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.

The post AxisRooms is making revenue management seamless for hotels : Anil K Prasanna, Co-founder and CEO appeared first on TravHQ.

Technology has continuously been transforming the travel industry, but one constant remains – the hotel front desk. Step into any hotel, of any range, and you will end up finding the typical counter with people smiling and greeting you.

There are exceptions to this of course – the hotels who have bid farewell to the faithful infrastructure in exchange for handheld or fixed devices and kiosks. We are in 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. IoT is termed as a defining force in travel and IoT solutions are offering 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. Many consumers want to interact with hotels flexibly, whether by texting to request an early check-in or by unlocking their guest room with keyless entry powered by a mobile app. Moreover, there is an age-old desire to cut labor costs through automation.

However, at most places, the front desk has defied most of these technological trends and persisted. How did that happen?

There has been a growing skepticism for technology that has many implications for travel. In the past couple of months, social media platforms have been facing intense backlash from consumers, media, and regulators for having abused their trust. By treating a traveller this way – ‘using’ them only for data and attributes – hoteliers stand to face a similar backlash for exploiting customers for the purpose of upselling. The front desk is one place where this can be taken care of.

People don’t want to be treated like gadgets anymore. When travellers show up at a hotel after a long flight, the last thing they would want is to interact with another piece of technology. This goes especially true for business travellers, for whom travel can be a particularly dehumanizing experience. Chances are that the only human interaction they have all day is the front desk colleague who warmly welcomes them. Isn’t that the point of staying at a great hotel – to be taken care of?

A front desk is like the heart of a hotel. The travel industry needs to rethink its pursuit of digital services as only a proxy to human experience, and not simply replace it. A vast majority of today’s travellers still reject fully automated check-in. Case in point, long queues at airport counters. People don’t usually walk up to kiosks unless escorted by a human.

This is not to say that we should not pursue automation and all things digital. Many guests already do prefer it. However, let’s wait for a point at which time more guests will prefer to check-in via mobile than in person, before completely giving up on the front desk. In fact, rather than replacing the front desk completely, it should be re-invented as a tool to build brand image, especially online. When people check out reviews at TripAdvisor, it is easy to see that what people review is service by humans. If hotels completely eliminate the front desk experience, all hotel brands will eventually become a commodity, and then, why would we need a brand at all?

The post Should hotels get rid of the front desk? appeared first on TravHQ.

HotelsPro, a technology and reservation solutions provider for travel industry professionals and a brand of the world’s leading travel and accommodation supplier MetGlobal Group of Companies, has appointed a new Managing Director.

Assigned in senior finance executive roles at the leading companies of its sectors for a huge part of her almost 25 year business experience, Nevgul Bilsel Safkan will be responsible for the management of London, Shanghai, Orlando, Dubai and Istanbul offices for HotelsPro. Mrs. Safkan has expertise in various areas such as e-commerce, business strategy, retail, financial analysis and reporting, financial management, auditing and business development.

Nevgul Bilsel Safkan graduated from Business Administration in English at Istanbul University in 1993 and completed Executive MBA Program at Boğaziçi University in 2003. Starting her professional career at auditing department of Arthur Andersen at the same year, she worked in different executive roles at the leading companies of Turkey such as Superonline, Paxar Turkey and Sabanci Holding. In 2005, she joined Sabancı Group, the biggest conglomerate of Turkey, where she participated in top management roles for 11 years between 2005-2016. The first role of hers in Sabanci Group was Finance Director of Marsa Kraft Foods. After that, in 2006, she was appointed as CFO at Teknosa, the largest electronics retailer in Turkey. During her career at Teknosa, she undertook the project leadership of important company acquisitions such as Best Buy and Uzelli. She executed the leadership of successful public offering and investor relations of Teknosa. Recently worked as General Manager at Kliksa, second largest b2c e-commerce company, Mrs. Safkan joined HotelsPro as Managing Director in the third quarter of 2016.

“Having achieved significant success by participating in executive roles at Turkey’s powerful companies, we are happy to have Nevgul Bilsel Safkan in MetGlobal family. We hope that HotelsPro, already being one of the leading travel wholesalers, will reach its targets faster with Mrs. Safkan’s contributions. As MetGlobal and HotelsPro family, we say welcome aboard to Mrs. Safkan”, said Metin Altun, the CEO of MetGlobal Group of Companies.

You can find more details about HotelsPro here.

