News Briefs

ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions, a provider of advanced security technology for the hospitality industry, together with ASSA ABLOY Group member, HID Global, announced the official launch of the Acuity digital linen management platform. Engineered by leveraging the technological expertise of the ASSA ABLOY Group, Acuity represents a dramatic shift over how hoteliers manage their laundry and linen operations, replacing time-consuming and error-prone manual processes with effortless automation and enhanced data intelligence that optimizes efficiency and service quality while minimizing associated costs.

Whether for towels, bed sheets or tablecloths, Acuity significantly features the ability to instantly identify any individual item and determine its current status. With the attaching of a small RFID reader tag designed to withstand countless washer and dryer cycles, Acuity can automatically list item type, size, the total number of laundry cycles previously performed, as well as an item’s real status within the current cycle. Able to be deployed in combination with a tabletop station and/or an RFID cabinet, Acuity can track and monitor the status of multiple linen items simultaneously, providing employees with substantial time savings while boosting the efficiency and reporting accuracy of laundry operations. For needs that may arise throughout a hotel’s premises, Acuity also includes a handheld terminal for managing and tracking linen inventory on the go.

A solution that exists within the cloud, Acuity also features a comprehensive, yet user-friendly dashboard that can be accessed from virtually any device enabled with an internet connection. Using the dashboard, hotel staff can instantly identify current stock levels, including cleaned items that are being returned for use, as well as soiled items that either due to be sent out for cleaning or that are already undergoing the process. The system can significantly determine appropriate stock levels and can provide staff with vital guidance to ensure that levels never fall below required amounts.

Dina Dekhi, Director of Strategic Partnerships at ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions, emphasizes the significance of hotel laundry operations in meeting guest needs and ensuring the quality of items while tracking losses. However, she highlights the potential challenges that can arise when managers stick to manual and inefficient approaches, as these can disrupt daily work routines and strain business budgets. To address these challenges, ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions has introduced Acuity, a comprehensive solution that revolutionizes the management of hotel laundry operations. Acuity offers a more efficient and cost-effective approach, ensuring optimal inventory levels and providing real-time tracking of every linen asset.

Introducing Acuity to the global hotel industry, as it offers a superior, more efficient, and cost-effective solution for managing laundry operations. Acuity ensures constant monitoring of linen assets in real-time, regardless of the item type, size, or volume, and maintains optimal inventory levels at all times. By implementing Acuity, hotels can streamline their laundry processes while adhering to hotel PAR standards.

With Acuity, hotels can effectively track their linens throughout the entire laundry process, from arrival to return to the guest rooms. This advanced system enables seamless tracking and monitoring of the linens, allowing hotel staff to easily locate specific items, monitor their quality, and track any losses or excessive waste.

As an end-to-end linen management solution, Acuity’s feature rich dashboard also provides high-value reporting analytics such as the current condition of individual items. Based on the number of laundry cycles that an item has accumulated, hotel staff can be alerted to any replacement needs and can keep track of deteriorated linen assets that have been disposed. Acuity’s linen RFID tags can even prevent hotel assets from being lost to theft, with sensors placed at building entrances that can detect the moment an item leaves the property.      

 

For more information about ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions and its comprehensive line of electronic in-room safes and locking solutions for the hospitality industry, please visit www.assaabloyglobalsolutions.com/hospitality. 

Shiji, a global hospitality technology innovator, has partnered with IPORT, an award-winning manufacturer known for enhancing the usability of iPads and iPhones, to introduce an all-in-one software solution for hotel restaurants. This collaboration will provide hoteliers with a seamless combination of a tablet and payment device to maximize their F&B operations.

The integrated iOS and payment device solution simplifies guest service for hotel restaurant servers, providing them with an effortless tool to cater to their guests' needs. As a certified Apple partner, Shiji and IPORT guarantee exceptional performance and reliability. Hoteliers can choose from multiple device options, including iPad Pro, iPad Mini, and iPhone, ensuring flexibility and compatibility with their operations.

“IPORT products are built around modularity and flexibility that empower our hospitality customers to do more with the iOS platform. We are thrilled to partner with a leading iPad and iPhone cloud PMS and POS platform provider like Shiji,” said Chris Lawson, Head of Partnerships, IPORT. “We look forward to innovating with Shiji in disrupting legacy, monolithic providers who have limited the industry from harnessing the power of iOS and mobility. The future is bright, and the possibilities are endless with IPORT, iOS, and Shiji.”

