News Briefs

Grazzy, the digital tipping platform driving higher earnings for hotel workers, has been named a preferred technology provider by Hyatt Hotels. With this status, all 700+ Hyatt franchise locations can utilize Grazzy's digital tipping solutions to help hotel operations, bar and restaurant staff earn $1 - $2 more per hour and enjoy instant access to earned tips.

This recognition from Hyatt follows successful Grazzy pilots with major hotel operators like Hotel Equities, HRI, Crestline and Dimension Hospitality. Grazzy worked with operators and the major hotel brands to refine a set of best practices that can help individual properties maximize digital tipping activity.

At a higher level, Grazzy also developed interactive enterprise reporting that helps operators understand team and property performance through their portfolio. These reporting tools help groups accelerate digital tipping, for example, by facilitating the sharing of strategies that help one property earn more than the others.

"Grazzy is helping service workers recapture tips that cashless innovations have for years made fewer and farther between. In doing so, we help hotels, bars, restaurants and other service businesses recruit and retain great talent in a competitive labor market," says Grazzy Founder and CEO Russell Lemmer.

With this announcement, Grazzy now exclusively enjoys brand approval status from all four of the major hotel brands, and is a preferred provider to three of the four. Hospitality businesses are moving quickly to implement convenient, cashless methods for guests to show gratitude for quality service. Grazzy's simple, branded tip payment process is easy for hotel teams to set up and blends well with each brand's designed guest experiences. Guests can choose from pre-set or custom tip amounts, and they can even leave specific feedback recognizing employees' efforts.

Grazzy also provides for service businesses:

• Secure, branded tips in 10 seconds or less
• Automated tip pooling and allocations
• Instant payouts for employees - including F&B staff at hotel locations
• Tax and tip credit reporting and compliance, and detailed performance program reporting for operators
• Real-time customer experience surveys, connected to industry-leading User Generated Content (UGC) travel review websites
• Integrations with Property Management Systems (PMS) and other operating tech stack systems
• Best-in-class customer support team, rated 90% in NPS

Guestline announces the launch of GuestVoucher, its new integrated voucher and gifting platform.  Hoteliers will now be able to sell personalised monetary and experience vouchers to guests who will then have the choice to redeem against particular hotel services or use as an alternative to cash payments.  

Hoteliers can choose either monetary vouchers that have a simple cash redemption value or experience vouchers which can promote and encourage sales of particular packages, amenities or services available throughout their property.  

GuestVoucher has been developed to enable operators to generate additional revenue and upsell opportunities by offering both existing and potential new guests the option to enhance their stay with additional experiences. When purchased as a gift operators can attract new guests to their property and services who might not otherwise have considered booking. This brings the opportunity to build guest loyalty in line with positive guest experiences, drive guest and customer acquisition and extend upsell and revenue opportunities from those guests redeeming their vouchers who might then consider a room upgrade, extending their stay or booking additional services beyond their voucher.   

• When asked what they really want from loyalty programs, consumers want, 78% percent of customers surveyed want discounts, according to HTs 12^th annual 2023 Customer Engagement Technology Study.   

GuestVoucher offers hoteliers complete autonomy over their voucher design and functionality. They can opt to design in line with their own hotel branding to ensure consistency across marketing and communications, in addition to setting expiry dates and any other required limitations around sales and redemptions. Multi-site groups can also control the locations at which vouchers can be redeemed in line with wider sales, marketing, revenue and distribution strategies.  

Intuitive and flexible, it offers a straightforward, easy to navigate shopping experience for guests. For hoteliers to set up, they simply need to create a voucher template in line with their own branding and design guidelines and can then select to create as many voucher options as they require using the master template. Whether for F&B, spa or a choice of monetary amounts, for example. They can then set expiry dates to reduce P&L liability, choose preferred delivery methods to guests, choose a subdomain so they have their own URL which can be added to the main website and then finally add a payment provider to ensure payments can be processed online before launching to sell.  

Commenting on the launch of GuestVoucher, Jonathan Lee, Product Manager at Guestline said: “Vouchers have always been an important revenue stream for hoteliers. In launching GuestVoucher our ambition is to enable operators to extend their guest reach even further with an efficient, intuitive tool that can drive revenue and build guest loyalty. 

“Ahead of the festive season gift vouchers are always a popular choice to treat loved ones and are an effective way for hoteliers to market seasonal packages and increase brand exposure during what is a competitive period for the industry. Alongside the templates, the reporting enables operators to track sales, redemptions and liabilities in real time so that any adjustments that need to be made in line with demand and operations can be done quickly and effectively. Guests will benefit from enhanced offers and experiences and operators can benefit from increased revenue, sales and guest loyalty.”  

For more information on how Guestline’s GuestVoucher can enhance your guest experience and drive revenue please visit guestline.com   

IRIS, a provider of digital F&B ordering, guest directory and concierge solutions for hotels and restaurants, has been chosen by Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino to provide a digital F&B ordering and guest directory platform for their guests.

With breath-taking views over Navarino Bay, the stunning hotel offers sweeping bay vistas and the perfect combination of luxury, style and privacy. This is the luxury brand's first outpost in Greece. 

