News Briefs

Mark Shambura has joined Panera Bread as Chief Marketing Officer. Shambura will lead all aspects of marketing at Panera, including Brand Building, Digital & Loyalty, Product Strategy & Consumer Insights. An accomplished marketing leader with broad expertise in the restaurant industry, Mr. Shambura has previously held marketing leadership roles during pivotal growth periods for top brands including Chipotle, MOD Pizza, and most recently Papa Johns.

"Mark brings an impressive background building brands and leading marketing teams for fast-casual restaurants, and we’re thrilled to welcome him to Panera Bread,” said José Alberto Dueñas, Chief Executive Officer. “As Panera continues to evolve our brand, guided by listening to our guests, Mark’s depth of experience and ability will help drive our growth as a brand that serves great food you feel good about eating.”

Shambura previously served as CMO at Papa Johns, where he led a revitalization of the brand by enhancing its iconic “Better Ingredients, Better Pizza” platform, and developing a more modern, innovative omnichannel approach to transform how Papa Johns appealed to both new and loyal consumers. As Executive Director at Chipotle, Mr. Shambura guided the marketing function through periods of both sustained growth and transition, providing leadership over brand strategy, advertising, digital, social, events/sponsorships, promotions, and field marketing, including playing a key role in spearheading its “Real Ingredients” brand strategy.

“I’m proud to join the Panera Bread team and excited to build on the momentum of the brand's transformation as it continues to evolve in service of our guests,” Mr. Shambura said. “Panera propelled and cemented its position at the top of the fast casual restaurant segment through its promise of high-quality ingredients and freshly prepared food, and I’m thrilled to join a highly talented team to help shape its next chapter.”

Prior to his tenure in the restaurant industry, Mr. Shambura gained extensive marketing agency experience, working with a broad array of top global consumer brands for over a decade. Shambura will report directly to José Alberto Dueñas, Chief Executive Officer, and officially assumed the role of Chief Marketing Officer on July 29, 2024.

Life House, an independent hotel management company, announced the spin-out of its software business unit into a new independent business, Diamo. This strategic move allows both companies to reinforce their respective core missions. Life House will strengthen its commitment to delivering local, personalized hospitality experiences while maintaining a strong emphasis on financial returns. Whereas Diamo will intensify its efforts in leveraging technology to make advanced revenue management strategies, along with high-return digital marketing tactics, accessible to independent lodging properties.

In a complex and expert-driven revenue landscape, many independent hoteliers lack the time, capital, or expertise to implement revenue strategies that maximize their financial performance. Diamo aims to bridge this gap with a comprehensive suite of products that optimize every stage of the guest booking journey.

“Growing from within a hotel management company, we’ve seen firsthand the complexity that time-strapped hoteliers face in maximizing revenue performance at their properties,” said James Kay, CEO of Diamo. “The +400,000 smaller independents globally have been underserved by solutions that address the holistic revenue problem. With Diamo, we aim to empower independent hoteliers with a simple platform that unlocks a holistic and advanced revenue management strategy that was previously out of reach. We’ve seen our solutions drive a 35% increase in revenue while significantly lowering OTA commissions, and we’re excited to bring this value to more lodging properties around the world.”

Diamo’s suite of products delivers an all-in-one solution to address the challenges independent hoteliers face in maximizing their revenue. Diamo’s unique platform earned the “2024 RMS Innovation of the Year” award from the TravelTech Breakthrough Awards.

The products have been meticulously developed and tested over the past several years, proving to drive positive revenue outcomes across North America, Europe, and Asia. The offerings include:

• Expert Digital Marketing: Services such as SEM, Metasearch, and OTA sponsored placements designed to increase visibility and bookings.
• Conversion-Optimized Website Templates: Beautifully designed, brand-aligned websites that drive direct bookings.
• Custom Booking Engine: A cohesive and upsell-focused booking platform that integrates seamlessly with the hotel’s brand.
• AI-Powered Dynamic Pricing Engine: An effective, yet simple, tool that automatically adjusts rates based on real-time demand, updating prices every hour for the next 365 days.

With Diamo’s specialized focus, the company is set to further innovate and expand its offerings to meet the evolving needs of hotels, B&Bs, hostels, and other lodging properties globally.

Life House remains committed to advancing the management and operations of its growing portfolio, refining its technology infrastructure to streamline and personalize the hospitality experience while ensuring robust financial returns.

