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Tony Loeb

2314 posts
Tony Loeb, un expert reconnu de l'industrie hôtelière et du marketing digital, a gravi les échelons de sa carrière, passant de webmaster à Directeur Technique puis co-fondateur de WIHP où il participe à la création Meta I/O. Il a ensuite lancé "Experience", le premier CRM hôtelier mondial, révolutionnant l'expérience client et aidant plus de 4500 hôtels. Actuellement, il innove avec 10minhotel.com, une plateforme et une base de connaissance pour hôteliers, combinant ses passions pour l'hôtellerie et le marketing. Le site propose également un podcast informatif, "10 min pour un hôtelier", démontrant l'engagement continu de Tony pour l'innovation dans l'industrie hôtelière.
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  • 2 min

HT Talks Tech with Original ChopShop CEO Jason Morgan

📝 In 2024, Original ChopShop (OCS) experienced its first full year using Ovation, a guest feedback tool, leading to 20,000 reviews within three months, with a response rate of 100%. Annually, OCS garnered 64,000 reviews, averaging a 4.6 out of 5 rating. OCS also emphasizes convenience with 70–75% of food consumed off-premises and a loyalty program used in 50% of in-store transactions. Their catering business, about 7–8% of sales, offers a rewards system with Paytronix, giving 10% back on $1,000 spent quarterly. The brand has a strong employee retention rate, with GMs averaging over 4 years and top hourly staff averaging 2.5 years.
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  • 4 min

How Predictive Intelligence Rewrites Guest Retention

🏨 Predictive AI enhances hotel guest loyalty by personalizing incentives and optimizing engagement, shifting from broad, generic perks to precision-timed, relevant offers. It analyzes behavior across channels, predicts future wants, and re-engages guests showing early signs of disengagement, potentially boosting re-engagement rates by double digits. Combining predictive and generative AI, hotels can strategize and deliver targeted messages, with predictive models trained against years of data. Future success in hospitality relies on unified data and personalized guest experiences, with predictive AI at the core of intelligent loyalty workflows.
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  • 4 min

The Hotel That Knows You Better Than You Do

🏨 Since December 2024, HT editors have tracked the upcoming Otonomus Hotel in Las Vegas, beginning operations in July 2025, set to be the first AI-powered hotel in the U.S. CEO Philippe Ziade, transitioning from real estate to hotelier post-2008, has developed an AI booking engine for customizing stays with attribute-based options and pre-ordered amenities. The AI scrapes social media data and employs gamified interaction for personalized experiences. Otonomus employs 50 engineers crafting in-house tech, ensuring data control and guest privacy. The AI aims to blend personalization with human hospitality, accessible to all guests.
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  • 3 min

Wunderkind Report: Fragmented Ordering App Landscape Poses Challenges, Opportunities for Restaurants

💸 SuiteOp, a Guest Operations Platform, secured its first external financing with a $3 million seed funding round. ScOp led the investment, with contributions from Dream Capital, Kunal Shah, Sudeep Singh, Song Pak, and a private European fund. Founded by Jean-Emmanuel Losi and Simon Seroussi, SuiteOp evolved from Sosuite, a short-term rental brand in Philadelphia. The platform, which caters to various lodging businesses, aims to streamline operations by integrating IoT, automation, and analytics. Featuring a fivefold annual run rate increase, 15% monthly growth, and zero percent customer churn, SuiteOp plans to further develop automation tools and expand into new markets.
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  • 3 min

Shaping the Future of Hospitality Technology, Choice Hotels Kicks Off MasteryX, its 10th Annual Tech Innovation Summit

💾 SuiteOp, a Guest Operations Platform, raised $3 million in seed funding to accelerate development, roll out automation tools, and expand markets. ScOp led the investment alongside Dream Capital, Kunal Shah, Sudeep Singh, Song Pak, and a private European fund. Founded by Jean-Emmanuel Losi and Simon Seroussi from their experiences with Sosuite, SuiteOp caters to a range of lodging businesses. It boasts a fivefold increase in run rate, 15% month-over-month growth, and zero percent customer churn. The fresh capital aims to enhance automation and efficiency in the hospitality sector, responding to high costs and labor constraints.
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  • 3 min

Unlocking the Power of CRM in Restaurants: Insights from Industry Leaders

📊 CRM technology is crucial for restaurant growth and customer engagement—experts Dave Harris (CTO, Cooper’s Hawk Winery & Restaurants) and Aaron Abramoff (CFO, The Restaurant People) shared insights in a panel discussion. They emphasized: actionable insights from CRM systems are key; a balance of instinct and data in decision-making is necessary; personalization improves guest loyalty but is complex to implement; ROI on CRM is hard to measure but essential; tech integration needs to be seamless; and AI is becoming vital in CRM strategy, enhancing human decision-making. CRM is a must-have for competitive restaurants.
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What’s Wrong with Metasearch Today?

💸 Nearly half of U.S. travelers used metasearch for flight and hotel bookings in 2017, with metasearch engines surpassing traditional ads as a marketing channel. However, metasearch's share of travel traffic fell from 22% in 2017 to 17% by 2020. The CPC revenue model often leads to higher prices, as rankings are based on bids rather than the best rates. Over 3/4 of top metasearch channels' revenue comes from Booking and Expedia. Traditional metasearch fails to retain customers due to better rates available through OTAs' loyalty programs or apps. For metasearch to survive, it must evolve beyond price comparison, adopting a customer-centric approach with integrated OTA functionality and a cost-per-action model that incentivizes better deals for travelers.
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DoorDash Adds AI-Powered Tools to Enhance Online Menus

💾 SuiteOp, a Guest Operations Platform, secured $3 million in seed funding to accelerate development, enhance automation tools, and expand into new markets. Co-founders Jean-Emmanuel Losi and Simon Seroussi, dealing with operational challenges at their short-term rental brand Sosuite, created SuiteOp to address similar issues hospitality businesses face. With this investment, the company aims to deepen automation, reduce overhead, and improve efficiency, building on a fivefold increase in run rate, 15% month-over-month growth, and zero percent customer churn. SuiteOp was founded in 2023 and supports tens of thousands of units.
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  • 2 min

The Raise the Wage Act would increase the federal minimum wage to $17 an hour — Here’s what to know

💰 Congressional Democrats, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, introduced the Raise the Wage Act to Congress on Tuesday, aiming to raise the national minimum wage to $17 an hour over five years and eliminate subminimum wages for tipped, disabled, and youth workers over seven years. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25, last increased in July 2009, would more than double by 2030. The legislation faced a party-line vote during the weekend. Sanders cited that over 60% of workers live paycheck to paycheck. Previously, a $15 minimum wage proposal was included in President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief plan in 2021 but failed to pass. The Raise the Wage Act has the support of Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-Va.), 32 Senators, 142 Congressional Representatives, and various organizations. The restaurant industry has concerns over job losses and the elimination of the tipped wage, currently at $2.13.
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