News Briefs

BeCause, the Danish start-up transforming how the global hospitality, travel and tourism industries manage their sustainability data, announced today that it has secured $1.9 million (€1.75M) in seed funding from investors. The round, co-led by Denmark's Ugly Duckling Ventures and Estonia's Superangel.io, includes a $708,000 (€650K) open tail-end and the $1.9 million for strategic investors to join on equal terms.

"We have retained the possibility of adding another investor to this round and hope to find a partner that has experience with high-growth startups in the impact space, particularly those with a background in B2B SaaS models, travel and big data API, to help accelerate our mission even further" explains Frederik Steensgaard, BeCause co-founder and CEO.

With a $450,000 angel investment from earlier this year, BeCause has raised $2.6 million (€2.4M) to date. This latest installment will allow the company to grow at an accelerated pace as it continues to meet the demand for its solutions from major enterprise organizations and global travel brands, such as Booking.com, easyJet, Google, Radisson Hotels and TUI.

A Transformative Solution for Sustainability Data in Travel

In an era of heightened consumer scrutiny and regulatory compliance, BeCause enables hotels, travel brands and marketplaces to streamline, simplify and reduce the costs of managing their sustainability data. Backed by an AI-powered platform, BeCause eliminates repetitive, error-prone tasks such as manual data collection at the individual property level and automates communication between hotels, industry organizations, green certification entities and booking platforms, freeing up valuable resources and leading to greater transparency between stakeholders and consumers.

Serving as a centralized hub for all sustainability data, BeCause results in a sixfold faster return on sustainability investments, amounting to a potential savings of millions of dollars for a typical hotel chain in the first year alone.

"We're very excited about BeCause's ability to improve sustainability data collection and reporting for the hospitality and tourism industries. It's a massive addressable market which thus far has lacked a purpose-built solution with the analytical capabilities to help players supercharge their positive impact on the people, planet, and profits," says Andreas Green Rasmussen, General Partner at Ugly Duckling Ventures.

According to a June forecast from research and advisory company Forrester, the cumulative global green market spend is expected to total $325 trillion from now until 2050, with travel and transportation commanding 35% or about $114 trillion of that spend by the end of this period. By adopting the BeCause platform, hospitality, travel and tourism brands can responsibly capitalize on this demand.

"We came in as a co-lead on this fundraising round because we believe in the power of BeCause to increase certified sustainability and decrease greenwashing in the accommodations sector. We are also very impressed by how fast the team has built a product that some of the world's biggest brands are comfortable using," explains Kärt Siilats, Venture Partner, Superangel.io.

An Impressive and Growing Roster of Clients

BeCause currently has over 20,000 hotels streaming sustainability data through its platform. It also counts over 50 certifiers, including GreenKey, and 15 travel booking marketplaces, including Booking.com, amongst its users.

"This newest round of funding allows us to continue our work with stakeholders in the hospitality industry and gives us the ability to respond to the massive interest in our sustainability data hub from adjacent industries like corporate travel and destinations and meetings," says Steensgaard.

"We're thankful to Ugly Duckling Ventures, Superangel and all our investors for putting their faith in us and our solution, which is critical to making travel greener and reducing its impact on the environment," he adds.

Additional investors in this round include serial exit entrepreneur Sean Brown (UK); Director, Business Development and Partnerships for fintech unicorn Circle.com, Sean Evans (UK); and private investor Patrick Patrong (DK).

Securing Funding in a Precarious Climate

The nearly $2 million raise for BeCause comes at a challenging time for start-ups, with the amount of capital down 38% from Q2 to Q3. Carta, the equity management platform, also recently revealed that it had had the worst quarter on record for company shutdowns. BeCause is flying in the face of that trend.

"Though we are just beginning our journey, the fact that we have signed some of the biggest names in travel and are more than anything preoccupied with handling non-stop demand reflects the pressing need for a solution like BeCause. We're proud that through better sustainability data management, we can do our part to reduce the harmful impacts of travel on the planet and instead help sustainable choices flow effortlessly," said Steensgaard.

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. 

Atomize, a leading provider of revenue management software (RMS) and a member of Oracle Partner Network (OPN), today announced that the Atomize Revenue Management Software is one of the first RMSs now available on Oracle Cloud Marketplace and can be integrated with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure via Oracle Hospitality Integration Platform (OHIP). This integration enables hotels using Opera Cloud to leverage Atomize’s AI-driven pricing technology for enhanced revenue management.