Through the IRIS app, guests can order a range of food and drink items (to be enjoyed in their rooms, at the Tranquillity Pool or at the Ormos Beach Club) and peruse the hotel’s range of bespoke services and amenities, all available to order and reserve from the palm of their hands. Furthermore, the app optimises processes, reduces operational costs for the hotel and creates new revenue streams, demonstrating its multi-faceted benefits. 

Andreas Zografos, Director of IT at Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino stated, “We are delighted to offer our guests IRIS’ innovative digital dining and guest experience app, designed with our guests' convenience in mind. With this seamless technology, we aim to enhance our guest’s stay, offering a mobile ordering experience at their fingertips.  

Not only does it elevate guest satisfaction and boost F&B revenue, it also streamlines our operations, allowing our team to focus on delivering an exceptional experience and creating unforgettable memories for our valued guests." 

For more information about the IRIS platform  visit https://www.iris.net/demo. 

Accenture has been appointed by global hospitality group Accor to support its content production capability, driving scale and establishing consistency in local and global marketing communications across its hotel brands, tailored to guests’ evolving needs.

Accenture Song, Accenture’s tech-powered creative group, created the ‘Content Atelier’, a new data-driven content supply chain model that aims to create personalized, flexible, efficient and high-quality marketing and communications content across every customer touchpoint, while reducing costs.

Spanning both physical and digital communications, the ‘Content Atelier’ will be available to all Accor marketing professionals worldwide, enabling content production management from the initial brief to performance measurement and content optimization. The service has been developed with leading design principles and utilizes Accenture’s SynOps platform for marketing and content operations, whilst being integrated into Accor’s infrastructure.

Against a backdrop of changing guest expectations and global macroeconomic shifts, the ‘Content Atelier’ uses a data-led approach to enable Accor brand marketers to focus on their most important activities, whilst aiming to increase the effectiveness of its digital marketing programs, drive more traffic to its branded website, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Technological innovation is key to the design of the service, with generative AI part of the strategic content production roadmap. In support of Accor’s commitment to shape the future of travel, sustainability sits at the core of all content production activities through brand and marketing strategy to marketing content activation.

Stéphanie Jaffré, SVP Digital Marketing & eCommerce, Premium, Midscale & Economy Brands at Accor, said: "Accor is committed to extending hospitality and inspiring new opportunities and experiences for our guests. So, it is crucial we have the right framework in place to reach our guests in the right way at the right time on the right channels, to inspire and support their travel needs and desires. Consumer attention is not agnostic, it spreads across multiple digital channels and we need be able to communicate with our guests on all relevant platforms, particularly at the research and inspiration stage of the customer journey. Hospitality is all about connecting with people and through our new digital content strategy we can better connect with, inspire and serve our guests.”

Martial Viudes, managing director, Accenture Song, said: “Together with Accor, we have redesigned the experience for Accor marketing professionals, aiming to optimize efficiency on a global level and ensure locally relevant, ultra-personalized experiences for its guests. We are proud to support Accor in creating a new generation of content production, harnessing our deep industry, creative and technical expertise. The development of the ‘Content Atelier’ serves each brand within the group according to their marketing ambitions, delivering bespoke and creative points of delight worldwide.”

Accenture Song, which has been working with Accor's marketing and content teams for almost four years, is already producing the Group’s content in multiple countries in Europe.

Cendyn  and SiteMinder announce a strategic partnership to mutually grow each other’s revenue management capabilities for the benefit of more than 70,000 hotels.

Through the partnership, Cendyn customers can now gain full access to SiteMinder’s revenue platform to complement the capabilities they receive through Cendyn’s central reservations system (CRS), which for the sixth consecutive year was voted the ‘Best Central Reservations System’ by the 2023 Hotel Tech Awards. SiteMinder’s revenue platform will provide Cendyn’s customers with the ability to manage their rate plans and inventory through SiteMinder. Additionally, they will be able to access SiteMinder’s complete ecosystem of distribution channels—the largest ecosystem for the hotel industry—to gain a more dynamic mix of revenue streams and increase their speed-to-market.

For SiteMinder’s hotel customers, the benefit will come through enhancements and optimized features in SiteMinder’s platform, informed by insights from Cendyn’s own hotel performance data.

Michael Bennett, President at Cendyn, says, “We are delighted to deepen our long-standing relationship with SiteMinder to provide our hotel customers the opportunity to tap into new streams of revenue, quickly and easily.  It’s exciting to extend this strength in revenue generation to our customers around the globe as SiteMinder stands out as a strong technology partner for hotels.”

Adds Jonathan Bedford, Chief Sales Officer at SiteMinder, “Cendyn is a true market le

Cendyn and SiteMinder first partnered in 2018, upon the launch of SiteMinder Exchange, which enabled hotel data to be transferred between property management systems and hotel applications, such as Cendyn’s customer relationship management (CRM), for the first time. SiteMinder Exchange culminated in the launch of SiteMinder’s Hotel App Store, which in 2019 formed the first marketplace to allow hotels of all sizes to connect applications to their business systems for greater guest experiences and revenue.