The post Reservation solutions provider HotelsPro appointed new Managing Director appeared first on TravHQ.

Hospitality sector has seen a wide range of technologies getting poured in and taken out for a spin. Technology has greatly influenced hotel management operations, overall guest management and booking solutions in the last decade. However, this doesn’t hold true for hotels of all sizes. Software vendors’ apathy small hotels and puts them under big risk. The realisation that their business is at risk would ideally creep soon.

In the lieu to initiate this paradigm shift eZee Technosys launches eZee Ultimate allowing hoteliers across the globe to avail their platform free of cost. eZee Technosys is world’s hospitality solution provider with customers in over 140 countries.

With this robust free solution, the hotels could access cloud PMS, channel manager, web booking engine, cloud restaurant POS (coming soon), hotel website, guest feedback management system and a mobile portal. By getting access to this free technology, hotels can maximise online visibility, create new sales channels, streamline hotel operations, and boost occupancy rate.

Hotels can engage this technology with a small transaction fee for bookings received via Channel Manager and web booking engine capped by a ceiling limit equivalent to the cost of a subscription.  Moreover, at times smaller hotels don’t have expertise in OTA registration, Channel Optimisation and this is where their sales can reach.

Mr Aeijaz Sodawala, CEO of eZee Technosys said “Almost 75% of the hotel industry comprises small and independent hotels who aren’t technology-savvy and have for long avoided adopting automation tools like a cloud PMS. The technology first belief is still limited to the larger hotels, mostly 3 star and above category, who are greatly benefiting from it. All we wanted to do was provide small to medium sized hotels with the technology which until now was only available to the bigger players in the industry.”

Currently, 5500+ businesses across 140 countries worldwide run on eZee’s technology and vouch for the system’s capabilities and robustness. eZee Ultimate offers a win-win option for both hoteliers and the technology leader. Hotels have the option of getting the same solution with regular subscription fees, with no lock-in contracts and hotels can switch plans anytime.

Hoteliers can sign up for eZee Ultimate here. For all the other technology solutions offered by eZee Technosys, you can visit their website.

The post Small hotels to benefit from the free-to-use hospitality technology product suite introduced by eZee appeared first on TravHQ.

Hoteliers always keep exploring ways to give their business a boost and increase occupancy rates. However the industry is highly competitive and they often keep facing the heat from other segments like alternative accommodation. The challenge is even bigger for individual hotel properties which are in the same game without the kind of resources that hotel chains have. We look at how these individual hotels can leverage technology and digital to stay competitive against the chains.

1- Open up channels

Just having a phone number and email ID won’t cut it anymore. Weigh down all the options you can offer your customer to reach you and start with the best ones. Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger could be a good start point. People who are on the move might not prefer picking up the phone and making a call to place a request and will prefer chat as a medium in many cases.

2- Build a character

While it is true for almost anyone on social media platforms, it is easier for relatively smaller independent hotels to implement. They have got more freedom on how they present themselves offline as well as online as compared to the hotel chains which have to stay in sync with the brand character. Pick the key traits and start highlighting them on social media one at a time.

3- Invite reviews

Even after an excellent stay, most of the guests won’t go to review platforms like TripAdvisor to give you a positive review. Review platforms are your friends as an increased ranking there will significantly affect the number of incoming guests. You can explore different ways to remind your guests to review you on Trip Advisor. A QR Code to the listing page on the bill or a thank you text after the stay with the link could be good for start but it would pay to be more creative with how you ask for reviews.

4- Channelize the negatives

Some guests are more demanding than the others and might not be very happy with the experience. Sometimes guests are unhappy due to incorrect expectations. Whatever be the case, keep all your communication channels open for your guests and encourage them to share any problems they face immediately. This would allow you to avoid a potentially negative review and even turn it into a positive one. There are some tools that allow hotels to invite feedback through the Wi-Fi landing page however we are not certain about the effectiveness of such tools.

5- Tech up

Personalisation goes a long way in enriching the customer experience and while most good hotels ensure that for their frequent guests, IoT technologies can also aid in the process by providing more actionable data. Hotels can explore the option of keyless entry and mobile check-ins. This would not only boost the customer experience but also attract new tech savvy guests to the property. While the investment would be high, implementation would be easier and quicker than across hotel chains.

