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.

The post Alibaba all set to roll out hotel service robots appeared first on TravHQ.

We are getting into an era of personalized digital communication, where hotels contextually speak to their guests. How do we personalize communication with guests before they arrive? How can we communicate with them and stay connected after their stay is over. Meet Loopon, a Swedish travel-startup which is trying to solve some of these problems for the hotel industry.

We spoke to Loopon’s co-founder Simon Finne on the idea behind the company and their background.  Here is what Simon had to say:

The seeds of the idea
Me and my co-founder Christofer were studying Engineering Physics at the Chalmers University of Technology. Through travelling we were made painfully aware of how hotels were lagging behind in adoption of technology in regards to the customer experience.

When we founded Loopon most hotels still just had paper forms at the room where they asked for feedback, and the few that used some kind of digital platform to ask for feedback after the stay made it blatantly clear that they were not interested in a dialogue.

We imagined a different future, where also our generation that is born with technology in our hands would feel welcome before the stay, taken care of during the stay, and felt as valuable customers after the stay.

From day one our vision has been to help hotels communicate better with their guests. While our first product was a pure feedback platform, all our design choices where done with the mindset “how does this make the hotel’s relationship with the guest more personal?” and “how does this improve the experience for the guest?” That vision has kept leading us ot the follow-up products that we have integrated into the system today (pre-arrival communication, in-stay communication, next-stay communication.)

The journey till now
In 2009 the first hotel chain started using Loopon, and at that point it was just me and my co-founder Christofer running Loopon. We’ve kept growing organically without any external funding, and are today a team of 10 fantastic people from all over the world. (We’re extremely picky in only working with the best of the best – but we’re hiring! https://www.loopon.com/jobs )

The flexibility of working with any hotel
Our tag-line is “Loopon, for hotels that truly care about their guests.” which also identifies our customer segment. We work with any type of hotel, from big five star luxury hotels in country capitals to small family-run bed & breakfasts at the country side.

The common factor that unites all our customers is that they truly care about their guests and understand that the return on investment in caring is well worth it.

On tackling global hotel chains with existing communication systems

With Loopon you have all digital guest communication in a single system. This simple fact provides a great amount of benefits: Easier for employees; there’s just a single system which you need to be logged in to, where you immediately see all up-selling requests from guests that are arriving, in-stay feedback and service requests for guests currently at the hotel, and feedback and online reviews from guests that have already left the building.

Data unification, by collecting data the guests volunteer to us through all stages of the journey we can optimise all other stages of the journey – Did you buy a room upgrade on your last stay? That gives us info about a good marketing message to send you afterwards. Did you complain about breakfast last time you where here? That will help us optimise the next pre-arrival message. Using multiple systems that integrate with each other leads to least-common-denominator solutions, while having a fully integrated system gives you endless possibilities to provide better service to the guest while it takes less time to manage the system.

Loopon Team (Note: The team has expanded from the time this picture was clicked)

With the new European General Data Protection Regulation – you just have a single system to worry about for digital guest communication, and Loopon will obviously be compliant when the new regulation comes into effect.
Price. With everything in a single system, we can offer very competitive prices compared to picking different providers for every stage of the guest journey.

Addressing the guest security concerns
Since day one we have been in close contact with the Swedish Data Protection Authority to ensure we are complying with the Swedish Personal Data Act. Luckily this has been relatively strict, so for us the implications of the GDPR will be minimal.

Technically speaking we follow all best practices to ensure our systems are as safe as possible – Keeping systems up to date, using encryption wherever is feasible, only allowing traffic over HTTPS even for the guests. In our development process, the security impact of all code changes are assessed during code review and code that does not explicitly consider security is not allowed into the code base.

Solving the boutique hotel problem
We are working on a potential break-through here with a completely new model, which we are not ready to announce yet. Expect interesting news during the autumn

Our available approach is more classic, with a marketing-module which uses the guest data we have collected through the rest of the guest journey to help hotels customise personalised marketing messages to guests. For example, it’s very easy to segment messages based on the feedback a guest gave – where they unhappy with the breakfast? Offer them a better price on your improved breakfast! Where they super happy with everything? Welcome them back to relive the experience!

