News Briefs

John Keells Group, the parent company of Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts, a diverse chain of hotels with a portfolio across Sri Lanka and the Maldives, selected the Oracle Hospitality OPERA Cloud suite of products, including property management, sales and event management, and MICROS Simphony Cloud point-of-sale. To best serve guests across their hotels, resorts, and restaurants, Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts was looking for a centralized, intelligent platform to run its operations. By choosing an integrated suite from Oracle, the company has ensured its staff members will gain a holistic view of its facilities and guests to better optimize administrative, technical, and service delivery tasks. 

Its upcoming flagship project Cinnamon Life Integrated Resort in Colombo, Sri Lanka, as well as Cinnamon Dhonveli Maldives, Cinnamon Velifushi Maldives, and Cinnamon Hakuraa Huraa Maldives, were the first properties to launch the suite. The three resorts in the Maldives include contemporary suites and bungalows while Cinnamon Life Integrated Resort in Colombo will open its doors to residential apartments, large-scale events and meeting venues, vibrant restaurants and bars, world-class entertainment experiences, wellness centres, kids’ clubs, and swimming pools, as well as other amenities. The group looks to introduce the Oracle solution across all other 12 hotels and resorts located in Sri Lanka in the near future.

“Visitors can choose from a number of properties when traveling, so the ability to create a consistent, extraordinary guest experience across the Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts brand is a key differentiator,” said Nalaka Umagiliya, Chief Operating Officer – Group Information Technology, Senior Vice President, John Keells Group and Head of Business Systems, Leisure Group. “We’re confident that Oracle technologies will help us integrate our operations at scale, from the front desk to dining, leisure, and beyond. We anticipate that the property management functionality gained with OPERA Cloud will improve ease of use for resort staff and further enhance the guest experience.”

Spicing up its property and restaurant management 

With its cloud-based architecture and hundreds of pre-built integrations, OPERA Cloud has addressed the limitations of Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts previous system by enabling its hotels to easily connect their back- and front-office systems, making it convenient for the central reservation office to view room availability and make reservations at a new location. The centralized property management system now offers the brand a complete view of hotel operations, giving leaders comprehensive insights to make impactful decisions and identify opportunities for growth.

With OPERA Cloud Sales and Event Management software, hotel staff can conduct site inspections, check the availability of inventory, and make changes to the customer’s bookings while on the go, streamlining operations and maximizing revenue. And with MICROS Simphony Cloud,staff have an intuitive restaurant point-of-sale system that has helped streamline kitchen operations, reservations, inventory, and recipe management, all while helping ensure transactional and payment information is easily accessible and stored securely in a cloud environment.

By adopting an integrated system across the resort through a single vendor, Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts has given itself a simpler way to consolidate its back-office functions to automate administrative tasks, increase employee efficiency, and connect day-to-day operations across their properties and restaurants for a more seamless guest experience. 

“An integrated resort requires a truly integrated system,” said Patrick Andres, regional vice president, JAPAC hotels and food & beverage, Oracle. “The functionality and analytics built into OPERA Cloud’s property management, sales and events, and MICROS Simphony point-of-sale systems will help staff at the Cinnamon Life Hotel continue to elevate guest experiences while they improve operations.”

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. 

Zume, a company that raised $445 million from investors to for pizza-making robots before switching to developing sustainable packaging in 2020, has shut down, The Information reported.

Launched in 2015, the startup promised to remake traditional pizza delivery with pie-making robots. Its Doughbot was said "to make each pizza crust five times faster than before while improving the quality of work for staff and speed of delivery for customers."  

• Silicon Valley Bank and Beyond: What You Need to Know

"SoftBank’s $375 million investment symbolized the huge checks investors were spending on startups attempting to reinvent conventional businesses with technology," stated The Information.

Knowland, a provider of data-as-a-service insights on meetings and events for hospitality and a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), announced the Knowland platform is available on Oracle Cloud Marketplace and will enable integration with the Oracle Hospitality OPERA Sales and Event Management sales and catering management application. Oracle Cloud Marketplace is a centralized repository of enterprise applications offered by Oracle and Oracle partners.

The Knowland Platform enables high-level operations and sales benefits by integrating data from the Oracle Hospitality OPERA Sales and Event Management application with Knowland's world-class meetings and events database for Knowland customers.

Oracle Cloud Marketplace is a one-stop shop for Oracle customers seeking trusted business applications offering unique business solutions, including ones that extend Oracle Cloud Applications. Oracle Cloud is an enterprise cloud that delivers massive, non-variable performance and next-generation security across a comprehensive portfolio of services, including SaaS, application development, application hosting, and business analytics. Customers get access to leading compute, storage, data management, security, integration, HPC, artificial intelligence (AI), and Blockchain services to augment and modernize their critical workloads. Oracle Cloud runs Oracle Autonomous Database, the industry's first and only self-driving database.