6- Make friends

Explore potential partnerships to expand the offerings beyond just accommodation. For instance, you can associate with some quality activity providers in the region and offer them as a part of stay packages at your property. You can also leverage each other’s marketing channels to reach different audience at times. This way, you will be able to reach new customers while being able to offer more than just hotel rooms to your guests.

How else do you think individual properties can compete with hotel chains? Do share with us.

The post Here is how individual hotels can stay competitive against hotel chains 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.

Technology is changing our travel experience in ways we could have never imagined. Hotels have continued to be more or less the same for a long time but now, even they aren’t unaffected by the entry of new technologies and increasing number of mobile users. Over the next few years, we will see many things we are used to see in hotels being replaced by technology. Here is what we think will go away first:

1- Phones

We are surprised that the fixed phones haven’t disappeared from the rooms yet. What was a revolution a few decades back doesn’t even qualify as technology anymore. As chat apps are being adopted widely, a large number of travel related services are shifting to the new medium and room service requests are no exception. Marriott introduced chat based requests through their mobile app where the guests can either choose from the options or just talk to an operator and place the request.

2- Cable TV

Seriously who watches TV anymore? Even in a hotel room, it is usually switched on in the background to fill in for the silence while you work on your laptop. According to the data shared last week at Phocuswright India by Lee McCabe, Global Head of Travel, Facebook, there has been a 32 percent decline since 2010 in the time spent watching television for people between 18 to 24 years of age. Streaming services like Netflix that offer more control to the user are killing conventional TV and soon it will disappear from hotel as well. Here again Marriott made the first move and enabled for guests at selected properties to use their Netflix account. We will see more hotels switch from the TV being a TV to a smart screen for your content.

3- In-Room Controls

Any hotel room will have a weird temperature control on one end, half a dozen switches on one side of the bed, half a dozen on the other and then a few more here and there. It is about time all those switches and controls go away from the room. Lights, temperature, blinds, radio, alarms and everything else will be controlled using a single device, maybe a tablet placed in the room, or your own mobile device through a simple app. Citizen M hotels offer Samsung tablets for in room controls and more will follow. Along with this, we will also see various appliances in hotel rooms becoming more efficient to minimise power consumption.

4- Keys

Starwood introduced keyless across multiple properties of its portfolio hotels. You can simply pull out your phone with the SPG app, put it near the door lock and done. No more digging around for the key cards. This trend is being adopted not only by the premium hotel chains like Starwood but smaller boutique hotels are also investing into the technology. Startups like Proxce are catalysing the process by providing technology solutions for hotels. With their identity management solution, they are not only enabling hotels to integrate keyless locks but also opening up opportunities to personalise the guest experience better.

5- Front desk

You stand awkwardly behind a guest, who is occupied on his phone while the front desk staff is digging for details in the computer, just to grab your keys. Nobody, absolutely nobody likes to queue up at the front desk to check-in and as they keys go away, the front desk will be the next. Hotels are offering guests the option to use their mobile phones to check-in, bypass the front desk and head straight to their rooms. Some have also experimented with kiosks to replace the front desk experience. As guests adopt to the change, the front desks will completely disappear in few years.

What else do you think will be replaced in hotels by technology? Do share with us.

The post 5 Things that will disappear from hotels in future appeared first on TravHQ.

Many industry experts have predicted that Internet of Things will define the travel industry in future. Adding technology to improve the user experience will help hotels set themselves apart and with the increasing number of tech savvy travellers, the trend will catch up. We came across a technology startup Proxce that has built Proximity Identity Manager to create a secure and seamless hotel check-in experience. We had a conversation with Madhu Madhusudhanan, Founder & CEO of Proxce and talked about the product and new trends coming up in the hospitality industry.

Madhu Madhusudhanan, Founder & CEO, Proxce

Proxce offers solutions for hospitality industry, especially hotels to offer seamless check-in and keyless room entry. Before Proxce, Madhu was working with IBM and sometime last year jumped into Proxce after his MBA. Since then he has been working to build and fine tune the product Here is an excerpt from the conversation:

How old is the company? What was the motivation behind starting it?

The company started in August 2014 last-year. Proxce was born out of the problems I faced as a business traveller myself. When I used to go to a hotel, they already had my payment and room preferences, but still I had to wait in line, show my ID and collect the keys. I realised that Identity is the key here and if we can associate the identity with the individual seamlessly, we can make the whole process frictionless.

