Innovation

📖 Dina Belon, President of Staypineapple, discusses the role of technology in guest experiences with Danica Smith. Dina argues against using kiosks in her hotels, emphasizing the importance of personal interaction. The conversation explores how independent hoteliers can compete with large brands by selecting appropriate tech partners.

📅 In 2025, seamless integration of Global Distribution System (GDS) with Property Management System (PMS), Central Reservation System (CRS), channel managers, and booking engines enhances hotel efficiency. STAAH's solution provides real-time updates, ensuring rate parity and preventing booking errors. Integration eliminates manual work, supports global reach, and offers analytics for better performance tracking. This technological harmony transforms GDS from complex to essential, enabling hotels to secure high-value corporate and government bookings while reducing OTA dependency.

📈 ATHENS — 23 September 2025 — Brown Hotels partners with IDeaS, deploying the G3 Revenue Management System across locations in Israel, Greece, Cyprus, and Croatia. The system enhances pricing, forecasting, and inventory control, reducing manual report processing from 80% to dynamic dashboards. The implementation improved forecast accuracy and revenue, particularly in superior room categories. IDeaS, with over 30,000 installations globally, supports Brown Hotels' strategic growth.

🛠 Who? Hotels and staff. When? Today. Where? Globally, applicable to hotels. What? 10 automations for hotel operations. How? Automate guest review responses, profile management, reservation updates, deposit collections, OTA reservations, high-risk bookings, commission reconciliations, credit card payments, invoice processing, and income reports. Why? To save time, reduce errors, improve guest service, and enhance financial management. Benefits? Increased efficiency, less manual work, better financial control, and enhanced guest experience.

💡 Munich, 23 September 2025 – Apaleo launches the first MCP Server, enabling AI agents in hospitality to perform complex tasks across systems without custom coding. The MCP standardizes interactions with hotel data, overcoming tech fragmentation and enhancing scalability. Apaleo’s platform supports co-creation with hoteliers, reducing deployment time from weeks to days. CitizenM’s Mike Rawson praises MCP's potential to redefine hotel operations. Apaleo supports over 2,000 properties globally, offering a modular, API-first management platform.

😯 OpenAI's #ChatGPT is now integrated with #ecommerce, offering a list of 4 "healthy" cereals in the US. Each cereal brand is clickable, linking to product pages on Walmart and Target. Users can directly access "Add to Cart" pages, raising questions about the role of #SEO and #SEM. Is this a new form of #Adwords for #ChatGPT? The intersection of #ChatGPT with #Shopping and #SearchEngine is intriguing.

🛠 Landed in Miami at 10:30 PM, the traveler struggled with an online check-in process involving six screens. Despite digital promises of speed, the check-in felt redundant, with repeated requests for name, address, and credit card. By 11:15 PM, at the hotel desk, card and ID were required again. The observation is that most check-ins prioritize data reporting over guest convenience, turning the process into a cumbersome task rather than a seamless experience. #HotelTech #GuestExperience