News Briefs

Seamless digital transactions available at all hours, paired with the desire for memorable in-person interactions and experiences, has seen hotels boost the value of their online bookings, according to Journey.

Providing guests with an all-in-one digital retail booking experience has led to Journey’s hotel clients increasing their average order value by 10.33% in Q1 2024, compared to the same time last year.

By facilitating easy purchasing, Journey’s revolutionary ecommerce platform - recently shortlisted in the 2024 Information Technology Awards’ ‘Innovative Software Development’ category - drove an overall 118.9% increase in revenue for their clients in the first quarter of 2024. Hotels using Journey’s ecommerce platform also experienced improved conversion on their direct booking websites, with an average conversion rate of 4.14% in Q1 2024 - significantly higher than the industry average of 3%.

Simon Bullingham, CEO and Founder of Journey, said: “Half of our hotel clients’ bookings are made outside the traditional business hours of 9am to 5pm. People crave convenience so using a holistic ecommerce platform to ensure potential guests can access a hotel’s full range of facilities and services when booking is without doubt the best way to secure bookings and capture incremental revenue.

“Cross-selling at check-out is long-established in physical stores with items placed near the queues and tills, while online retailers promote personalized ‘recommended’ extras, but the hospitality industry has been slow to adopt retail practices. For hoteliers, Journey’s ecommerce platform is the best-in-class way of showcasing everything a hotel has to offer and making it instantly bookable, transforming a hotel booking into an online retail experience.”

Furthering their commitment to help hoteliers maximize commercial performance, Journey has combined their strategists, analysts and client account teams into a new Performance Hub, led by Performance Director Susanne Williams.

The Hub’s digital marketing experts drove a Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS) of 13 to 1 across the quarter, well above the hotel and travel industry benchmark range of 5-10, completing a circle of support to the UK’s leading luxury independent hotels and resorts.

Said Williams: “The digital landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace. For a hotel to not only be competitive but to succeed requires expertise and an army of support - something independent and boutique hotels can’t afford to hire in-house. By pooling Journey’s expertise together under our new Performance Hub, we’re able to enhance our already exceptional results for our clients and help them continue to grow their direct business and increase profitability.”

Data from Journey’s 750 clients also highlighted Mondays as the peak day to make luxury hotel bookings, and 8pm to 9pm as the busiest hour.

Further social behavioral changes were reflected in devices used to book: mobile remains the primary device (54.81% of traffic) but experienced a 6.9% fall, offset by a 9.95% increase in desktop and a 6.45% increase in tablet bookings.

Based in Cheltenham, the company has grown from 59 staff in Q1 2023 to 147 in Q1 2024, reflecting the increased demand for their ecommerce and experience technology platforms, alongside their performance services.

Domino's Pizza Inc. introduces its new and improved loyalty program. 

Domino's Rewards offers loyalty members even more opportunities to earn and redeem points across its corporate and franchise store locations. Domino's enhanced rewards program allows customers to:

• Earn points for less
  • Loyalty members will now earn 10 points on every order of $5 or more
• Redeem points for even more menu items – and earn free Domino's after just two orders
  • Members can redeem a variety of points for more menu items:
    • 20 points: A free dipping cup, a 16-piece order of Parmesan Bread Bites or a 20 oz. drink
    • 40 points: An order of Bread Twists or Stuffed Cheesy Bread
    • 60 points: A medium, two-topping pizza; pasta; Oven-Baked Sandwich; or a 3-piece order of Chocolate Lava Crunch Cakes
• Earn more rewards
  • Loyalty perks are now even better, as members will have exclusive access to member-only deals, special discounts and opportunities to earn bonus points!

"We are thrilled to give the brand's loyal customers additional ways to earn free Domino's items more often," said Mark Messing, Domino's vice president of digital experience and loyalty. "At a time when most brands are scaling back their loyalty programs and making it more difficult to earn and redeem points, Domino's is doing the opposite. We want to make it easier to reward our customers and give them more options so they can get rewarded faster."

Marketing a LTO 

From now until Oct. 22, 2023, rewards members can take advantage of a limited time offer to redeem 20 points for a free order of Domino's new Pepperoni Stuffed Cheesy Bread, which is normally a 40-point redemption, in celebration of the product's recent launch. 

