News Briefs

After filing for Chapter 11 last week, BurgerFi International has received the court's interim approval to access financing to keep Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza & Wings and the better burger concept BurgerFi's 144 locations open for business.  

On Sept. 16, the Court granted interim approval for the company to immediately access $3.5 million of the debtor-in-possession financing provided by an affiliate of TREW Capital Management. The Court also approved the use of the company's existing employee benefits, cash management systems, and customer programs.

Looking for a Buyer

As part of the financing agreement, the company intends to propose a sale process and bidding procedures for a sale with the support of its lenders. The "second day" hearing seeking final approval for the company's requests is scheduled for October 7

"The company has worked very hard to ensure that the transition into Chapter 11 would have no impact on our valued employees, customers and franchise partners," said Carl Bachmann, Chief Executive Officer of BurgerFi International, Inc. "We are very pleased that we received approval of our key motions to support our continued operations including employee wages and benefits, cash management and customer programs."

The "second day" hearing seeking final approval for the company's requests is scheduled for October 7.

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.

Mirai – which provides hotels with technology and operations support to sell in the direct channel – is proud to announce the impressive results of its collaboration with Princess Hotels & Resorts – a hotel chain that offers luxurious holiday experiences – on the implementation of Google’s Demand Gen campaigns, significantly enhancing Princess Hotels' performance in the competitive luxury travel market. 

The Demand Gen campaigns, executed in Q2 2024 (April to June), delivered significant results for the luxury hotel chain in the hotels implemented in Princess Caribe (Riviera Maya and Punta Cana), showing a result of a 165% increase in qualified leads (CTR) and a 102% increase in profitability (ROAS) compared to last year's same period. Notably, the assist-to-conversion ratio was 19.1%, and the business data showed an impressive 18% growth in revenue and a 14% increase in bookings during this period.

Princess Hotels & Resorts, which has worked with Mirai since 2018, collaborated with Google to leverage the power of Demand Gen campaigns. This AI-driven solution enabled them to effectively target high-potential travelers by combining Google’s advanced AI technology with Princess Hotels’ own audience data. The company personalized the guest journey by creating custom videos and messages, targeting audiences based on website interactions, and maximizing the impact of the campaign. This approach re-engaged potential customers who had shown booking intent, keeping the brand top-of-mind.

“This new campaign, replacing Discovery Ads, offers more immersive ad environments. Partnering with Mirai, we defined a mid and low funnel strategy, boosting traffic, ROAS and revenue”,  said Pere Jordi Estivill, Head of Digital Marketing and Web at Princess Hotels & Resorts. 

Enrique Cano, Digital Marketing Consultant at Mirai, added: “Working with Princess Hotels & Resorts on this project has been a great collaboration. Our focus on maximising conversions through Google’s AI-driven tools and personalised messaging allowed us to deliver exceptional results for the client. This partnership is a testament to the power of combining strategic digital marketing with cutting-edge technology. Princess Hotels & Resorts, sought to attract new guests, generate qualified leads, and drive bookings for their exquisite properties in the Dominican Republic and Mexico. In a highly competitive luxury travel market, they aimed to engage new visitors and re-engage website users who had shown booking intent.”

With new products and a new brand on the horizon, travel technology leader Hotel Engine today announced a $140M Series C growth investment led by Permira Growth Opportunities II, a fund advised by global private equity firm Permira.

Hotel Engine will use the funding to support ongoing product development, including the launch of flight and rental car bookings to its platform. The new booking options will go live in October, making Hotel Engine an all-in-one solution for business travel.

Alongside the new product release, Hotel Engine will change its name to "Engine" to reflect its expanded focus.

“Hotel bookings will always be in our DNA, but we’re out to transform the entire travel experience,” said Hotel Engine CEO Elia Wallen. “We want to become the engine of business travel. Our new name will reflect that, and with Permira’s latest investment, we’ll be better positioned than ever to turn our ambitions into reality.”

