News Briefs

Tipping is on the rise when consumers dine out, with the highest tips occurring at bars and fine dining restaurants. On the other hand, average takeout and delivery tips dropped to around 8%, suggesting consumers might be pulling back on tips outside of traditional service venues, according to new hospitality data from Lightspeed Commerce Inc.. 

The data is based on a sample of thousands of restaurants powered by Lightspeed across North America. Powering the world’s best businesses, Lightspeed is the unified POS and payments platform for ambitious entrepreneurs to accelerate growth, elevate their customer experience and become a go-to destination in their space.

Key findings from the Lightspeed Restaurant data:

• Tipping is on the rise: Good news for servers: diners aren’t skimping on tips. Year-over-year, the median tip percentage increased by 2.3%, from 16.93% to 17.32%.
• Bars and fine dining take home the biggest tips: Overall, tipping trends are staying stable across business types year-over-year, with customers continuing to tip around 3% more at bars (19.25%) and fine dining restaurants (19.9%) than they do in casual restaurants (16.5%).
• Takeout tips are down: Tips for online orders and delivery dipped slightly, falling from 8.83% to 8.07%. In spite of earning the biggest in-house tips, bars were hit hardest on takeout, with the median online and delivery tip falling from almost 10% to 8.54%.
• Tipping on fast casual is going strong: In spite of the “tipflation” backlash, diners haven’t stopped tipping in fast casual restaurants, though the median tip size is still hovering under 9%—well below the 17.32% average.
• Diners are going out more often: People are dining out more frequently at both fine dining and fast casual restaurants, with the total number of transactions rising 3.60% year-over-year at fine dining and 3.53% at fast casual restaurants. 

“Now more than ever, hospitality businesses are turning to technology to help them drive additional revenue and change the guest experience for the better,” notes Peter Dougherty, General Manager of Hospitality at Lightspeed Commerce. “Our customers that have implemented embedded payments and automated tipping prompts often tell us they see a bump in average tip size. The reality is that in our post-pandemic world, guests are looking for a frictionless, cashless payment experience, and they’re willing to tip more for exceptional dining experiences—especially when they have access to digital tools that make it easy. For hospitality businesses navigating a rapidly changing market, that extra income in their employees’ pockets is crucial to retaining staff without cutting into their profit margins.”

Lightspeed powers the world’s best restaurants, including: Daniel Boulud Group (NYC), Atomic Hospitality Group (Chicago), Alinea Group (Chicago), Canlis (Seattle), Big Mamma (Europe), Kei (Paris) and Maybe Sammy (Sydney), and is now available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, and Australia.

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.

Subway  unveiled MVP Rewards, a refreshed loyalty program launching September 9 in Canada, the U.S., and Puerto Rico. The new and improved program gives Subway guests the MVP experience with more ways to earn, more perks, and more earning power as customers ascend from Pro to Captain to All-Star status tiers. Consumers can earn points by ordering their favorite sub in Subway restaurants, on Subway.ca or the Subway app.

MVP Rewards replaces Subway MyWay Rewards. All 30 million MyWay members across North America will be enrolled in the new program, and their unspent tokens will automatically be converted into points, giving them a head start on reaching status and earning MVP Rewards' best perks. New members will receive 250 bonus points when they join**.

"Subway fans are the best in QSR and to thank them for their loyalty, we're giving them the star treatment as MVP Rewards members," said Mike Kappitt, Chief Operating and Insights Officer at Subway. "Consumer input helped inform our refreshed loyalty program to create a best-in-class experience. MVP Rewards gives our guests more of what they love from Subway, with a few hidden surprises baked in, so every guest feels like an MVP and comes back to Subway more often for their favourite subs."

As part of its loyalty refresh, Subway made the program easier for guests to sign up, earn and redeem points, as well as advance from Pro to All-Star. Besides craveworthy signature subs and meal upgrades, members at the Captain and All-Star tiers will soon have access to special Subway merchandise and members-only VIP exclusives:

For a complete overview of Subway MVP Rewards and Subway's new loyalty program benefits, visit Subway.ca/rewards.

GauVendi is advancing its disruptive approach to rethinking inventory, which has already been successfully implemented in the GauVendi Sales Engine, towards an open, feature-based inventory platform.

GauVendi started in 2020 with an innovative AI-driven booking experience that provides accommodation providers with a comprehensive solution for hyper-personalized sales and fulfillment automation. It was mainly deployed as a stand-alone solution. With this evolution, accommodation businesses and technology providers can now explore new avenues in sales, distribution, operational efficiency, and marketing of inventory. They benefit from highly automated processes without major system overhauls.

"We aim to offer every operator the opportunity to distribute their inventory in a scalable manner, much like it was previously only possible through personal sales - and all of it fully automated," says Markus Müller, CEO, and co-founder of GauVendi. "With the open API interface, all technology providers can now sell relevant and customizable inventory through their platforms. Our solution acts as an additional layer integrated into the existing tech stack, enabling differentiated sales and automation without significant changes to the current system landscape," adds Müller.

GauVendi's platform is the only one worldwide that provides a feature-based language and a dynamic product management system with its approach. The open API approach ensures seamless integration with other technology providers. Feature-based inventory can be transformed into relevant and tailored accommodation products using the AI recommendation model. The result is a transparent guest experience right from the booking process and significant time savings during reservations through intelligent and optimized room assignments.