We took a fair bit of time to build the product and worked on it till early this year. We came out of semi-stealth mode and got immediate interest from few hoteliers. We piloted it with few hotels and they all liked it. Few months ago we started talking to large hotel chains and we are in process of deploying with few of them right now.

How big is your team? Are all of them from US only?

We are about 10 people and almost all of the team is based out of California in U.S. with the exception of 1 developer who is in India.

Are you supported by any investors? How do you plan to scale up further?

We were trying to raise an early stage fund few months back and we decided to close that fund. We are probably 10 months away from Series A funding. In 10 months, we should have good data points after working with large customers. We will also have usage data and revenue numbers by then. Our product is a license based product where we’re giving APIs and SDKs to existing apps of hotels where they can use features like mobile check-in and keyless entry.

What kind of hotels are you working with? Are you looking at hotel chains or individual properties?

We started off with boutique hotels. We offer the basic services for their app at a small fee. Our core product caters to medium to large hotel chains who have an app but don’t have a strong developer team to incorporate advanced features. We are talking to customers all over world and the nature of our implementation cycle involves deploying the product along with few months of services where we integrate all the features into their systems.

What are the challenges you face with integration into existing app?

Our SDK is built to be seamlessly integrated into the existing app so there aren’t any major challenges. Few of the challenges are that some hotels use legacy system at the backend so that requires some work, where, depending on the system, we have to customise few things to make it work. We don’t really provide technology for keyless locks. For that we work with existing system providers. Their system works seamlessly with ours but hotels might have to change locks to use them.

What features do most hotels look for? Mobile check-in coupled with keyless systems or just check-in feature?

For smaller hotels we suggest check-ins and key pickup. Smaller hotels are little wary to go keyless in the beginning. For them, we have product that costs almost nothing and then they can look at the experience how guests are adapting. Our technology can tell them who is at the front desk. So if you walk up to the front desk, they can greet you with your name and hand over your keys without asking for details. That is an additional element of customer service.

Larger hotels are more open to the full system. In some cases we suggest them to have the new locks for some of the rooms and assign those rooms to people who come with keyless entry enabled mobile phones. This way they don’t have to invest much into the locks and they can consider adding more such locks at a later stage according to the response.

What is the cost of replacing a lock for the hotel?

Actually hotels don’t pay us the costs but they deal directly with provider. Some providers add additional chip to the lock which makes it low cost solution. In some cases there are complicated systems that require replacing the full lock.

What fraction of the hotels have got good apps?

There are just a handful of hotels that have apps that offer some really great value. There are some which offer static content which is easily available outside and thus very few people bother to use the app. Barring few large hotel chains, many of them are yet to catch up on app but the good thing is that almost every hotel we talk to has plans regarding a mobile app.

What is your pricing structure?

We have flat pricing for starter kit. To some we offer the system for free but they have to use Proxce app to check in. But the white label solution costs USD 5,000 and about USD 150 as a support fee. For a starter kit, we offer around 3 beacons that they can strategically place around the property and an iPad to control the systems.

If the hotel is looking for the complete system, costs will depend on the architecture and requirements of the hotel.

And how are hotels adapting to the new technologies?

We like to tell hotels to gradually open it up as it takes time for the front desk staff to adapt to this different means of check in. To do so, we send out contextual mails inviting users to try it out. We usually start with around 50-100 users per month and gradually increase to a number, hotels are comfortable with.

We came across Roomkey earlier and they seem to be doing something similar? How do you differentiate? What is your take on the competition?

We are an identity management company. Typically the app and keyless entry part is just a feature of what we are doing. Our focus will be security and associating ID with an individual and then adding value. There are some players in the industry that are working on similar technologies but we plan to extend this beyond hospitality. There are bars and restaurants where this can be used. We also provide ID relationship management where we can securely tell, when you enter a hotel, what sort of relationship you have with that location and offer access to certain things, like it will be different for employee and guest.

Our core differentiator I would say is that with the SDK based systems that we are deploying, none of the data is stored on our systems. The user profiles stay with the hotel or any other organisation that is using the system which gives them an assurance of security. This is crucial in case of high end hotels because of the kind of guests they welcome.

Apart from expanding in different verticals, what are your future plans?

Our goal is to offer completely SDK and API based solutions, more like VISA or Master Card that facilitate the transactions. At some point we want to get out of the frontend business and want our technology to be embedded within existing apps and systems. Brands can use our app and can offer keyless systems to their customers without having those customers ported into our system. Suppose IBM has partnered with restaurants to provide free lunch to their employees, they can associate the IDs with the system to take care of the job.