"The partnership with IPORT is a significant milestone for Shiji in our commitment to provide innovative technology solutions for the hospitality industry," said Ryan King, Senior Vice President of Shiji in the Americas. "By combining our expertise with IPORT’s hardware solutions, we empower hoteliers to streamline restaurant operations and deliver exceptional guest experiences. This collaboration represents another step forward in our dedication to driving success in the Americas, and globally."

The tablet and payment device solution seamlessly integrates with multiple payment gateways, allowing hoteliers to choose the system that best suits their needs. By simplifying the payment process, it reduces operational complexities, minimizes errors, and saves valuable time and resources for hoteliers.

For electric vehicle owners in British Columbia, Tim Hortons is now fueling road trips in more ways than one.  The company has announced the expansion of its electric vehicle charging station pilot launched earlier this year in Oakville, Ontario, by unveiling six new charging stations at restaurants throughout  British Columbia.

Tim Hortons announced the pilot in February in an effort to study the technology, its usage and opportunities.

"We have been thrilled with the results of the pilot so far.  Usage of the charging station in Oakville has surpassed our expectations and we received many calls with requests to expand the pilot," said Paulo Ferreira, Senior Director, International Strategic Restaurant Design and Building Standards, Tim Hortons. "With more than 3,300 eligible restaurants across the country, we continue to look for opportunities to expand the pilot and contribute to the EV infrastructure."

The BC expansion, supported by the Province of BC's Community Charging Infrastructure Fund and Koben Systems Inc. (KSI), placed charging stations strategically in Nanaimo, Langford, North Vancouver, Burnaby, Abbotsford and Coquitlam to create paths within the province, allowing guests to travel from restaurant to restaurant strictly on electric power.

Tim Hortons offers charging stations as a courtesy to guests at six locations.  As of March 31st, 2013, Tim Hortons had 4,288 system-wide restaurants, including 3,453 in Canada, 808 in the United States and 27 in the Gulf Cooperation Council. 

Delivering on the promise of better visibility, VENZA announced the release of the VENZA System—a new platform that centralizes several of its industry-leading data protection functions. The VENZA System will be capable of generating even more impactful results, greater precision in reporting, and an ultra-smooth user experience.

Beginning soon, VENZA will offer one combined node that turns VENZA Learning™ and VENZA Phishing™ into a unified instrument with customizable reports. The platform, developed in-house and tailored to the needs of the hospitality industry, updates dynamically in real-time. Users will be able to select data by type and filter by level, from organizational, to individual properties, down to work groups. With this, VENZA will now more than ever produce the information you need when you need it.

“We are constantly working to produce new tools, as well as enhancements to our existing ones, that respond to ever-growing cybersecurity threats and regulatory compliance needs,” said Barbara Espinosa, Product Manager at VENZA. “Our platform will be a step-change in capability and responsiveness. We’re very pleased to deliver this product to our clients but also extremely excited about how this platform can evolve the VENZA system moving forward. We have big plans for 2024, so it is a great time for early movers to experience it and get the opportunity to participate in its design.”

Further additions to the VENZA system are under development. A range of governance, risk management, and compliance features will be rolled out in further stages over the coming year. This will include products that provide automatic vendor risk assessments, SAQ and audit functions, tasking and project management, and more. The user experience will also become simpler with mobile support and support for single sign-on (SSO) log-in.

Ultimately, VENZA will offer a wholistic governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) platform with an open API that allows users to plug in their own data and fully customize the system to their needs.

Airvine has developed a multi-Gigabit-speed wireless backhaul system for indoor connectivity, is introducing its WaveTunnel product line to the hospitality sector at the HITEC conference and exposition in Toronto, June 26 – 29^th.  HITEC is the leading technology solutions event for the hospitality industry. 

Hotels, conference centers and related facilities need higher-bandwidth backbone networks to support higher-speed Wi-Fi for guest rooms, growing IoT systems (including security cameras) and new entertainment platforms with more HD and on-demand options.  This means upgrading the existing wired indoor infrastructure, which to date has meant laying new cables or swapping out new for old (such as Ethernet CAT 5 cable).  This process can result in lengthy construction projects, which result in lost revenue while blocks of rooms, or even entire floors, are out of service during this time.  In addition, these projects are inconvenient for hotel guests as well.  

The Airvine WaveTunnel represents a significantly faster and less expensive option, as the shoebox-sized modules are mounted on ceilings and other interior high points to provide multi-Gigabit links that pass through walls, down corridors and around corners with minimal construction and personnel. 