“The decision to establish Diamo as an independent business sharpens our focus on becoming the leading operator for independent hotels,” said Chris Cave, CEO of Life House. “We are confident that under James’s leadership, Diamo is poised to revolutionize revenue management, while Life House dedicates itself to redefining the guest experience and the essence of boutique hotel management—beyond revenue. Diamo will remain a cornerstone for our hotel management clients, and we are excited to see it push the boundaries of hospitality software.”

The spin-off of Diamo follows a 25% increase in Life House’s management portfolio over the past year, with 5 additional properties scheduled to open by the year’s end.

For more information about Diamo and its suite of revenue management solutions, please visit www.diamo.ai.

UKG, a leading provider of HR, payroll, workforce management, and culture solutions, today announced that Aimbridge Hospitality, a leading global hospitality management company and trusted operator of distinctive independent hotels as well as some of the world’s most recognized hotel brands — including Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, and Wyndham — is building a great place to work with the AI-powered UKG Pro^® suite through flexible, gig-like experiences that allow its 45,000 hourly U.S. employees to pick up shifts when and where they want.

“We compete for talent with the Ubers of the world, where people can decide when and where they work and set their own schedules. We are always keeping a pulse on the needs and preferences of our associates, and we set out to ‘gigify’ our workforce a few years ago to better compete for talent and become a more flexible employer,” said Ann Christenson, chief human resources officer at Aimbridge Hospitality. “With UKG already in use for HR and payroll, it was a seamless process to add advanced scheduling to our UKG suite and transform the way our people work — and especially to attract the next generation of workers.”

In an industry challenged by labor shortages and high turnover rates but where frontline workers are the backbone of business operations, Aimbridge rolled out flexible scheduling to its 24x7 workforce, giving people control of their schedules and work-location preferences through intelligent shift scheduling. Employees immediately began to self-schedule, swap shifts, and pick up open shifts across hotels through the UKG Pro mobile app, resulting in better work-life balance and improved employee satisfaction for their people, earning the hospitality giant a 2023 UKG Innovation Award.

According to a forthcoming global study on the frontline workforce by the UKG Workforce Institute, Aimbridge is ahead of the hospitality industry in offering flex scheduling, with nearly half (47%) of global employees in 2024 saying flexible/self-scheduling is highly desirable.

“Since we launched flex scheduling, more than 12,000 employees — about 30% of our hourly workforce — have traded shifts across our 1,100 U.S. properties, and that number continues to grow,” said Christenson. “We’ve given the power to our people, with opportunities to pick up shifts at any of our Aimbridge-managed properties in their area. The power of UKG’s solutions gives Aimbridge associates more choices to work their preferred hours and earn additional pay to support the other areas of their lives, which was important to us.”

Beyond creating more empowering and flexible options for employees, Aimbridge saw an opportunity to dramatically reinvent how it communicates with employees at its corporate, frontline property, and management levels through UKG Talk — a mobile communications platform in the UKG Pro suite that helps organizations build a culture of belonging through connection and collaboration.

“We rely on our General Managers to lead their properties and cascade messages down to their frontline employees,” said Christenson. “Every associate has access to UKG, and the ability to use the communications platform in UKG, where employees are already accessing their schedules, timecards, paystubs, and time-off requests, is extremely valuable. With UKG Talk, all of our communications are streamlined, leading to stronger operations and a more consistent, reliable, and enjoyable communications experience for our frontline employees.”

Another area Aimbridge plans to use UKG technology to more effectively communicate with employees is around paid time off (PTO). As a multi-state organization with union and non-union workers, as well as a diverse collection of hotel verticals housed in its Full Service and Select Service divisions, Aimbridge offers a wide range of PTO options to employees and plans to leverage UKG Bryte™, an AI-powered assistant in the UKG Pro suite that uses GenAI, to help guide employees, managers, and leaders to be more transparent about those policies.

“Our associates want to know they can get information they need from our HR team, and with 45,000 hourly workers, we need the right systems to support each and every individual,” said Christenson. “Initially, we had planned to build a chatbot to help answer questions more quickly, and the functionality is already available with UKG Bryte. Having a partner who can anticipate our needs and is always there with the right solutions at the right time truly speaks to the value of our UKG partnership.”

“At the end of the day, we want our associates focused on delivering great experiences for people, no matter what their reason is for traveling,” added Christenson. "When hospitality is done right, people are guest focused. We don’t want our workforce focused on the payroll cycle, their timecards, or any of those back-of-the-house functions. UKG does all that for us, freeing up our people to focus on providing the exceptional guest services we are known for.”