The Atomize Revenue Management Software, accessible through Oracle Cloud Marketplace, offers significant business advantages by utilizing key data from Opera Cloud PMS. This data includes room inventory and occupancy rates, which Atomize's AI algorithms analyze to assess prices in real-time, ensuring optimal rates for every room type. The collaboration underscores a one-stop solution for Oracle customers in the hospitality industry, allowing them to modernize and augment their workload with next-generation security and performance.

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.

Benefits of the Integration with Atomize for Opera Cloud Users:

• Maximized Revenue: Real-time price optimization in response to market demand.
• Increased Efficiency: Automated pricing eliminates manual tasks and saves time.
• Competitive Advantage: Insights into future market demand for proactive strategies.
• Balanced Pricing Strategy: Incorporates competitor data for aligned pricing.
• Optimized Room Pricing: Dynamic pricing based on actual demand for various room types.
• Enhanced Market Share: Notable improvements in RevPAR Index, averaging a 15% increase in the first quarter.

"The integration with Opera Cloud is a pivotal development in hotel revenue management,” said Alexander Edström, CEO of Atomize. “By leveraging AI and real-time data, we enable hotels to maximize their revenue potential and adapt to market changes efficiently. Our participation in Oracle Cloud Marketplace further extends our commitment to the Oracle community and enables customers to easily reap the benefits of Atomize. We look forward to leveraging the power of the Oracle Cloud to help us achieve our business goals.”

The integration of Atomize with Opera Cloud is a leap forward for hotel revenue management, equipping users to approach the dynamic hospitality landscape with more agility and success.

For hotels using Opera and looking to connect with Atomize, visit the Atomize profile in the Opera Marketplace to learn more.

HotelPORT has announced several key appointments and organizational changes as part of its global expansion strategy. These appointments reflect HotelPORT’s commitment to fostering a diverse, skilled, and globally distributed workforce.

Rodion Zhitomirsky has joined as  Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and shared his enthusiasm for this role: "I've been a part of HotelPORT since its transition into a full-fledged IT business began back in 2018, initially in a part-time capacity. However, as we observed the company's growth, it became evident that it required consistent attention at the CTO level, encompassing both technological expertise and technical leadership. Consequently, I made a deliberate decision to join HotelPORT full-time as CTO to provide the necessary impetus. This choice was driven by my belief in HotelPORT's promising future and my desire to contribute to its success, making my mark on its journey towards greatness."

HotelPORT’s leadership team also includes:

- Danielle Faberlle, Vice President, Partner Success

- Antanina Shafranskaya, Product Manager, PropertyVIEW®

- Ekaterina Zhigadlo, Head of Content Analyst Services

HotelPORT provides innovative solutions for hoteliers, restaurants, and spas to audit, optimize, and enhance their online presence. Recognizing the unique needs of different sectors within the hospitality industry, the company has made significant organizational changes, introducing specialized teams such as the Partner Success Team, Support Team, Rebranding Team, and a team of restaurant and spa experts. These dedicated groups will focus on addressing the specific challenges and opportunities within each domain, ensuring tailored and effective solutions for clients.

Fred Bean, HotelPORT’s CEO and Founder, expressed his excitement, stating, “These latest appointments mark a significant milestone in our growth and expansion journey. Our team now boasts 91 talented specialists, spread across 7 countries and 3 continents. This remarkable growth is testament to our commitment to building a diverse, skilled, and globally distributed workforce.”

This year, HotelPORT welcomed 49 new members, broadening its expertise and enhancing its capacity to deliver exceptional services, including content analysts, developers, QA engineers, Support Specialists, and a Scrum Master.

Fred added, “This expansion enhances our technical capabilities and streamlines our project management and quality assurance processes, ensuring that we continue to deliver cutting-edge solutions in the fast-evolving tech landscape.”

HotelPORT remains dedicated to gender diversity and inclusion, with over 60% of its current team comprising women. The global company recognizes that diverse teams bring a range of perspectives, ideas, and solutions to the table, crucial for innovation and problem-solving in our industry.

Fred concluded by saying, “HotelPORT’s expansion is more than just numbers. It’s about building a robust, diverse, and skilled team capable of navigating the complexities of the travel and hospitality industry. As we continue to grow, we remain committed to our vision of leveraging technology to revolutionize travel experiences, one innovation at a time. Our expanded team is poised to take on the challenges of a dynamic industry, and we are excited for what the future holds.”

Mews, the industry-leading hospitality cloud, has unveiled its next-generation kiosk solution for hotels. The Kiosk can be used for check-in and check-out, by guests or by staff.