Jeff Bzdawka, CEO, Knowland, said: “Expanding Knowland’s data-as-a-service platform with rich data sources like the Oracle OPERA Sales and Event Management application is a key focus for us to deliver increasingly valuable sales insights that fuel hotel growth and profitability. Knowland’s participation in the Oracle Cloud Marketplace further extends our commitment to the Oracle community and enables our common customers to easily reap the benefits of rich, actionable data. We look forward to leveraging the power of the Oracle Cloud to enhance data access for the global hospitality industry.”

This collaboration will deliver sales efficiency and performance benefits to the hospitality industry in these areas:

• Increase data volume and quality using electronic data collection through an approved API. Enables the delivery of sales and event data from the Oracle Cloud directly into the robust Knowland database. Event information is quickly available to supplement market data and enhance account profiles, informing sales teams and thereby improving decision-making outcomes.
• Accelerate revenue velocity across hospitality businesses by taking advantage of the strong growth in meetings and events. Increase and maintain revenue base when other segments, such as business travel, are less steady.
• Improve efficiency and enhance sales productivity by providing accurate, timely access to market data. The Knowland and Oracle partnership enables customers to enroll in automated data contribution, thereby streamlining their reporting processes and providing timely insights to fuel sales decisions by leveraging the two powerful platforms together.

The City of New York has set a minimum pay rate for app-based restaurant delivery workers.

Starting July 12, app-based restaurant delivery workers in New York City will be paid $17.96 per hour, approximately 30 cents per minute before tips.  The hourly rate will increase to $19.96 when it is fully phased-in on April 1, 2025, and will be adjusted annually for inflation.

Restaurant delivery apps will also have flexibility in how they pay the gig workers the new minimum rate. According to the statement, apps have the option to pay delivery workers per trip, per hour worked, or develop their own formulas, as long as their workers make the minimum pay rate of $19.96, on average. Apps that pay workers for all the time a worker is connected to the app. Apps that only pay for trip time (the time from accepting a delivery offer to dropping off the delivery) must pay at least approximately 50 cents per minute of trip time in 2023, not including tips.

According to a statement by the NY Mayor's Office, the city's estimated 60,000 delivery drivers make an average of $7.09 per hour.  Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP)  considered all comments submitted during the public comment period. For more information visit DCWP's website.

SevenRooms, a guest experience and retention platform for the hospitality industry, released its latest consumer report, “2023 Dining Discovery & Booking Report,” highlighting how guests discover new restaurants and book reservations. One thing is clear – diners are utilizing many channels for discovery - from word of mouth to a variety of online channels. Nearly two-thirds (61%) of diners hear about or discover new restaurants from friends, family and co-workers, followed by 33% using Google, 29% searching social media for restaurant profiles and 22% discovering through social media influencers or trusted sources. Only a small percentage use third-party platforms such as OpenTable (9%) and Resy (3%) to discover new restaurants.

“Coming out of the pandemic, operators are navigating an entirely new landscape which includes how diners are discovering and booking reservations,” said Joel Montaniel, CEO & Co-Founder of SevenRooms. “In this new world three things are clear: being everywhere diners are online is table stakes, diners prefer to book directly as opposed to using a third-party app, and while third-party apps are still important, Google is quickly becoming one of the preferred destinations for diners when they don't go direct to the restaurant.”

Defining today’s restaurant guest

In the United States, today’s guests expect more than just a meal, and creating opportunities to build loyalty will set restaurants apart. Each experience can turn a one-time diner into a loyal guest – but it must include personalized touches from start to finish. It is critical for operators to own their data to create a relationship with each guest based on preferences, past visits and upcoming special occasions noted when booking direct. By building this relationship, operators are able to be more proactive with their guests, personalize dining experiences and use the data they collect to curate experiences that will ultimately drive more revenue. 

The beauty of a direct booking platform is the ability to capture that data; for example, asking the guest when they are booking if they are celebrating anything special, or noting dietary preferences. Guests are also willing to make that extra step to make sure they have an excellent experience - nearly half (45%) of diners will call the restaurant directly to book a reservation, and 35% will book through the restaurant's website. Twenty-nine percent of diners also say that they receive better experiences at the restaurant when they book direct, and more than 1 in 4 (27%) feel restaurants prioritize their reservation when doing so. 

Similar to how today’s diners are catching on to the experiential benefits of booking direct, they are also realizing that third-party platforms are not actually in the best interest of the restaurant. Sixty-one percent believe that making reservations directly with the restaurant, rather than with a third-party reservation platform, is better for the restaurant. Additionally: 

• 29% of respondents want to do all they can to directly support restaurants
• 17% of respondents noted that third-party reservation platforms charge too much in fees to the restaurant, and guests would rather not have the restaurant incur that cost

“As the expectation for incredible experiences grows, third-party reservation platforms are losing market share as diners prefer to book directly with restaurants to ensure they get the best experience,” said Montaniel. “SevenRooms has always been dedicated and focused on empowering operators to deliver the most personalized guest experiences. Our omnichannel approach, enabling restaurants to meet guests wherever they are, whether through global discovery and booking channels or a restaurant's own website, helps operators serve diners in this new world while helping them operate more sustainable and profitable businesses.

To learn more about SevenRooms, please visit www.sevenrooms.com.