TOP NEWS

🚧 NTIA leads a campaign to save Boxpark Shoreditch after closure announcement. Founding in 2011, Boxpark created over 1,000 jobs, contributed £80m annually to the local economy, totaling over £1bn, and welcomed 10 million visitors. Negotiations for site extension failed despite efforts with multiple stakeholders. Lease expiration and planned redevelopment by Bishopsgate Goodsyard and London authorities led to the closure set for summer end. Open letter urges Hackney Council to prevent a major setback in Shoreditch's regeneration efforts.

💾 Guestline, integrated with AI, launched self-service features in its GuestStay portal to ease hotel staff workload. The portal allows guests to modify reservations and order extra services. ResDiary, also part of Access Group, is now integrated for seamless restaurant bookings. Trials show corporate travellers prefer the portal for its quick amendment capability. Hotels see an increase in restaurant bookings, with some properties noting 25% of table bookings via GuestStay. Digital registration completion rates are at 31%, and hotels collect more real guest emails, encouraging direct repeat business over OTA bookings. Additional enhancements are expected later in 2024.

🏆 Folio, dubbed the "Amazon for hotels," offers a mobile-friendly procurement platform for hotel operations, streamlining inventory management. Affixify is a free-to-use hotel tech selection platform using an algorithm to match hotels with vendors. Away Together, a mobile app developed by a couple, enhances guest communication through real-time updates and offers geofenced social connections. Bon App, a POS system with a 20-minute setup, focuses on user-friendliness and cost-cutting via QR code ordering. Directful, an AI marketing platform, predicts guest booking patterns, sending direct booking texts with a 98% read rate within five minutes. Yipy provides a digital standards management platform for hotels, ensuring compliance with updates and performance tracking.

🛒 Restaurant sales forecast to top $1 trillion; hospitality industry to add 200,000 jobs, total employment reaching 15.7 million. Over two-thirds of hotels face staffing shortages. 62% of hospitality workers experience burnout from unpredictable schedules; 60% of managers report burnout leading up to peak seasons. Shift scheduling software and apps can save hours per week, reduce overtime costs, and improve scheduling forecasting. Flexible scheduling leads to a 25% decrease in turnover. Optimizing scheduling can increase revenue by up to 15%.

💵 Deliverect launches Pulse, a market intelligence platform integrating with Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and Just Eat, providing restaurants with insights to optimize marketing and increase order volumes. Leveraging actionable insights, restaurants can assess performance, benchmark against competitors, and make informed decisions for targeted campaigns. Pulse features include an estate overview across channels, competitive intelligence, and an all-in-one marketing management tool, aiming to simplify marketing across third-party apps and enhance ROI.

🏨 Florencia Cueto and Xavier López discuss digital transformation in hotel operations on Shiji Insights podcast's fourth episode. EISI Soft, co-founded by Xavier in 2012 and officially established in December 2016, overcomes challenges, including the global pandemic, to innovate hotel maintenance. Key takeaways include the integration of operational tools for strategic decisions, dynamic data collection for real-time feedback, immersive management via digital twins, and operational benchmarking against similar hotels to improve asset management strategies.

💸 Guestline, part of Access Group, enhances its GuestStay product with self-service options and AI, saving time for hotel staff and elevating guest autonomy. The platform lets guests manage reservations, order services like breakfast or parking, and secure restaurant bookings via ResDiary integration. Trials show corporate travelers enjoy the ease of use. Some properties report 25% of restaurant bookings through GuestStay, with plans to add more upsell features in 2024. Digital registration completion averages 31%, and hotels collect more real guest email addresses, encouraging direct repeat bookings over OTAs.

🏢 Oslofjord Convention Center in Norway, Europe’s largest event village, automates over 30,000 bookings annually with RMS Cloud's property management software to streamline and error-proof the process. The venue hosts up to 12,000 guests with a variety of accommodations, including cabins, cottages, hotel rooms, and suites. The new system, implemented in February, enhances upselling capabilities and is user-friendly for the fluctuating staff numbers, ranging from 300 to 10,000. RMS Cloud was selected after analyzing 15 vendors and offers competitive pricing and functionality.

📣 Beef 'O' Brady's, operating in more than 20 US states, partners with SoundHoundAI to introduce voice AI for phone orders. The tech is live at all corporate locations, set for franchise integration, and efficiently handles 100% of calls—even during peak periods like the 2024 Summer Olympics. SoundHound's AI can manage orders, answer menu queries, and cover FAQs, offering seamless ordering for customers. SoundHound AI's solutions are used in over 10,000 restaurants and recently acquired the Allset ordering platform, signaling a growing trend where 80% of US diners expect AI voice assistants to dominate food ordering soon.

🍴 Chef John Tesar's Knife Italian opened on March 19 at The Ritz-Carlton Dallas, Las Colinas following a $55 million property renovation. The restaurant features diverse menus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, combining traditional Italian flavors with modern touches. Steak options are sourced from 44 Farms and include dry-aged cuts ranging from 45 to 240 days. Tesar's fusion of steakhouse experience and Italian roots manifests in a vibrant, ingredient-driven culinary venture.