“What makes the Mews Kiosk special is that it isn’t only designed for a smooth guest experience,” said Matt Welle, CEO of Mews. “We’ve completely overhauled its user interface and it’s driving phenomenal improvements in check-ins and outs. It’s now easier to find bookings, offer early check-in options and upsell services and products to guests, making a tangible difference to bottom lines and staff productivity.”

The new Kiosk has been optimized for speed, both in terms of its build and functionality, and enables hotels to upsell products and services during the check-in process. Used in economy, midscale and luxury properties around the world, guests have the choice to check-in however they want. Guests can search for their reservation using their last name only using Mews Kiosk, and easily cut their own room keys by following the clear on-screen guidance.

This has contributed to an average check-in time of just over two minutes, a minute faster than previously. For properties using the new Mews Kiosk, the proportion of guests using it to check in has risen, with some hotels seeing kiosk usage increase by over 100%.

Hotels will also benefit from a more cohesive branding and opportunities to boost revenue. For instance, properties can curate their Kiosk imagery, making a more engaging guest experience. A customizable screensaver allows hotels to play branded videos when the kiosks aren’t in use, which lets hotels promote additional services and upgrades. These upsells can be purchased during the kiosk check-in process.

When combined with Mews Terminals, a fully automated, integrated card reader, hotels remove the manual processing of card payments, reducing human error and duplicate billing. Mews customers save an average of six hours per month using Mews Terminals and have seen a 19% higher success rate of payments.

If a guest arrives before check-in time, they can still use the kiosk and – if there is a room available – choose to check in early. This is a huge revenue earner for hotels, and because payment can be made directly via the kiosk, there is no time drain for front desk staff. One hotel in the heart of London generated over €19,000 through early kiosk check-ins in just six weeks.

Postillion Hotels

Mews Kiosk is used by Postillion Hotels in the Netherlands, where they’ve seen a 36% reduction in the time taken for guests to check-in to its hotels, with average check-in taking just over two minutes.

“The Mews Kiosk has improved our check in process tremendously. I don’t see the Kiosks as a replacement of our staff, instead it’s an added benefit. The features offered in the new version fit perfectly with our guest needs. We can now offer extra products, like an early check-in without any hassle, but with extra revenue.” commented Manon Klop, Revenue Manager at Postillion Hotels Nederland, “From a branding standpoint, we oversee the images being displayed and making sure everything the guest sees during check-in matches our standards. For us it is also important that the improvements allow us to keep up with guests’ changing demands.”

Hotel Maashof

Another Mews customer, Hotel Maashof in the city center of Venlo in The Netherlands, has seen 60% faster check-ins because of Mews Kiosk.

Maurice Martens, Head of Marketing at Hotel Maashof, commented, “The front desk team are very happy with Mews Kiosk because they no longer have to print out documents and manually type in all the guest details into the computer. They can focus on the guest instead.”

At AWS re:Invent, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company, announced new generative AI capabilities in Amazon Connect, AWS’s cloud contact center that enables organizations of all sizes to deliver better customer experiences at lower cost. Powered by large language models (LLMs) and other foundation models (FMs) available through Amazon Bedrock, the latest Amazon Connect enhancements include new generative AI capabilities that expand on the service’s existing machine learning (ML) features to transform how companies provide customer service. Amazon Q in Connect—a generative AI-enhanced evolution of Amazon Connect Wisdom—provides agents with recommended responses and actions based on real-time customer questions, for faster and more accurate customer support. Amazon Connect Contact Lens—an Amazon Connect feature that provides real-time contact center analytics and quality management—now helps identify the essential parts of call-center conversations with AI generated summaries that detect sentiment, trends, and policy compliance. Also powered by generative AI, Amazon Lex in Amazon Connect today enables contact center administrators to create new chatbots and interactive voice response (IVR) systems in hours by using natural-language prompts, and improve existing systems by generating responses to commonly asked questions. Lastly, Amazon Connect Customer Profiles—an Amazon Connect feature that enables agents to deliver faster, more personalized customer service—now creates unified customer profiles from disparate software-as-a-service applications and databases. To get started with Amazon Connect, visit aws.amazon.com/connect/.

