F&B, M&E, Ancillary Revenue

What is the bedrock of great service? This is a question that any service provider should be well equipped to answer, but there is, perhaps, no industry more deeply rooted in the art of service than hospitality. Hotel and travel brands are, after all, in the business of experience; specifically, experience as a service, and today’s guest expects best-in-class service at every turn. So, let me ask you again, hoteliers: what is the bedrock of great guest service? The answer, if you ask me, is quite simple: technology.

During the height of the pandemic in 2020, casino hotels scrambled to adopt mobile check-in to protect their guests and staff, and adhere to social distancing guidelines. This big push towards mobile also led hoteliers to seek better tech solutions to improve other areas of the guest experience and hotel operations. Today, in the midst of a labor shortage and the pandemic’s uncertain end, casinos are doubling down on their tech initiatives, focusing investments in new technologies that will provide a more modern experience for guests, help improve operational efficiency and generate more revenue.

Perhaps you’ve heard about hotel benchmarking but are not quite sure where to start. How do you define a compset? What kind of metrics can you compare? How should you go about interpreting the results? We’re going to dig a little deeper into all of these points but first, let’s think about why benchmarking your hotel’s performance makes a lot of sense.

Guest expectations have evolved in recent years especially during the pandemic. The right technology – specifically, a Central Data Management (CDM) system built around a centralized guest profile – can enable hotels to meet these.

The countdown has begun as we approach our big relaunch of GHA DISCOVERY in early December! Though there is a multitude of changes across the programme, the most considerable enhancement is our new reward offering – DISCOVERY Dollars (D$) – the first of its kind digital rewards currency, which is accepted as a payment method for pretty much everything across our hotels.

A further easing of restrictions over the past month has allowed confidence to build, as travellers prepare for a holiday season away from home. Currently, the World Hotel Index shows us that an average of more than 1-in-5 existing hotel bookings globally are for the three weeks leading up to year’s end, while an average of almost 10% of booked stays are due for arrival in the week around New Year’s Eve.

It’s often said that the only constant in the technology industry is change. As businesses and industries evolve and adapt to user demands, the software that powers their internal and external processes must also evolve. Microservices are one of the architectural trends which more and more organizations are adopting. Many enterprise companies like Netflix, Amazon, PayPal, Uber, Airbnb, and essentially every other digital business have moved away from monolithic architectures and migrated over to this microservice approach.

One hundred and sixteen years ago, two architectural jewels opened in the Grand Canyon National Park: the 95-room El Tovar Hotel and the adjacent Hopi House Gift Shop. Both reflected the foresight and entrepreneurship of Frederick Henry Harvey whose business ventures included restaurants, hotels, railroad dining cars, gift shops and newsstands.

Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season in the US and is widely known as the busiest travel period of the year. Based on hotel booking data in the weeks leading up to the holiday, this year is on track to exceed pre-pandemic levels.

It’s a slow, relentless march towards zero-carbon emissions for all businesses in all industries. While the goal of ‘net zero’ has been given a far-off deadline like 2035 or 2050, many corporations are already pivoting so that they can improve operational efficiencies – minimizing the ‘green premium’ as it is known in economics – as well as capitalize upon any trendsetter cachet. The beginning of October saw two major announcements in the F&B space that hoteliers should be conscious of.