Innovation

🏨 Guestline, part of Access Group, enhances its GuestStay offering with self-service options and AI integration, easing hotel staff's workload and elevating guest autonomy. The portal allows guests to manage reservations, add services, and make restaurant bookings via ResDiary. Notably, properties report 25% of table bookings through GuestStay, with more upsell features in development. GuestStay aids in increasing Total Revenue per Available Room (TRevPAR) and improving guest experience, particularly for room-only OTA bookings. Further updates to the portal are expected later in 2024.

🏨 Marriott utilizes natural search effectively with AI in hospitality. The industry struggles with data quality and privacy issues, essential for AI success. Transparency in data practices is crucial for consumer trust. The AI integration debate focuses on efficiency versus maintaining human interaction. Knowledge grows on AI as a team member, not a replacement—concerns for AI in luxury spaces due to service expectations. The travel industry faces a critical period for AI's role in enhancing or detracting from hospitality and travel experiences.

🤖 Vayu Robotics, founded in 2020 and having raised $12.7 million, launched the first on-road Delivery Robot using AI and passive sensors, eliminating costly lidar. The robot can carry 100 lbs at under 20mph, navigating autonomously without pre-mapping. Vayu recently signed a deal to deploy 2500 robots for a major e-commerce company, aiming to revolutionize goods transport and expand into other robotic forms.

🏫 Budderfly installed smart sensors at Hart's Sonic Drive-In locations, enabling remote HVAC control and energy savings of 3-5% per month. Hart's average spend is over $5,000 monthly per store, totaling around $300,000 annually. Savings per percent equal $3,000. Hart plans to add solar panels with Budderfly's financial and operational support, and expresses interest in future EV charger installations.

🍚 Beef 'O' Brady's operates in 20+ US states and is collaborating with SoundHoundAI for phone orders. SoundHound's voice AI answers 100% of calls and can handle multiple orders, allowing staff to focus on service. Nearly 80% of US diners expect AI to dominate food ordering soon. SoundHound's AI is deployed in over 10,000 locations and the company recently acquired Allset to expand its reach. Beef 'O' Brady's emphasizes innovation for customer satisfaction, integrating AI to streamline ordering.

📈 In Nashville, Tennessee, Groups360 introduced GroupSync Planner+, a hotel planning and booking tool for enterprise-level event organizers. The web-based GroupSync marketplace showcases live availability at over 25,000 properties worldwide and offers instant booking for events with 10 to 25 rooms and up to 50 participants. Planner+ delivers a customizable approval process, financial reporting tools, and later will integrate Master Service Agreements and preferred hotels. Christian Oliver, Groups360’s SVP of product, highlighted Planner+'s ability to save time and money while standardizing corporate event planning.

🚀 Ashu Singhal, FREENOW’s chief product and technology officer, commits to enhancing urban mobility in Europe. Partnering with Incognia, they aim to bolster platform trust, focusing on fraud prevention without customer friction. Incognia's CEO André Ferraz emphasizes this collaboration's role in FREENOW's secure service delivery and customer satisfaction growth.

🛑 Today's global tech outage was caused by a software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, impacting organizations using Microsoft Windows, notably in the airline, financial, healthcare and broadcasting sectors. Hospitality and foodservice were also affected, highlighting the need for businesses to understand technological dependencies, have a business continuity plan, and embrace redundancy with manual procedures and backup systems to ensure operations can continue during such incidents.