Contact centers are a critical customer service channel for organizations to provide support and build relationships with their customers. With the advent of generative AI, contact center leaders have an unprecedented opportunity to redefine how they create and measure their customers’ experiences. However, taking advantage of LLMs and other FMs is a difficult endeavor requiring technical expertise that is in short supply and high demand. Even when utilizing existing models, industry-specific data must be used to fine-tune models that generate responses tailored to an organization’s business. Integrating these models into new customer experience applications that work with an organization’s existing suite of contact center tools requires further industry-specific expertise. Amazon Connect removes the challenges of building and deploying models in contact centers by allowing non-technical business leaders to set up a cloud contact center with generative AI capabilities within minutes. The new generative AI capabilities of Amazon Connect include:
 

• Amazon Q in Connect: generative AI to assist agents with recommended responses and actions for faster customer support. Agents play a critical role in helping organizations build customer trust and loyalty by guiding customers through complex decisions, helping customers understand policies and terms, suggesting new products and services, providing fast and accurate solutions when issues arise, and capturing a record of every customer interaction. Amazon Q, a new type of generative AI-powered assistant that can be tailored for any business, provides new agent assistance for the contact center. Amazon Q in Connect helps understand customer intents and uses relevant sources of information to deliver accurate responses and actions for the agent to communicate and resolve unique customer needs, all in real time. For example, Amazon Q in Connect can detect that a customer is contacting a rental car company to change their reservation, generate a response for the agent to quickly communicate how the company’s change-fee policies apply to this customer, and guide the agent through the steps they need to update the reservation. By empowering agents to address customer needs across a broad range of topics without assistance from supervisors, Amazon Q in Connect increases customer satisfaction and helps build loyal customer relationships, while reducing agent training, resolution times, and costs.
• Amazon Connect Contact Lens: post-contact summarization for increased productivity. To help improve customer interactions and ensure details are available for future reference, contact center supervisors rely on the notes that agents manually create after every customer interaction. To further contextualize those notes, supervisors must listen to large volumes of customer conversations, or read through complete conversation transcripts, since failure to correctly capture and act upon information from the conversation can lower contact center quality and erode customer trust. Amazon Connect Contact Lens now generates concise customer contact summaries after each interaction to provide supervisors with those context-rich details. Moments after a customer interaction, Amazon Connect Contact Lens identifies important details of the customer conversation—such as the customer’s issue, the actions taken by the agent, and the next steps required to close the loop with the customer—and generates a short summary. Supervisors can then use these summaries to inform efforts to improve contact center quality. For example, supervisors can use summaries to track commitments made to customers and ensure prompt completion of follow-up actions. When investigating a customer issue, supervisors can review an auto-generated summary of previous interactions without having to listen to the call recording or read the transcript. By saving time with concise summaries of customer calls, supervisors can more effectively monitor performance for all customer interactions and scale quality management.
• Amazon Lex in Amazon Connect: generative AI to simplify bot building and create improved self-service experiences. The creation of personalized, self-service chatbots and IVR systems requires contact center administrators to account for every aspect of a conversation—including customer intents, responses, and interaction flows. When these systems are unable to address uncommon responses or inquiries from customers, it often requires escalation to a contact center agent and creates customer frustration. Amazon Connect now makes it easier to build more effective and personalized self-service experiences provided by chatbots and IVRs. From the Amazon Lex administrator console, contact center administrators can create robust chatbots and IVRs by simply describing in natural language what they want the self-service system to accomplish. For example, a contact center administrator could type, “Build a bot to handle hotel reservations using customer name and contact information, travel dates, room type, and payment details.” Using this prompt, Amazon Lex will generate sample utterances and create a chatbot or IVR, reducing the time and complexity of building self-service systems. In addition, contact center administrators can now deploy more effective self-service systems that eliminate the need to anticipate all possible questions and answers. When customers reply to chatbots or IVRs with less common responses, Amazon Connect leverages models to correctly interpret the customer’s response. For example, if a customer says they want to reserve a hotel room for “Saturday and Sunday,” the self-service system correctly interprets the response as “two nights.” Contact center administrators can also create question-and-answer chatbots and IVRs directly using Amazon Lex, which will generate responses for common customer questions by searching through an organization’s existing knowledge base and summarizing the most relevant details. These self-service chatbot and IVR systems can be instantly deployed into any website.
• Amazon Connect Customer Profiles: automatic creation of unified customer profiles for personalized customer experiences. Customers expect personalized customer service experiences, which require contact centers to have a comprehensive understanding of customers' preferences, purchases, and interactions. To achieve that, contact center administrators need to create unified customer profiles by merging customer data from dozens of applications. Now, Amazon Connect Customer Profiles leverages models to reduce the timeneeded to provide personalized customer experiences.When contact center administrators add data sources—such as Adobe Analytics, Salesforce, ServiceNow, ZenDesk or Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)—Amazon Connect Customer Profiles will analyze the data to understand what the data format and content represent and how the data relates to customers’ profiles. Amazon Connect Customer Profiles then determines how to organize and combine data from different sources into complete, accurate profiles. With just a few clicks, managers can review, make any necessary edits, and complete the setup of customer profiles so contact center teams can begin providing personalized customer service that improves customer satisfaction and agent productivity.

