INTERNATIONAL REPORT—Technology companies are introducing new solutions to create better guest experiences. With the innovative intelligence, properties have new ways to go about operations and better serve their guests:
Oracle Hospitality Arms Hotels with Intelligence, Capabilities for Enhanced Guest Stays
Oracle Hospitality Opera Cloud Service enables hotel personnel to focus on better connecting with guests and delivering personalized experiences to keep them coming back. Opera Cloud aims to bring the same comprehensive features to a cloud-based, mobile-enabled platform. In addition, Opera Cloud Service now offers open APIs enabling faster and easier integration with third party providers that hotels can leverage to deliver unparalleled guest stays. By moving the property management system to the cloud, hotels can reduce its IT complexity.
Enhance the guest experience:
- Streamline Reservations: a new “look to book” feature provides room type and rate inventory for single- and multi-property reservations via a shopping cart view for faster booking. Existing reservations are easily located via several search options and one-click access to guest details helps staff understand which guests are VIPs, repeat customers, loyalty members as well as their preferences. Group bookings have also been streamlined.
- Ease Arrivals & Check-In: Opera Cloud is mobile-enabled, allowing staff to check-in guests on tablets, eliminating long lines and guest frustration while delivering a more personalized check-in experience.
- Simplify Check-Out: enhanced check out capabilities make it easy to settle bills, including preparing and routing bills with multiple folios. Drag-and-drop functionality makes it easy to transfer a posting to another folio or room. Integration with EMV credit card settlement eases payment processing from the desk or a mobile tablet makes it easier to serve the customer.
Empower Staff: available in 20 languages, the enhanced Opera Cloud Service offers additional capabilities for guests and staff:
- Improve Corporate and Property Reporting: With three out-of-the-box standard dashboards and sample reports, hotel personnel from operations managers to revenue teams can view and deliver insights such as average daily rates, room revenue by property, guest profiles, reservation blocks and sales and catering information.
- Enhance Staff Productivity: Opera Cloud’s “I want to” panel enables personnel to find tasks they need to perform such as assigning a room, canceling a reservation, checking in a guest or creating an invoice. With Opera Cloud, all departments from concierge and valet to housekeeping and maintenance, can leverage mobile devices for tasks.
Angie Hospitality Intros PassPoint Hotspot 2.0 Technology
Angie Hospitality has added PassPoint Hotspot 2.0 technology to its virtual assistant solution. This next generation WiFi platform mirrors today’s cellular connectivity experience, streamlining the authentication process and allowing guests to securely connect to hotel WiFi with a click. With Angie’s ability to provide guests with a private, in-room network in addition to an array of voice control and touch screen capabilities, the new Hotspot 2.0 integration further ensures that each guest can effortlessly and securely connect multiple personal devices, including WiFi only tablets and laptops.
Angie’s ability to provide Hotspot 2.0 functionality requires minimal effort to connect, yet delivers the highest WPA2 security encryption. This is achieved using a one-time provisioning file that is transmitted to each guest device, automatically configuring the WiFi settings and all necessary encryption protocols without the need for human intervention. Once registered and provided with a Passpoint Hotspot 2.0 credential, guests are then able to automatically and securely connect to WLAN Hotspot 2.0 coverage areas anytime they are within range, including in guestrooms, lobby, common areas, meeting rooms, etc. where Hotspot is enabled.
Intelity and SkyTouch Connect to Mobilize Staff and Property Management
Intelity, provider of the travel industry’s first and broadest enterprise guest engagement and staff management platform, has teamed up with SkyTouch, a cloud-based hotel property management system (PMS). The connection will allow properties to use the Intelity and SkyTouch technologies in tandem through the SkyTouch/Connect integration platform. The cloud-to-cloud integration between the SkyTouch PMS and the Intelity platform gives staff access to a comprehensive set of management tools that work in combination to provide an exceptional guest experience.
The Intelity Staff back office platform connects to the SkyTouch PMS providing staff with updates to guest information and reservation status, as well as real-time updates regarding check-in/out and room changes. Because both platforms are available through mobile devices, management teams can be completely mobile on property and still track and manage all staff and guest activities.
AutoClerk Partners With Akia
AutoClerk Inc., a property management system (PMS) provider, has partnered with Akia, a technology company that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to power conversations between hotel staff and their guests. The system, created by a team of former Facebook engineers, is more than an automated response program. It can create work orders for housekeeping and maintenance, order valet service or call for a bellman, employing AI so that it learns when and how to best initiate responses to guests ,and saving hotel staff valuable time and resources.