Solving the biggest points for guests once they have checked in
Our solution for this really shines. It started out with the simple realisation that a lot of the feedback hotels got after the stay would have been very easily solvable if the guest just mentioned it during the stay (bad cleaning of the room, missing towels, broken lamps, missing soap in the bathroom, …)

Most systems today that claim that they offer “realtime” feedback during the stay still requires the hotel to login to a system and refresh a page to see if there’s anything new. We offer a truly realtime solution on any channel the guests prefers: When the guest checks into the hotel, we send a welcome sms to the guest.

The guest can then choose to either reply to the sms without opening any app or web page, or open our web-based in-stay application where they can either give feedback or chat with the hotel through a realtime web interface or even use facebook messenger if the guest prefers.

From the hotel’s point of view, there’s a true realtime chat within Loopon where all messages arrive and the hotel can respond no matter what channel the guest used to communicate. If no-one at the hotel happens to be logged in to the chat at the moment, we have a chatbot that replies and the hotel can get notified through e-mail/sms/phone app so they never miss any comments from the guests.

Pricing mechanics
Since we combine all communication in a single product we can be very competitive on pricing. If you only want for example our realtime chat on your hotel website, we start as low as 39€ per month. For our pre-stay, in-stay, post-stay and next-stay features you simply pay per how many services you want to use and the website chat is included free of extra charge:
1 service: 100€ per month
2 services: 150€ per month
3 services: 200€ per month
4 services: 250€ per month

On tackling the competition
Historically speaking, our main competitors have been ReviewPro, Revinate and TrustYou – but today Loopon can also be a complement to all of them if a hotel already uses one of them. Our focus today is digital guest communication through the entire journey, while the three main old competitors mainly focus on a single or two stages of the journey.

The potential market is global – all hotels that want to stay relevant today have to maintain digital communication with guests before, during and after the stay; but today they struggle by using multiple software platforms for the different stages of the guest journey. By combining all communication into a single package, we offer a competitive advantage for any hotel already using one of the older platforms.

The post Sweden’s Loopon wants to take hotels to the next level of digital communication with guests appeared first on TravHQ.

Taj Hotels Palaces Resorts Safaris have recently launched their new mobile application in order to offer a seamless booking experience, rich content and new features to their guests. The group has partnered with Silicon Valley-based tech startup Proxce to leverage the real world identity management solution in different places throughout the guest journey.

IoT is termed as a defining force in travel and IoT solutions like that of Proxce offer interesting set of possibilities for hotels by offering better data about the guests. From enabling front desk to serve customers quickly to skipping it altogether, the solution allows hoteliers to add the technologies as extensions to their existing app.

“Data accessibility and mobile usage is growing exponentially across the world, especially in growing travel markets like India. Nearly 50% of our guests are now using a mobile device to explore our hotels and destinations somewhere in their purchase path. Online and mobile are our fastest growing channels and we will continue to invest in this area with the goal of creating a consistent guest experience across all platforms. We are grateful to Proxce who have partnered with us to successfully develop a destination-led and customer-centric app,” said Chinmai Sharma, Chief Revenue Officer, Taj Hotels Palaces Resorts Safaris.

Late last year, the first phase of the app, offering guests a seamless booking experience, was released as a teaser for things to come. The second phase planned for this year will include a simplified booking engine, frictionless mobile check-in, prompt service chat, improved loyalty system, and keyless access to guest rooms among other things.

“We’re excited to work with an iconic brand like Taj. Instead of building a mobile app merely for the sake of having one, Taj always wanted an app that would be an extension of themselves. With Proxce’s advanced identity management system behind Taj’s new mobile app, guests can now expect a smarter technology to give them an exceptional world-class experience, one that Taj is known for,” said Madhu Madhusudhanan, CEO and Founder, Proxce Inc.

On one hand, the hotel industry faces pressure from the alternative accommodation space while on the other, hoteliers have forever been trying to push their direct channels above OTAs. Leveraging technology to boost user experience allows them to further add differentiators for the tech savvy travellers while adding another incentive for the guests to use the app. Jumeriah More details about Proxce can be found in our interview with founder Madhu Madhusudhanan.

The post Proxce and Taj Hotels to offer a highly personalised guest experience through new mobile platform appeared first on TravHQ.

