Innovation

🏡 Since 1930, Palácio Estoril, near Lisbon, has offered five-star hospitality. Partnering with The Hotels Network (THN) in 2018, it adopted THN’s Predictive Personalization to refine its direct booking strategy. By evaluating visitor intent with machine learning, Palácio Estoril personalized promotions, offering a 15% discount to low-intent visitors and upselling luxury experiences to high-intent ones. One year later, the hotel saw improved direct channel performance, increased revenue, and reduced marketing expenses, showcasing AI's impact in hospitality.

🏥 Sunborn London, a luxury yacht hotel, partnered with Shiji for technology-driven hospitality solutions on February 25, 2025, in London, United Kingdom. Shiji's implementation includes PMS, Digital Stay, Infrasys POS, and Digital Dine, aiming to enhance guest experiences and operational efficiency. Francisco Ventura, General Manager of Sunborn London, emphasized the importance of selecting a technology partner that understands hospitality. Shiji, founded in 1998, serves 91,000 hotels, 200,000 restaurants, and 600,000 retail outlets with over 5,000 employees across 31 countries.

🏨 LONDON, February 2025 – Dorint, a German hotel company in the DACH region, partners with IDeaS to revamp its revenue management. With 6,000 rooms and 60+ properties in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, this move aims to capitalize on the hospitality market's 7.7% CAGR. Manuel Schmidgen, Vice President of Dorint, and Michael McCartan, Area Vice President at IDeaS, highlight the synergy of strategy and technology with the G3 RMS and Optix solutions to enhance operational efficiency, demand forecasting, and revenue optimization.

🏨 The hotel business model includes three key steps: attracting guests, maximizing sales per guest, and delivering a satisfying experience cost-effectively. Attraction strategies involve personalized digital marketing and dynamic pricing. Maximizing sales includes upselling, diversifying revenue streams, and using guest data for personalization. Cost-effective satisfaction entails operational automation, employee training, and activity-based costing. Business intelligence (BI) systems underpin strategic decisions by providing insights into guest behavior, spending patterns, and real-time performance tracking, ensuring accountability and profitability alignment.

📍 Six Krystal locations in Albany, Georgia are being updated with a new look drawing from the successful Orangeburg, S.C. location opened in December and co-owned by Charlamagne Tha God. Upgrades include modernized digital menu boards, new furniture, and refreshed interiors while maintaining service. Digital boards allow for real-time menu updates, improved customer experience, and tailored promotions. Krystal, founded in 1932, operates nearly 300 locations and prioritizes hospitality over AI in its modernization efforts.

🏠 Digital twins are transforming the hospitality industry by enhancing employee training, improving maintenance, and boosting sales. Utilizing VR/AR for hands-on training with assets like HVAC and AV equipment minimizes costly mistakes. Maintenance teams use digital twins fed with real-time sensor data to anticipate failures, reducing downtime and extending lifespan. Sales teams can virtually showcase properties to secure event contracts. Joseph Callahan, CEO of Ciright, emphasizes the efficiency, safety, and guest experience benefits of this technology.

🎶 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.

📖 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.