitality company to offer this seamless check-in experience.

The check-in process can be completed in less than a minute. Chinese guests simply need to scan their IDs, take a photo and input contact details on a self-help machine. The intelligent device will then dispense room key cards after identities and booking information are verified.

Both the companies had announced the establishment of a joint venture last year to redefine the travel experience for the hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers traveling abroad and domestically every year. As incomes rise, China’s middle class is looking for higher quality products and travel experiences. This new technology is perfectly designed to satisfy consumers’ expectations for seamless, integrated, personalized, and convenient travel solutions.

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