How many times have you waited in the hotel lobby after arriving early because you can’t check into your room before 1200 hours? Or just spent hours at airport after your meeting to catch that late night flight? Or booked two room nights because you will arrive one evening and leave the next evening. There is a good possibility that all these scenarios sound familiar and that is because the entire hotel industry follows a rigid check-in and check-out pattern. We have adopted the system and generally plan our travel accounting for it.

(L to R) Pranav Prabhakar and Sandeep Jaiswal, Founders, MiStay

However, a young startup seems to have a different idea. Sandeep and Pranav, the founders of MiStay, believe that travellers should have more flexibility when choosing their accommodation. Both IIT Madras alumni, Sandeep carries experience in management consulting and has previously filed two patents for developing internal analytical tools. He has also co-founded AmrutDhara, a for-profit social enterprise. Pranav, carries experience in design & product development and apart from working with LinkedIn, he has founded startups to help photographers and videographers.

MiStay offers travellers the option to book hotel rooms by pack of hours with flexible check-in and check-out times breaking the conventional practice in the industry. Sandeep shares that with MiStay, their objective is not just to make hotels available for few hours but also to make it flexible for people looking for a day or day and a half or any other duration. They have divided the day into three slots as morning, day and night and travellers can book depending on their requirement.

This of course if great for travellers. Who wouldn’t want to save money if they don’t need the room for the full booking duration? Most of the traction MiStay has seen until now has been at the partner properties situated near transit places like airports or railway stations. However, Sandeep believes that it will see more usage from business travellers which is why he is in the process of putting together meaningful business ties to serve as accommodation partner for various companies.

The response from hotels has been mixed. One side of the argument is that they can reach new customers who would not book a hotel room at all otherwise and could get more bookings during low occupancy times. The other side is potential risk of eating through the full day bookings and potential loss of revenue.

Sandeep however shares that the partner hotels have full control on what inventory they make available through MiStay. They can choose how many rooms and what slots are available. Hoteliers see different occupancy rates all year round and can even choose to offer no inventory when they get full occupancy. The same inventory can be used multiple times by the hotel. The costs will add up for them with more guests however MiStay claims that the added costs will be justified with the higher price for the slots.

That however isn’t the only challenge for them. The tools used by hotels to manage their properties don’t have room for this flexibility. It is not yet integrated with any channel manager yet but some partnerships are in pipeline to allow for this flexibility. At this point, the hotels are managing their extranet separately to take care of the bookings.

The climb these guys have taken up is certainly a steep one. It won’t be easy to change the practice that has been followed for ages but they have certainly made good progress since the time they launched few months back. MiStay is now also a part of the accelerator Axilor Ventures founded by Infosys co-founders Kris Gopalkrishnan & Shibulal which would help it grow further. You can visit MiStay.in to find more details.

The post Why this duo is trying to change how we have been booking hotels for ages? appeared first on TravHQ.

From young startups to the online travel giants, a lot of promises have been made in the hospitality industry. We often talk about how the shift towards online will redefine the hospitality industry and many startups have showcased the same globally. However, the challenges still continue to exist at the bottom of the chain, especially on our side of the globe.

The team at Caption Hospitality started off trying to build an OTA for South East Asia region with a focus on the boutique hotel category. The initial business development was focussed on Singapore but when they started testing the model in some developing countries like Indonesia and Thailand, they realised that the problem is much bigger than what they were trying to address. They took a brief pivot towards a meta search model focusing on Thailand but couldn’t take it very far back then.

By that time, the likes of OYO Rooms, ZO Rooms and many more were starting to pop up all over and the problem they were promising to address was visible in many other developing countries. The team had learned from the past experiences that they shouldn’t be tempted by a hyped idea so they considered validating the same and decided to address the problem from its root.

Key challenges

The biggest problem was that a huge fraction of the individual properties were still operating on manual processes. Hoteliers were manually updating inventories through OTA extranets and some were even managing check-ins on pen and paper. There are plenty of solutions available for hotels so that they can change it but things were quite different in the real world, especially with the lower end of the spectrum.

The team

(L to R) Larry Chua and Budi Santoso

The duo behind Caption Hospitality, Larry Chua and Budi Santoso spent time in identifying the key problems to create a product that eliminates the ground level problems. Larry has been in the travel industry for over a decade carrying experience of working with notable startups like Ensogo, Livingsocial and Deal.com.sg. He is also a motorsport enthusiast and has competed in F1 H2O Nations Cup Powerboat race in 2011 representing Singapore. Budi has been one of the top engineers graduating from the acclaimed Nanyang Technological University and has spent close to seven years with Marvell before stepping into travel space.