WaveTunnel operates in the interference-free 60 GHz band, where there is also plenty of spectrum to provide on first release a multi-Gb/s backbone connectivity capability.  Furthermore, 60 GHz systems operate on a line-of-sight (LOS) basis. WaveTunnel, however, can penetrate most indoor walls as well as ”beam steer” around corners, making it a true non-LOS 60GHz system. This breakthrough capability greatly simplifies and expedites network set-up and operational readiness.

“We’ve met with many of our MSP partners in the hospitality sector over the last year and they hear a common theme from their hoteliers – they need to upgrade their broadband connectivity, and at the same time need to keep rooms open to maintain revenue and make up for money lost during the Covid lockdowns,” Zach Hubeck, Executive Vice President of Marketing for WAV, an Airvine partner and a leading distributor of end-to-end broadband network systems who is also participating at HITEC. “The Airvine WaveTunnel is a great way to create a multi-Gigabit, interior backbone network with minimal disruption to hotel operations.” 

Next week at HITEC® Toronto, Aptech will reveal a series of upgrades to its three innovative financial-management solutions, PVNG, Execuvue, and Targetvue. Produced by Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP®), this premier hotel technology tradeshow is the ideal forum to shop for the latest in financial-management software designed to help operators cut costs and improve their bottom lines. Aptech’s 100% hospitality focused, customizable solutions enable hoteliers to access, view, compare, and analyze performance data of a single hotel or a multi-property/multi-brand enterprise.

Aptech will showcase its Enterprise Accounting, Business Intelligence and Budgeting/Forecasting solutions in Booth 1301 at the Metro Toronto Convention Center – South Building, June 27 to 29.

NEW Enterprise Accounting

PVNG version 1.7 was released to Aptech customers this week. PVNG features the Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, General Ledger, Statistics, Financials, and Bank Reconciliation that today’s hotel operators are seeking with much-needed browser navigation. Its OCR invoice processing, myriad of payment options, drill-down capabilities in financial statements and reports, ability to handle single or multi-property accounting, and the fact that it can be deployed as a hosted service, explains why this accounting solution is in such high demand.

PVNG V 1.7 enhancements to be on display at HITEC include:

• Invoice Automation
• New drill down capabilities
• Plus, a myriad of client requested enhancements to improve efficiency and reporting

Also NEW at HITEC, Aptech will reveal an integration with one of the world’s leading data networks powering the digital financial ecosystem. By connecting Aptech’s PVNG enterprise accounting solution to the platform, hotels will achieve seamless and secure access to thousands of financial accounts for financial reconciliation. Now properties running on PVNG can leverage their security measures and minimize the risk associated with handling sensitive financial information.

NEW Business Intelligence

Execuvue was upgraded to IBM Cognos Analytics 11.2.4 with Watson AI and released to customers on June 1, 2023. Execuvue is an IBM Cognos-based ASP BI application that features a dashboard platform that delivers stunning images of financial and operational data that hotel accounting teams can act upon. Leveraging AI-powered analytics, Execuvue is helping operators make smarter business decisions and respond to commands, such as “Show Me Room Revenues by State and by Property.” The AI tool links relevant data elements (number of rooms rented, ADR, RevPAR, occupancy, rooms out of order, etc.) with a list of properties or brands to analyze the information in visually compelling ways. It also configures data regionally, giving hoteliers a performance snapshot portfolio wide, as well as by region, brand, and property.

Execuvue + IBM Cognos Analytics 11.2.4 with Watson AI enhancements on display at HITEC include:

• New and enhanced visualizations
• Cascading Filters
• New Analytics panel to view forecasting and Narrative Insights features

NEW Budgeting & Forecasting

Targetvue provides hotel accounting teams with “one version of the truth.” It consolidates reports, identifies trends, and eliminates the maintenance and distribution of Excel spreadsheets throughout the organization. Automated forecast snapshots offers users ad-hoc capabilities to previous and future performance projections. 

Targetvue enhancements to be on display at HITEC include:

• New release of Targetvue cloud with predictive analysis
• Additional data source integrations
• Enhanced audit log – who did what when

“Aptech is known industrywide for our willingness to listen to our customers and quickly develop new features to meet their specific needs,” said Aptech Vice President Cam Troutman. “The recent enhancements to PVNG, Execuvue and Targetvue that will be seen for the first time at HITEC are proof of our ability to develop on demand. In addition, our new data network integration will give Aptech users the financial reconciliation they have been asking for. We are eager to see everyone in Toronto.”

For more information on Aptech solutions, visit them at HITEC Toronto. To pre-schedule a booth appointment, reach out to Kim Sieminski by clicking here.