Denver-based Hotel Engine has quickly become a go-to option for business travelers thanks to its industry-leading tech and innovative features like consolidated invoices, coverage for incidentals, 24/7 customer support, whole-company trip insurance and free travel-management software to help customers save time and money. Hotel Engine’s contract-free approach with no minimums or agent-assist fees makes adoption easy for businesses of all types and sizes.

Hotel Engine connects business travelers to a robust network of more than 750,000 hotels, 300 airlines and 40 rental car companies. Travel providers are also able to use Hotel Engine’s Partner Hub software platform for free which enables them to provide special offers to business travelers, manage reservations, create marketing campaigns and benchmark against competitors.

“We are proud to have built a platform that benefits everyone,” Wallen said. “In addition to the value we provide to businesses, we also help hotels raise their visibility and build relationships with business travelers worldwide through our Partner Hub platform.”

It’s a winning strategy. Hotel Engine has used only $20M of outside capital to reach its current $2.1B valuation, up from $1.3B at its Series B in November of 2021. The company is profitable, experiencing 70% year-over-year revenue growth at scale, and is on track to book over 10 million room nights this year.

Permira Principal Alex Melamud has joined Hotel Engine’s Board of Directors.

“Hotel Engine is a category leader in more ways than one,” he said. “They’ve figured out how to provide the benefits of managed travel without the downsides such as contracts, minimum spend requirements and extra support fees, and they’ve also created a business that appeals to both travelers and suppliers like hotels, airlines and car rental companies. We are confident that Hotel Engine has miles of room to run, and we’re excited to be part of the journey alongside Elia and his team,” commented Melamud.

SiteMinder, the world’s leading hotel distribution and revenue platform, is heralding a new era of revenue management for hotels with the unveiling of ‘Dynamic Revenue Plus,’ the only solution for hotels to both access live market intelligence and take immediate action on their bookable inventory, pricing, and distribution strategy. Unlike revenue management systems that have traditionally been accessible to a limited number of hotels, the dual capability within Dynamic Revenue Plus means any hotel can, for the first time, use one mobile-first system to optimize its revenue based on market demand.

Dynamic Revenue Plus is uniquely powered by the data within SiteMinder’s platform, which stems from an unparalleled 120 million annual hotel reservations that give users of Dynamic Revenue Plus the most comprehensive data available, including top source markets. Soon, it will be enhanced with dynamic pricing recommendations from IDeaS, a SAS company and the world’s leading provider of revenue management software and services. The built-in combination of IDeaS’ dynamic pricing strength and SiteMinder’s distribution platform with deep market intelligence will provide powerful revenue management capability and speed-to-market to hotels of any size, including the most resource-strapped. To date, these have been accessible only as separate solutions and limited to hotels with dedicated revenue management resources.

Using the unified solution, any hotel can now move away from traditional, static revenue management practices characterized by slow and irregular changes to a more dynamic approach that involves frequent adjustments to revenue strategies in response to market fluctuations. Examples of changes include bulk room rate updates, new minimum base rates and lengths of stay, sale restrictions, inventory adjustments, and new marketing promotions, which can all be done on mobile and desktop.

Klaus Kohlmayr, chief evangelist and development officer at IDeaS, said, “We’re committed to democratizing revenue management and bringing the benefits of dynamic, demand-based pricing to hotels across the globe. This partnership provides another viable option for hotels of all resources and operating models to stop leaving money on the table due to outdated manual revenue management practices and tools.”

Dynamic Revenue Plus was conceived in late 2023 to mirror the convergence of distribution, revenue optimization, and market intelligence strategies that SiteMinder saw taking place at hotels globally to drive a commercial mindset across hotel departments. Available initially to hotels in Australia and New Zealand, with all other markets to follow in 2025, Dynamic Revenue Plus is a key pillar of SiteMinder’s Smart Platform strategy – the manifestation of SiteMinder’s mission of making sophisticated revenue management accessible to every hotel worldwide.