“The contact center industry is poised to be fundamentally transformed by generative AI, offering customer service agents, contact center supervisors, and contact center administrators new ways to deliver personalized customer experiences even more effectively. Yet few organizations have the advanced machine learning expertise to easily harness this technology and apply it to their operations,” said Pasquale DeMaio, vice president, Amazon Connect, AWS Applications. “With just a few clicks, contact center leaders can leverage new capabilities powered by generative AI in Amazon Connect to enhance the more than 15 million customer interactions handled on Amazon Connect every day. With these new capabilities, contact centers can consistently deliver improved customer support at scale.”

In addition to these new generative AI enhancements, Amazon Connect has extended omnichannel capabilities to include out-of-the-box support for two-way SMS messaging, as well as in-app and web voice calling with support for video. These new omnichannel communications—as well as the generative AI enhancements to Amazon Lex, Amazon Q in Connect, and Amazon Connect Customer profiles—are generally available. New generative AI capabilities in Amazon Connect Contact Lens are available in preview.

Choice Hotels is a leading global lodging franchisor with a vast network of nearly 7,500 hotels, representing almost 630,000 rooms across 46 countries and territories. “Today, our team spends significant time to understand customer data relationships and create data mappings. Data objects such as hotel booking or loyalty can be very complex with multi-level nesting,” said Michael Bennett, distinguished engineer at Choice Hotels. “Using the Amazon Connect generative AI data mapping feature will reduce the onboarding time and provide guidance on which data columns to use for the unique identification of a profile. With it, we will onboard future specialized data sources much quicker and enrich our Guest 360 profiles with the data to power our real-time personalization initiatives.”

NatWest Group is a relationship bank for a digital world, serving 19 million people, families, and businesses in communities throughout the UK and Ireland. “For our customers to feel supported through financial decisions at every stage of their lives, they need timely responses and a consistent experience regardless of which agent they speak with,” said Angela Byrne, chief operating officer, Retail Banking at NatWest. “Yet providing accurate details on our vast array of products and services across all of our brands often requires that our agents spend time searching across our knowledge management sources while customers wait for an answer. NatWest Group believes generative AI presents a great opportunity for our business, especially within the contact center. We expect that Amazon Q in Connect will ensure both our new and experienced agents are prompted in real time with accurate information to provide a consistently high-quality customer experience.”

NeuraFlash is a leading consulting andindependent software vendor partner of AWS, focused on helping customers transform their businesses with AI-powered experiences. “Our customers who are looking to get more business value from their customer conversations find that long call recordings and transcripts can be cumbersome to listen through for the quality assurance team, supervisors, the next agent to work with the customer, and others across the organization,” said Patrick Beyries, head of Product and Innovation at NeuraFlash. “Amazon Connect Contact Lens’ new automatic contact summarizations will allow our customers to more effectively understand and share what happened in a customer conversation and, just as importantly, what to do next to drive customer success and business results.”

Traeger Grills is a leading provider of smokers, grills, and barbeque products. “As we have grown our customer base and diversified our product offerings, one of our biggest challenges has been in providing our agents and supervisors with the right information at the right time to increase customer satisfaction,” said Corey Savory, vice president, Customer Experience and Service at Traeger Grills. “Amazon Connect’s new generative AI features have shown great promise in testing at our contact center. In the future, we envision these features will enable our agents and supervisors to focus on delivering premier customer experiences. We anticipate Amazon Q in Connect will improve agent efficiency by 20% by providing agents with generated responses and actions that are specific to customer needs. By concisely summarizing important information from customer conversations using Amazon Connect Contact Lens in a structured, easy-to-read format, supervisors will no longer need to invest valuable time in listening to entire call recordings or reading detailed transcripts.”

USAN provides cloud-based contact center technology and services to customers around the world. “Improving agent, supervisor, and contact center administrator support is top-of-mind for our customers today to deliver better end-customer outcomes,” said Steve Herlocher, senior vice president of Product at USAN. “Amazon Connect’s new, built-in generative AI capabilities will help our customers efficiently create unified customer profiles through better data mapping, improve contact center supervisor efficiency with post-contact summarization in Contact Lens, and onboard agents faster with suggested responses and actions. Best of all, our customers can start using these generative AI-powered capabilities immediately in Amazon Connect, without the need to build and deploy large language models.”