Have you been in talks with any Indian hotel brands? What scope do you see for this technology in Indian market?

We are really excited about Indian market because of increasing number of tech savvy users. The industry is booming there and people have started to travel more. With more people travelling for leisure there is a good scope to make the experience smooth. Hotels are upgrading their infrastructure to add value which is good for us. We will see some good progress in adoption and usage number will be high. The market is biased towards Android but still the number of mobile users is very high. People are eventually getting used to see applications of IoT and the addition of our technologies shouldn’t come as a surprise to them.

Apart from the beacon technologies, there are companies like Savioke that are working on robots for hotels. What other technology trends do you see coming in the hotel industry?

Savioke is a very good example of robots being used for delivery system. An area where we will see good progress beyond keyless will be VR. Giving an experience of seeing the actual hotel through VR from your own couch can change the experience as the user will be able to make a better decision. That is definitely going to pick up.

Wearables will also catch up in future. We are yet to see very useful applications of wearables apart from keyless entry. In future we will be able to use them to pay for services, staff can use to track you, let your children have bands to allow them access to hotel features and keep track of them. These are the areas we will see grow in future and will help hotels create good experiene. Airbnbs are catching up well and hotels can set themselves apart by adding technology and focusing on providing good experience. Hotels might think that they do not need it today but it will be required in coming years.

Any message for the TravHQ community?

The biggest message I would give them is that the traveller is changing. Modern travellers behave differently before actually coming to hotel. They have moved from taxis to Uber, they are skipping lines at airport but the final piece of puzzle is hotel where they are following age old pattern. While there are good number of travellers that prefer the old methods, there is an increasing number of users who prefer using technology to simplify things. This is the right time for hoteliers to consider adding new technologies to their hotel.

Do tell us what you think of the new technologies coming up in the hotel industry. If you are interested in exploring the options for your hotel, you can read more about Proxce on their website here.

The post Skip the front desk with this California based startup Proxce appeared first on TravHQ.

As travellers turn tech savvy and become increasingly dependent on mobile, hotels are embracing mobile and building features around it. Apart from improving the mobile booking experience, luxury hotels like Marriott allow guests to place service requests or schedule pickup using the mobile app. Starwood has introduced keyless entry using smartphones so that guests can go straight to their room and unlock using their mobile. Hilton is also working on something similar. ITC is working on a mobile app to add features like mobile check-in and mobile service request.

While the hotel industry’s giants are trying to build around the needs of a modern connected travellers, boutique hotels often find it hard to adapt to the change. Having keyless entry or a good mobile app has got heavy costs associated with it that are hard to justify against the potential ROI for such hotels. RoomKey, (not to be confused with hotel search engine by the same name) enters the picture with a tangible solution. It offers services like mobile check-in and keyless entry for partner hotels, allowing them to offer the same features as the major brands.

The RoomKey app allows users to book with their partner hotels and also use the in app chat feature to talk to a hotel representative. Guests can book on mobile, select their room, do advance check-in, bypass the front desk and head straight to the room which they can unlock using their phone. They can also check out and receive the invoice for stay on mobile. At this point the app is available for iOS only and an Android version is in the pipeline. RoomKey charges hotels $800 / month for the features with an additional cost per room if the hotel wants to install RoomKey’s Bluetooth lock hardware.

RoomKey Technologies recently announced a $1M seed round from 500 Startups and others.

Talking about this recent funding, Vikas Bhakta, Co-founder & CEO of RoomKey Technologies, Inc., said, “We are grateful to announce this funding, which will allow us to provide RoomKey to hundreds of hotels in our pipeline, starting with hotel partners in the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, millennial and mobile travelers prefer hotels that offer premier digital services, including mobile apps. However, most hotels lack the resources or internal IT expertise to build their own mobile solutions. RoomKey provides hotels with a complete mobile app solution to attract tech-savvy travelers, without the burden of developing and maintaining their own individual app.”

Startups like RoomKey help the industry by catalysing the adoption of technology. A large number of hotels which might not have even considered keyless entry or mobile check-in will get the push with RoomKey. Do you think we will see these hotel technologies trickle down from luxury hotels in India anytime soon?

The post Roomkey helps Boutique Hotels turn millennial friendly appeared first on TravHQ.