The newly established inventory management platform and the associated new products and solutions were developed based on experiences gained from implementing the Sales Engine with existing hotel customers, their achieved results, and the acquired data. The new data structure enables the introduction of advanced automation possibilities, including dynamically optimized and intelligent room assignments using AI (Reinforcement Loops), going far beyond the largely manual and limited assignments used until now.

In today's era of personalization, the data structure in the form of categories for inventory management has proven to be inadequate. It lacks information about individual room features in data formats, making it challenging for operators to fulfill guest requests without significant manual and operational efforts. Any inquiry about specific room characteristics is handled offline and requires manual processing. Monetizing these features is also not possible, and the lack of personalization reduces the competitiveness of accommodation businesses compared to others.

Müller adds, "These problems are a thing of the past with the use of GauVendi. The results our customers achieve with our current solution validate this: significant increases in room revenue, considerable time savings through new automation features, a reduction in phone and email inquiries, and better guest reviews and check-in experiences."

 HotelIQ, a global hospitality technology company and member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), announced that their business intelligence and analytics tool, Decision Cloud, is available on Oracle Cloud Marketplace and can be deployed on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and integrates with OPERA Cloud Platform via Oracle Hospitality Integration Platform (OHIP). Hotels are now able to more quickly and easily integrate HotelIQ Decision Cloud with OPERA Cloud, enabling more efficient implementation and increasing ROI. Oracle Cloud Marketplace is a centralized repository of enterprise applications offered by Oracle and Oracle partners.

Leveraging the power of OHIP to enable integration between HotelIQ Decicsion Cloud and OPERA Cloud offers significant benefits for hoteliers. HotelIQ is able to capture and analyze property data and provide hoteliers with easy-to-digest, accurate, and consistent data to internal departments which were previously siloed. This makes it easy for revenue management, marketing and sales teams to work together to identify revenue opportunities and discover new ways to optimize operational processes. Hotel IT teams also benefit from OHIP’s self-service onboarding process, which eliminates the need for outside vendors to get a partner connected. In addition, OHIP’s APIs allow partners to ensure both systems are in sync, minimizing the work for hotel IT or outside vendors.

“Traditional PMS data integration and implementation have historically been our biggest pain points when onboarding new clients,” said Andrew Fessenden, Director of Implementations and Integrations at HotelIQ. ”By making OHIP free for hotels using OPERA Cloud, we are able to offer self-service implementation benefits to users of HotelIQ Decision Cloud on OPERA Cloud.”

Oracle Cloud Marketplace is a one-stop shop for Oracle customers seeking trusted business applications offering unique business solutions.

OCI is a deep and broad platform of cloud infrastructure services that enables customers to build and run a wide range of applications in a scalable, secure, highly available, and high-performance environment. From application development and business analytics to data management, integration, security, AI, and infrastructure services including Kubernetes and VMware, OCI delivers unmatched security, performance, and cost savings. In addition, with multicloud, hybrid cloud, public cloud, and dedicated cloud options, OCI’s distributed cloud offers customers the benefits of cloud with greater control over data residency, locality, and authority, even across multiple clouds. As a result, customers can bring enterprise workloads to the cloud quickly and efficiently while meeting the strictest regulatory compliance requirements.

IDeaS, a SAS company, a provider of hotel revenue management software and services, announced today that Summerstar Tourist Parks has adopted the IDeaS’ G3 Revenue Management System (RMS) across fourteen of its Australian-based caravan and holiday park sites.

Summerstar previously relied on manual-based approaches to forecast demand and set prices. However, as its business grew, manually collecting multiple data sets and calculating information via spreadsheets became time-consuming and susceptible to errors and missed opportunities. To modernize its business processes and evolve its approach to pricing, Summerstar adopted IDeaS G3 RMS across all its properties.

• Assessing property performance and market demand: IDeaS G3 RMS will automatically assess Summerstar property performance and market demand while deploying pricing decisions and length-of-stay controls across distribution channels. G3 RMS generates prices that adapt to market changes while considering the competitive landscape and a guest’s willingness to pay.
• Streamlining head-office resources: IDeaS will help Summerstar grow as a business without additional head-office resources dedicated to revenue management. Using its advanced, automated RMS the properties can minimize the loss of ‘in-head’ knowledge and user error in the revenue management space.
• Optimizing revenue streams to increase profitability: By continually analyzing data and adjusting pricing strategies, IDeaS enables the optimization of revenue streams to increase profitability. Through monitoring market trends, competitor pricing, and customer behaviors, hoteliers can better adjust pricing and distribution strategies and maintain a competitive edge to capture market share. 

James Corbitt, director, Summerstar Tourist Parks, said: “Summerstar Tourist Parks sites are located across western and southern Australia, all of which have different peak seasons, special events, and guest preferences when it comes to booking. We realized that to continue operating successfully, Summerstar must provide both the best customer experience and prices possible. As a result, it was critical that our length of stay and pricing be balanced through practicing effective revenue management.”

Jurgen Ortelee, managing director of APAC, IDeaS, said: “To provide accommodation options for every budget and attract guests at the right price, Summerstar must continually meet the market from a revenue management perspective. By analyzing historical data and market trends, IDeaS enables Summerstar to forecast future demand accurately. This forecasting capability helps them to plan resources, inventory, and capacity effectively, ensuring that their properties can attract guests while minimizing costs and maximizing revenue.”