“Frontline workers make up the vast majority of today’s workforce and are crucial to keeping the global economy running, which is why our customers are hyper-focused on providing these vital employees with great workplace experiences,” said Jennifer Morgan, CEO at UKG. “By offering flexible and adaptable work schedules, organizations like Aimbridge Hospitality are signaling to their people that they care about their wellbeing, which inspires workers to show up every day, ready to provide high-quality service to every guest who walks through their doors.”

Mobi.ai, a human collaborative AI company focused on delivering transformational customer experiences for the travel industry, today announced the launch of its industry-first search and discovery technology, Mobi Intent Driven Search (IDS). Mobi IDS combines simple, natural language search with generative AI, Mobi's proprietary content store of 40M+ fully enriched points of interest around the world, and Mobi's advanced AI capabilities to deliver “best match” destinations, accommodations and experiences for guests of travel, tourism and hospitality companies.

AI is upending the industry and fundamentally changing how travel companies are interacting with customers. A recent report, The Promise of Travel in the Age of AI, produced by McKinsey and Skift Research, found that organizations that take advantage of the latest technological advancements “have the potential to see a 15 to 25 percent earnings improvement.”

“Search is changing in a big way with major browsers and most online travel agencies (OTA) embracing large language models like ChatGPT to offer natural language search,” said Mobi CEO and founder Anna Jaffe. “At Mobi, we leverage generative AI and LLMs to power natural language capabilities and understand guest travel intents. We then use a multimodal approach, combining our proprietary content with advanced planning and optimization AI, to deliver fast, accurate recommendations that meet guests' specific requirements and desires."

Mobi IDS ingests, cleans and structures data from multiple sources to provide real-time and accurate information about anything and everything surrounding any location or property, from dining and transportation options to activities, attractions, wildlife and more. This unlocks the ability to offer experience-led searches and provide specific recommendations for any customer query.

By enabling guests to ask personal questions with natural language, guests will share incredible insight into their likes, dislikes and behavior. These personal details can then be used to improve brands’ communications and marketing tactics. Mobi IDS can even integrate with client loyalty systems and booking engines to drive engagement and increase revenue capture.

“Most travelers know what they want to do on their next vacation, they simply don’t know where to go to pursue their passions,” said Mobi’s VP of Product Harriet Brown, who worked on the team that built and scaled the product behind Google Flights. “With IDS, hospitality companies don’t need to predict what a customer might want, they can listen to their intentions and provide a highly tailored recommendation of destination, property and activities to create their ideal adventure. This deep personalization will delight and inspire customers, and go a long way in building emotional loyalty.”

The basic implementation of Mobi IDS can be completed in just six weeks with custom enrichment of all client properties completed over the next two months. “Getting started with Mobi IDS is easy,” said Peng Yu, Mobi CTO and co-founder. “We’ve built a data pipeline capable of ingesting unstructured or structured data of any kind. We can accommodate any business logic or customer rules in configuration and we have a ready-made testing environment. This infrastructure is designed to get our clients from inspiration to implementation to value as quickly as possible.”

To learn more about Mobi’s Intent Driven Search product or book a meeting, visit mobi.ai/solutions/IDS. The tech will also be demonstrated at Destination AI in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 26, Hotel Technology Forum 2024 at the Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. from Nov. 18-20, and The Phocuswright Conference 2024 in Phoenix from Nov 19-21.

Seventy percent of consumers would take their business elsewhere after just one frustrating experience with AI-supported customer service,  according to a new survey from Acquire BPO, a provider of customer experience and business process outsourcing.

As companies increasingly turn to AI-powered customer service to reduce costs and increase efficiency, they risk alienating a large portion of their customer base if the customer experience is compromised. Companies only have one shot at getting it right, underlining the importance of mapping out a strong AI deployment strategy.

The 2024 AI in Customer Service Survey was conducted for Acquire BPO by the third-party survey platform Pollfish to explore consumer sentiment insights and how companies can proactively map out their AI customer experience strategies. Pollfish surveyed the experiences of 600 U.S. consumers aged 18+ who contacted a company for support issues over the past year.

