Innovation

📣 Saladplate, part of Informa Markets, serves as the official content and engagement hub for the Hospitality, Food, and Beverage industry. It offers weekly news updates, a monthly newsletter, and a bi-monthly e-magazine. The platform features a supplier directory with over 10,000 brands, companies, and products, plus registration and updates for more than 35 international trade events.

📈 Infor announced its new AI-driven revenue management solution (RMS) for the hospitality sector in New York. The RMS features AI and machine learning algorithms to enhance pricing and revenue optimization for hoteliers. It offers personalized KPI access, granular pricing capabilities, a unified system adaptable to various property types, AI for opportunity-focused insights, role-specific interfaces, and data analysis powered by Infor’s data lake and hospitality-centric language model. The RMS supports manual, fully-automated, or semi-automated operations, providing real-time data streaming and continuous reforecasting.

💰 Hyatt Hotels Corporation's 2024 full-year net income hit $1,296 million, with RevPAR growth of 4.6%. Q4 net income reached $56 million, with diluted EPS at $0.58 and adjusted at $0.42. Adjusted EBITDA for Q4 was $255 million, contributing to the annual $1,096 million. Net rooms saw a 7.8% growth, and shareholder returns exceeded $1.2 billion. The World of Hyatt loyalty program grew to approximately 54 million members. For 2025, the forecast includes 2-4% RevPAR growth, 6-7% net rooms growth, and a projected net income of $190-240 million.

📆 A new automatic classification process for tourist events utilizes CRISP-DM, supervised machine learning, and NLP. Over 1,100 event sources from 30+ countries, 700,000 events, and 23 languages contributed to train a model categorizing events into a hierarchical taxonomy. This innovation aids travelers in finding events aligned with their interests and enhances trip planning across multiple regions and languages. It also provides insights for DMOs, event planners, and tourism marketers to tailor events, promotions, and collaborations among tourism stakeholders.

📊 Noida-based RateGain Travel Technologies Limited reported Q3 FY25 financials for period ending December 31, 2024. Total Revenue rose 13.7% YoY to INR 2,990.4 Mn, Operating Revenue by 10.6% YoY to INR 2,787.1 Mn, and PAT surged 39.9% YoY to INR 565.4 Mn. EBITDA margin increased to 22.1% from 20.3% YoY. For 9MFY25, Total Revenue up 20.8% YoY to INR 8,719.0 Mn; PAT jumped 61.6% YoY to INR 1,541.2 Mn. LTV to CAC ratio at 14.2x, Revenue per Employee at INR 13.3 Mn, ARR at INR 11,148.6 Mn; workforce stands at 836.

📱 Marriott International operates nearly 9,100 properties globally. A recent survey indicated that 95% of consumers trust businesses with extensive online reviews more, while 36% believe businesses can stand out by responding to reviews publicly. 19% of Millennials and Gen Z read reviews first when researching a business, compared to 14% of Baby Boomers. Almost half (46%) of consumers wouldn't dine without reading reviews, and 90% consider reviews important when pre-booking hotels online. Photos influence 92% of consumers, with 41% swayed by food photos. AI helps analyze vast amounts of customer feedback, identifying trends and opportunities for improvement.

💳 Payment complexity in the hospitality industry is seen as a given, yet there's a push for simplification to enhance guest experience. Payment orchestration is emerging as a solution, integrating various providers on a single platform, improving efficiency and reducing costs. A 2022 Outpayce study revealed 40% of hotel guests experience payment issues, with 54% finding it difficult to pay, and 77% expecting hotels to simplify the process. Hotels are adapting by enabling digital payments, and the future looks toward seamless integration and diversification of payment methods for a more guest-centric approach.

💸 FinMont partners with Azupay to revolutionize payment processes in the travel industry by integrating real-time payment solutions. Azupay, an Australian leader in real-time payments, enhances fraud prevention and streamlines reconciliation. This strategic collaboration promises to deliver a payment ecosystem tailored to travel businesses, offering faster and safer payment options to global travel merchants. CEOs Suby Valluri of FinMont and Trent Daniel of Azupay aim to challenge traditional payment systems and boost the competitiveness and customer experience for travel merchants.

✈ Spotnana partners with Cleartrip, India's rapidly expanding online travel tech company, to access local airline content through Cleartrip's API. This integration allows Spotnana's users to book flights with Indian low-cost carriers—IndiGo, Air India Express, SpiceJet, Akasa Air—and combine them with Spotnana's direct airline integrations into a single itinerary. The collaboration aims to offer competitive rates, flight extras, easy cancellations, and GST compliance, enhancing travel options in one of the world's fastest-growing travel markets.

🏨 Mews, a hospitality cloud platform, has renewed a multi-year partnership with Criterion Hospitality. Criterion, managing a portfolio of upscale and mid-range hotels, including Zedwell in London, will automate operations and improve guest experiences using Mews’ systems. Eight hotels, such as Victory House Leicester Square and Assembly Covent Garden, are already using Mews. Zedwell Piccadilly Circus features 15 self-service kiosks, with over half of guests using them for check-in. The partnership, enhancing automation and customer service, has been active since 2021, with further expansion expected in the next 18 months.