Thanx, the leading guest engagement and retention platform for restaurants, announces today major enhancements to their already powerful mobile app content management system (CMS). Restaurants now have unprecedented control over the design, branding and user experience, without building a custom app with a developer. These enhancements represent an important milestone for restaurants, as it marks the first time an app solution has provided such extensive customization within a white-label framework.

"Good customer loyalty is about more than great rewards; in order to shine, a brand’s digital experiences must be differentiated and easy to use. But, building and maintaining a custom app is expensive and time-consuming. We're thrilled to provide new tools empowering restaurants to create infinitely customizable mobile apps without the prohibitive costs and lengthy cycles of custom development—all without additional fees or software development delays when a brand wants to make a change,” says Zach Goldstein, Thanx Founder and CEO.

Brands can style components to precisely match brand guidelines, going beyond the font, color, and logo basics, allowing for full customization of every element – background and foreground colors, borders, border radius, padding and more. Components within the app can be arranged as desired, even appearing dynamically based on applicability to the user, while completely custom components can showcase new program benefits, limited time offers, seasonal menus and more. As before, restaurants can instantly make and publish changes right from within the Thanx dashboard – without an app store review or incremental fees.

Bubbakoo’s Burritos, the fusion-style restaurant that puts a unique spin on classic Mexican dishes, was an early adopter of the new capabilities. The restaurant saw an uptick in downloads of the new app – an impressive 12.8% increase from February to March.

According to Chief Financial Officer, Chris Ives, “With Thanx, we don't compromise between cost and elegant design in our mobile app. The Bubbakoo’s app seamlessly aligns with our brand identity, and of equal importance — we have the flexibility to modify the app any time to precisely tailor the guest experience to better serve our customers.”

App Onboarding

With Thanx, restaurant operators can customize the app first impression, tailoring the onboarding flow with any desired imagery and messaging. Welcome pages, tutorials, and notifications can be used to educate new users about the program benefits, help them understand how to navigate the app, and ease the transition for existing loyalty members.

Home Screen Customization

Operators can effortlessly update every element of the app home screen, customizing standard and custom components in any arrangement. Precise styling options ensure alignment with brand guidelines, giving control over fonts, background and foreground colors, borders, padding and other elements. Operators can also incorporate personalized content based on the user profile to encourage actions such as collecting profile information, reordering a previous order, or exploring rewards.

Menu Showcase

Restaurant operators can showcase menu items with unique design elements. The menu can either blend cohesively with the homepage design or can adopt a unique style, spotlighting specific menus. Pricing, images, and more pull directly from the ordering platform, streamlining menu content management for all operators.

Loyalty Marketplace

Unique to Thanx, brands can create and edit loyalty program branding, reward design and availability, assign and adjust values, and set expiration dates – all in real time. In addition to ensuring uniform design and branding, this flexibility also allows brands to dynamically update their content and rewards, responding to consumer trends and fluctuating costs, ensuring that reward conversion rates and available rewards are attractive to customers and favorable to profitability.

Ordering and POS Integrations

With Thanx’s seamless integrations with ordering and POS providers, restaurant operators can make changes without the need to coordinate with other technology providers. Merchants can measure order conversion rates and app downloads in Thanx, ensuring any iterations on the app are aligned with business outcomes.

Shift4, a provider of integrated payments and commerce technology, has launched SkyTab Business Intelligence (BI), a powerful reporting and analytics platform to meet the needs of restaurants of all sizes – from small independent restaurants to large enterprise chains. SkyTab BI is among a wide array of new features added to SkyTab POS that deliver advanced reporting capabilities and enterprise management tools, augmenting the software’s already robust functionality.

SkyTab BI enables restaurant operators to see an overview of their entire enterprise or drill down to individual locations and compare data side-by-side in real time with granular filtering options. Additionally, SkyTab has added a number of other new features catering to enterprise restaurants, such as detailed transaction management, revenue center reporting, and multi-location menu management. All of these features are available at no additional cost for businesses using SkyTab.

