Innovation

🎶 Marketers in the QSR and franchise restaurant sector leverage digital advertising, including in-app advertising, connected TV, and SMS promotions. Programmatic advertising, optimized through cloud services, has become pivotal, allowing criteria-based automatic ad placement bidding. QSR brands often utilize valuable first-party data from apps for better targeting, facilitated by advertising partners using data clean rooms to maintain user privacy. Mobile gaming, surpassing podcasting and traditional media with a $185 billion revenue in 2022, presents a significant opportunity for audio ads. It offers an extensive reach with four times the active users of Netflix's ad-supported subscribers and a 15-20% share of the 546 million global podcast listeners. Programmatic audio advertising enables creative flexibility, targeted reach, and scalability in engaging formats. Odeeo, co-founded by Elad Stern in 2021, specializes in in-game audio advertising solutions to tap into this market.

🍕 Restaurant operators are leveraging online and mobile app ordering to reduce third-party fees and improve customer satisfaction. Liner-free label printers aid in ensuring order accuracy and efficiency, particularly in quick-service restaurants (QSRs). Self-ordering kiosks are increasingly popular, enhancing guest experiences by reducing wait times, improving order precision, and offering upselling opportunities without extra staffing costs. These strategies are part of the industry's adaptation to technological advancements and changing consumer expectations.

🔮 ToDo Robotics' BellaBot Pro is reshaping hospitality by handling tasks like food delivery and bussing tables in hotels and restaurants. El Porton Mexican Group, across Georgia, Tennessee, and Arkansas, uses multiple units for improved service speed and customer engagement. BellaBot Pro integrates with POS and PMS and offers significant labor cost savings over time. Initially, older guests may face adoption challenges, but overall, reception is positive. The bot supports staff, rather than replacing them, and features customizable branding and voice options. Future AI advancements will enhance capabilities, aiming to address labor shortages and elevate guest experiences.

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📖 Bret Thorn, Senior Food & Beverage Editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality, reports on food and beverage trends and hosts "In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn" podcast. Writing since 1999, Thorn's expertise includes French cuisine and Asian foods, with a focus on Thailand. He was a columnist for The New York Sun from 2005 to 2008, covered restaurant and business news in Thailand in the mid-90s, and worked for ABC News during 1989's Tiananmen Square events. Thorn's a magna cum laude Tufts graduate, studied at Le Cordon Bleu, and wrote for notable food encyclopedias. Inducted into Disciples d'Escoffier in 2014, he lives in Brooklyn, NY. Contact him at [email protected] or follow on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

📈 MartechTribe surveyed 283 marketing professionals, revealing genAI applications dominate the marketing tech landscape with 2,324 tools, accounting for 77% of sector growth in 2024. Content and data use cases ranked highest, with copy ideation (50.7%), copy production (43.9%), and content optimization (28.6%) leading the content category. In data, knowledge/documentation (22.5%), and competitor research (21.4%) were top applications. Advertising tech sees lower adoption, with the highest ad-related use case ranked 28th. Monthly genAI use centers on strategic tasks like content image/video ideation (24.3%), while daily/weekly uses focus on operational tasks such as copy ideation (50.7%). Wishlist items indicate interest in exploring audio/podcast production (51.4%) and compliance/risk data (46.4%).

📊 Finance analytics is vital for hotel profitability, focusing on revenue flow, cost structures, and operational efficiency. Utilizing financial metrics like GOPPAR and tracking fiscal KPIs such as RevPAR and TRevPAR are essential. Advanced analytics platforms, like Juyo Analytics, offer insights into booking channels and guest behaviors to optimize strategies and profitability. AI enhances decision-making and operational efficiency, detecting discrepancies and trends in financial and operational data to inform adjustments. Hospitality businesses can maximize profitability by integrating real-time insights with strategic execution across revenue streams.

💼 Shiji appoints Steven Hopkinson as Senior Vice President for APAC & Middle East, announced on February 24 in Singapore. With a background in hospitality technology and business expansion, Hopkinson previously served as Senior Vice President for EMEA & AsiaPac at Groups360 and co-founded a Group Housing solution bought by Groups360 in January 2020. CEO Kevin King expresses confidence in Steven's role to enhance Shiji's regional support and expand customer relationships. Shiji, founded in 1998, now has over 5,000 employees, 80+ subsidiaries, operates in over 31 countries, and serves 91,000+ hotels, 200,000+ restaurants, and 600,000+ retail outlets.

🛄 Amadeus partners with Salesforce to create a new hotel service center solution, integrating Salesforce's Service Cloud with Amadeus’ Central Reservations Systems and Guest Interaction solutions. This collaboration aims to simplify booking experiences, reducing call times by up to 40%, and enabling personalized interactions for travelers. It will provide flexibility for hoteliers, scale from basic to advanced capabilities, and offer task automation and case management. Salesforce's Brian Landsman and Amadeus' Peter Waters acknowledge the initiative's potential to enhance guest services and drive revenue.

🏡 InterContinental Hotels Group PLC acquired Ruby SARL brand for €110.5m (~$116m). Ruby, established in 2013, operates 20 hotels with 3,483 rooms and has 10 pipeline hotels with 2,235 rooms across Europe. IHG plans to introduce Ruby in the US by end of year and aims for the brand to grow to over 120 hotels in 10 years. The initial franchise fees from the current Ruby hotels are expected to be $8m in 2028, potentially exceeding $15m by 2030. Seller's Ruby-branded hotels may bring additional payments up to €181m ($190m) if the room count exceeds 20,000 by 2035. Integration into IHG's system is set to begin in 2025, expected to increase IHG’s system size by 0.5% with the open and pipeline hotels. Integration costs for IHG are projected at $10m for 2025.