Solution?

After spending close to four months surveying various hotel properties and interviewing hoteliers, they identified various hurdles. The existing solutions for budget hotel properties were too expensive for most hoteliers. On top of that, these solutions were designed considering ideal connectivity situations which wasn’t the case everywhere in developing markets. To further add to the woes, most of them required a certain level of technical expertise which meant that the lower tier hotel staff wasn’t able to operate them. Adding to all this was the fact that the hoteliers were lacking the skills required to compete or even be visible in the highly competitive online travel space.

The solution? CRONO. It is an end-to-end solution for hotels that don’t require complicated modules such as managing F&B, Spas etc. In simple words, a solution to allow budget hotels to easily manage the inventory and focus on other important aspects of running a hotel business. This is more relevant now than ever before because the modern traveller doesn’t want to spend any time at the front desk. The friction at front desk puts off the customer.

The founders have extensively researched the market looping in the feedback of potential customers and specifically addressing their pain points. That is why, apart from offering solutions for streamlining operations, they also help them boost their online presence and make the most of it.

Commenting on their vision, Larry shared, “While Oracle has dominated the market of the top tier travel accommodations, we aim to be the default operating system for the lower tier travel accommodations, enabling and empowering them to be ready for the modern travellers.”

Multiple properties in Tier 2 cities are using and testing CRONO in Indonesia. The team is also in the process of signing five year management contract with some other properties in Indonesia. Recently they also announced a partnership with eRevMax, leading hotel distribution technology provider, to offer automated channel management and reservation delivery to the hotel partners.

With CRONO, Caption Hospitality is looking to get rid of inefficiencies in operations of budget hotels, which will allow them to serve their guests better, eventually giving long term gains. You can find more details at www.captionhospitality.com.

The post Travel Startup Spotlight: Caption Hospitality wants to help budget hotels turn millennial friendly appeared first on TravHQ.

eRevMax, leading hotel distribution technology provider has announced a new association with Singapore based Caption Hospitality. With this association, eRevMax has successfully completed a two way interface with CRONO PMS developed by Caption Hospitality and it would allow them to offer automated channel management and reservation delivery to standalone properties across the APAC region.

With this integration, hoteliers using the Caption Hospitality’s CRONO PMS will be able to distribute the availability and pricing of their inventory to major OTAs directly from their property management system and receive reservations directly through RateTiger, RTConnect and LIVE OS, various distribution tools offered by eRevMax. The availability status and prices will automatically be updated across all the connected online sales channels including GDS, OTAs, metasearch channels and other channels. This would minimise the effort required in the process and ensure that the information is synchronised across all channels without manual intervention.

“Lower tier travel accommodation providers in developing countries have been facing challenges trying to strive for business in the online world. Through this partnership, we are solving technology challenges for hotel owners through a solution that is simple and easy to operate. Using a single control panel on Caption Hospitality’s CRONO, they will be connected to multiple online travel agents globally with the help of eRevMax,” said Larry Chua, Co-founder, Caption Hospitality.

“Our interface with Caption Hospitality’s Crono PMS provides independent  hoteliers the best way to manage online channels cost effectively without worrying about maintaining online inventory manually across each booking website. A greater number of hotels can now leverage the benefits of our Channel Ecosystem while streamlining their distribution efforts. The secure XML connection ensures live rate and inventory updates as well as booking data retrieval, thereby keeping the hotel PMS updated at all times,” said Ashis Saha, SVP – Project Management, eRevMax.

CRONO was developed by Caption Hospitality to provide a reliable and easy to use solution for independent budget hotel properties to handle their day to day processes. Targeted primarily at three star and below properties, CRONO can handle front office check-in process, payments, inventories, accounting, marketing and lot more for the property. This strategic partnership would help hotels streamline their sales by using only one application for revenue and distribution management.

You can find more details about eRevMax at www.erevmax.com and about CRONO at www.captionhospitality.com

The post Caption Hospitality completes integrations with eRevMax to offer seamless online booking connectivity to individual properties appeared first on TravHQ.