“I’ve never seen a POS company create this level of reporting and analysis. Historically, we have always had to go to a third-party vendor to get this type of information,” says Allison Varlan, Chief Financial Officer of Live! Hospitality & Entertainment, a SkyTab BI customer. Live! venues are among the highest profile dining, entertainment, gaming, hotel, and sports-anchored destinations in the United States, serving over 55 million visitors annually.

“SkyTab Business Intelligence and our new multi-location menu management tools enable SkyTab to compete for even the largest enterprise restaurants,” says Shift4 CEO Jared Isaacman. “We are constantly adding capabilities to the SkyTab platform without adding cost. We don’t believe every new feature needs to be a module that requires an additional expense. Delivering a best-in-class POS solution at the lowest total cost of ownership will always be our priority.”

SkyTab POS is a best-in-class restaurant technology solution designed to streamline operations, simplify business management, and improve the guest experience. It includes integrated online ordering and reservations, contactless/QR code ordering and payment, built-in marketing tools and loyalty program, mobile devices for tableside ordering and payment, comprehensive reporting, and much more.

CommScope, a global leader in network connectivity, announced the immediate availability of a new suite of RUCKUS Networks solutions designed specifically to drive operational efficiency, sustainability and brand loyalty for the hospitality industry.

The turn-key suite builds on RUCKUS Networks’ worldwide leadership in hotel Wi-Fi®—offering solutions that work in harmony to deliver personalized and elevated guest experiences across hospitality brands and locations. It features the latest AI-driven Wi-Fi 7 solutions for providing the latest high-performance services, and simplifies technology deployment at scale, using AI-driven cloud-based management and assurance to drive operational efficiency across owners, service providers, integrators, and IT managers at properties.

“Loews Hotels is a family-owned brand of 26 luxury hotels and resorts that’s obsessed with delivering the most amazing experience to every guest,” stated Clayton Melson, Senior Communications Manager, Loews Hotels at Universal Orlando. “We’re continuously optimizing our network using recommendations made by RUCKUS AI. We’ve deployed AI-driven RUCKUS wired and Wi-Fi solutions throughout our properties to tailor each guest's connectivity experience to perfection. With RUCKUS AI, we’ve significantly improved our IT efficiency by reducing mean time to identification (MTTI) by 80% and mean time to resolution (MTTR) by 70%. From proactive network management to personalized bandwidth allocation, our AI-driven approach ensures that every guest is delighted."

The suite delivers the purpose-built features that are specific to the hospitality industry and tailored to the needs of the various hospitality stakeholders including:

• Identity-based differentiated experiences: Depending on their loyalty level as per the property management system (PMS), a guest could be offered certain rewards or benefits without any extra charge, i.e., premium Wi-Fi connectivity for specified status or higher-level guests.
• Brand Compliance RUCKUS One™ Hospitality Edition provides a suite of features that deliver 360-degree brand report cards covering brand specific policy compliance, network health and guest experience.
• Industry-aligned License Management: Ownership and on-going management of licenses as it relates to the industry. Licenses are owned by property/ownership groups. Licenses are handled accordingly when property/ownership group change brand and/or LSP/Integrators.

“We are proud that our customer complaints around Wi-Fi disruptions have reduced by 90% since relying on RUCKUS AI. Praise and formal surveys indicate an overall increase in guest satisfaction around excellent Wi-Fi connectivity across our entire property throughout guests' stays,” noted Miguel Fonseca, IT Systems Manager, Royal Garden Hotel. He further added, “With RUCKUS AI, approximate calculation suggests that our cost to handle an incident has reduced by 75%. RUCKUS AI offers us recommendations to continuously optimize our network, something we used to do on an ad-hoc basis. RUCKUS AI has truly enabled us to deliver a ROYAL experience.”

Joseph Martin, Vice President, Product Management for Single Digits Inc., commented, "RUCKUS Solutions have empowered us to provide innovative services that delight hotel guests and enhance their brand loyalty. The hospitality-focused RUCKUS AI platform has given us detailed visibility, with a primary goal of ensuring amazing guest experiences across all managed properties while also streamlining our operations. In numerous instances, RUCKUS’s AI technology has enabled us to proactively address issues, eliminating the necessity for helpdesk tickets."