Key findings include:

• Consumers are 2.5X more positive about their experience chatting with humans versus AI-powered bots.
• Half of consumers feel negatively about companies relying more on AI for customer support, citing downsides such as the lack of personal touch, decreased accuracy and longer resolution times.
• Consumers are willing to put their money behind their preferences, with 57% of chatbot fans saying they’ve chosen a service or product because they knew it offered chatbot support, and 72% of those with a human preference saying the availability of human customer support factored into their buying decisions.
• Many chatbot fans would rather complete an unpleasant or inconvenient task instead of speaking to a human customer support agent, with 29% saying they’d rather file their taxes, 29% saying they’d rather help a friend move out of a 6th floor apartment with no elevator, and 26% saying they’d rather clean the toilet.
• 40% of consumers are confident in AI’s ability to handle simple issues as well as a human, and 49% said they’d feel more comfortable using AI-powered support if they had the ability to switch to a human agent at any time.

To maximize AI’s benefits while avoiding its pitfalls, Acquire BPO advises that companies use it judiciously for the right tasks–and do the same for human agents as well.

• Don’t be afraid to use AI to address simple requests. 40% of consumers were confident in AI’s ability to handle simple issues as well as a human, presenting an easy opportunity for companies to streamline a portion of their support workload.
• Use AI to reference past issues–but don’t go too far in predicting future issues. 61% of survey respondents liked the idea of AI remembering past issues in order to streamline future contact with customer support, however 50% responded negatively to AI being used to predict problems before they happened.
• Use AI to escalate issues. 55% of consumers responded positively to knowing that AI could detect frustration with sentiment analysis and help route them to a resource or human agent to help with more complex issues.
• Provide clear paths for customers to request a human agent. 49% of customers said they’d feel more comfortable using AI-powered support if they had the ability to switch to a human agent at any time.

"Unlocking the power of AI is essential for companies to gain a competitive edge, however the future of exceptional customer service requires striking the right balance between AI and human support,” said Scott Stavretis, CEO of Acquire BPO. “By carefully mapping out an experience that blends AI and human support seamlessly, brands can meet customers where they are and deliver consistently outstanding service across all touchpoints."

Visit the 2024 AI in Customer Service Survey at Acquire BPO’s website for the complete survey results.

Bikky, a customer data platform built exclusively for multi-unit restaurants, announced a partnership with Marugame Udon USA, the fast-casual Japanese restaurant.

Marugame has since grown to more than 1,200 locations globally. More recently, the brand has been expanding in the US and has 15 locations in California, Hawaii, and Texas. As they continue to rapidly scale, it's become critical for their team to make the right marketing, menu, and operational decisions - all backed by data.

“Bikky has honestly saved us hours in figuring out what’s working and what’s not,” says Janna Esguerra, Marketing Analyst at Marugame Udon USA. “We’re excited to better use our customer data in our marketing and menu efforts as we scale.”

This announcement comes at a time when the restaurant industry finds itself at a crossroads. While total sales are expected to rise 10% in 2024 and surpass $1 trillion for the first time, the operating environment continues to get tougher. According to the National Restaurant Association, 45% of restaurant operators expect competition to increase. Additionally, more than 95% say higher food and labor costs will be an issue for their business this year.

Despite the broader cautious outlook for restaurants, Bikky enables Marugame to more easily navigate this environment. With a CDP, Marugame can now access the behavior of the 2.5 million guests they’ve served since 2020 - a 10x increase over their digital guests.

Fully accessing their customer data is critical for Marugame as they continue introducing new menu items to consumers. With Bikky’s guest and menu analytics tools, the brand could easily see how new items affect new guest acquisition, retention, average check, and overall sales. With clear data on how different items contribute to success, Janna and Marketing Director Kristin Yi are now brainstorming new additions to the menu, including their specialty beverages and shareable add-ons.

“Every restaurant - whether they have 15 locations or 1,500 - needs the right data partner to help them navigate this new, more complex operating environment,” says Bikky co-founder and CEO Abhinav Kapur. “We’re proud to partner with a global brand like Marugame Udon, bolstering their U.S. expansion efforts with data to drive higher ROI on every menu, marketing, and operational decision.”

The fastest-growing, most innovative restaurants look to Bikky for unprecedented insight into how their decisions directly impact consumer behavior and top-line sales. Marugame Udon USA is the latest fast-growing brand to adopt its groundbreaking customer data and analytics platform alongside others, including Dave’s Hot Chicken, Robeks, Eggs Up Grill, and Bojangles.

To learn more about Bikky, visit https://www.bikky.com.