The RUCKUS Networks hospitality suite features the following solutions:

• RUCKUS One Hospitality Edition: AI-driven, Converged Network Assurance and Business Intelligence platform tailored to the hospitality industry that helps to drive global brand standards and increase brand loyalty. For example, when guests are greeted with a room set to their portfolio preferences, it results in increased brand loyalty.
• RUCKUS® Wi-Fi 7 Solutions: including the high-performance R770 Access Point and the new R670 Access Point—RUCKUS’ first AI driven Wi-Fi 7 AP for mainstream deployments.
• RUCKUS AI™: delivering robust service assurance for IT and business intelligence to hospitality organizations.
• Hospitality Gateway by RUCKUS Networks: WAN gateway enabling simple and affordable deployment of a unified hospitality services solution—delivering features that maximize revenue, increase guest loyalty, provide actionable user information, and improve property-wide employee efficiency.
• RUCKUS IoT Suite: empowering the hospitality industry to deliver exceptional guest experiences, improve operational efficiency, enhance staff productivity, safety and security and thus remain competitive in a rapidly evolving market.

“The RUCKUS suite of hospitality solutions is purpose driven to meet two of the biggest needs in the hospitality industry: improving brand loyalty and operational efficiency,” stated Bart Giordano, SVP and president, Networking, Intelligent Cellular & Security Solutions, CommScope. “We’ve leveraged AI, Wi-Fi 7, and our proven cloud-native network management and assurance solutions to make it easier than ever to deliver amazing guest experiences; scale that experience across services, brands, and locations; and create new efficiencies that span the entire value delivery chain. In other words, it’s never been easier or more cost-effective to deliver and maintain the best digital hospitality experiences.”

For more information on the RUCKUS Networks suite of solutions for hospitality, please visit the RUCKUS Networks website.

CommScope and the CommScope logo are registered trademarks of CommScope and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. For additional trademark information see https://www.commscope.com/trademarks. Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi 7 are trademarks of the Wi-Fi Alliance. All product names, trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions is announcing the acquisition of Axxess Industries Inc., a renowned innovator of electronics and smart technologies engineered for the needs of hotel and residential environments. Axxess’ solutions will be offered alongside the offerings of Vingcard, the main brand for ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions’ business area Hospitality, promoting wider access to the latest in enhanced security, guest convenience and cost-saving efficiency.

“Axxess Industries is a welcome addition to our global team and further complements our commitment of serving as an end-to-end technology provider. In addition, it also complements our portfolio to become a true full solutions provider. We look forward to passing on the enhanced value that this latest acquisition represents and as hospitality-based businesses seek out more ways to differentiate themselves with exceptional experiences”, says Stephanie Ordan, Executive Vice President, and Head of ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions.

Launched in 2000, Axxess Industries has grown to become recognized as a leading developer of guestroom controls and other smart technology-based solutions. Their solutions are designed to streamline property operations, while ensuring high-quality services that cater to modern consumer preferences and expectations. Current offerings designed for hotel business include electronic do-not-disturb systems, doorbells, touch keypads, lighting controls, motion sensors and minibar sensors, as well as smart thermostats and drape and blind controls.

“Axxess Industries provides a wide range of IoT-driven solutions which are becoming essential to managing a successful hotel, especially as what counts as a satisfying experience is being increasingly influenced by the ability to deliver faster, more accessible, and personalized service. We are very pleased to welcome the Axxess team as the newest members of the ASSA ABLOY and Vingcard families and look forward to providing a competitive edge to our customers”, says Li Wang, Senior Vice President and Head of Hospitality.

“We are honored to join ASSA ABLOY Global Solutions and Vingcard. Our team is committed to the same goals of enhancing the guest experience and hotel management systems. We look forward to combining our proven track record of success in order to develop new smart technology-based solutions that push the limits on what today’s hoteliers can achieve. Furthermore, we are committed to continue the vison and work of CEO Joerg Wagner after his retirement in a few years, as part of Vingcard and the ASSA ABLOY family”, says Toni Adrian, Head of Operations at Axxess Industries.