The launch of Dynamic Revenue Plus comes amid rising international travel and a booming events industry, which are boosting hotel economies around the world. In response, the solution gives users the most complete event information available in the market, along with insight into future demand surges. This capability will allow hotels to capitalize on changing travel flows, events, and other critical revenue opportunities at a speed not available until now.

Leah Rankin, chief product officer at SiteMinder, said, “While market intelligence is not new, Dynamic Revenue Plus by SiteMinder is unique among existing solutions for the capability it offers hoteliers to not only consume insights but to take multiple actions, beyond pricing changes, within minutes. Additionally, its mobile-first approach and unique ability to provide insight into future levels and timings of demand mean hoteliers can adapt with the market. Truly, Dynamic Revenue Plus is the first of its kind, and together with the team at IDeaS, we at SiteMinder are delighted to make it available for all hotels looking to make the critical shift to dynamic revenue management and drive significant growth in revenue.”

Fready Goenawan, revenue and distribution manager AU at Ovolo Hotels, said, "The notifications we receive through Dynamic Revenue Plus mean we no longer have to search for this information on the Internet; it's provided to us. They will replace the holiday calendar we manage manually and save our team a lot of time. Additionally, the insights we're using for our studies on geographical markets are amazing. They don't exist in other systems. 

Using SiteMinder's platform, we can see right away which countries are returning to our hotels. We can also break down the data to see performance metrics such as length of stay so we can roll out a new promotion to suit. When you're trying to maximize revenue, you need to know the markets from which your income is coming so you don’t splash your marketing budget everywhere. Having information by destination market is also wonderful, as it's important to know if we're ahead or behind the pace of the market. SiteMinder's solution is very powerful in this way."

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, a hotel franchisor with 25 brands and 9,200 hotels in more than 95 countries, is using Salesforce Data Cloud to unlock data trapped across multiple systems. Now, Wyndham has a complete, unified view of each guest to power customized experiences with trusted AI, automation, and data-driven insights.

The challenge: In the highly competitive hospitality industry, guests expect hotels to know their room and service preferences even before stepping foot on the property. With hundreds of millions of guest records and millions of bookings per year spread across individual properties and corporate call centers, Wyndham faced challenges accessing guest data where and when it was needed, which put guest satisfaction and direct bookings at risk.

The impact: Millions of bookings route through Wyndham’s reservation call center and hotels every year, underscoring the importance of identifying guests in real time so they can quickly offer tailored experiences while booking guest stays. Wyndham turned to Salesforce to unify its reservation, loyalty, and CRM data, creating a seamless flow of information that empowers its agents to deliver the individualized, high-quality services their guests and franchisees expect, at scale. Now Wyndham is:

• Personalizing Guest Interactions: Wyndham leverages Data Cloud to bridge the gap between data from individual hotels and its corporate call center. With this data aggregated, agents can now access guests’ booking histories at any franchise property, such as accessible room requests, loyalty status, or milestones to personalize every interaction. 
• Expediting Customer Support: AI-generated reply recommendations from Service Cloud also means agents can quickly and intuitively respond to guest inquiries across multiple channels, reducing average handle times by about 90 seconds and decreasing call time resolution by a projected 35%. Efficient call center interactions and enhanced direct booking experiences makes it quick, easy, and convenient for Wyndham’s guests to reach out directly instead of using third-party booking sites, fostering deeper relationships and helping franchisees avoid third-party commissions.
  • Since implementing Salesforce AI technology, the company has also achieved a 55% improvement in franchisee-resolved customer care cases and a 33% reduction in days to close a case. These results have improved guest experiences at franchises and strengthened guest loyalty, ensuring care and comfort across Wyndham’s global locations. 
• Streamlining Operations: MuleSoft enables Wyndham to harness the full potential of its data with APIs that ensure smooth data flow into Data Cloud and simplify the complex task of integrating multiple systems. And, by connecting its reservation and loyalty systems with MuleSoft and Data Cloud, Wyndham can more easily expand its infrastructure for new hotel owners, accelerating their onboarding and driving their success by providing easy access to relevant information.

Franchisee facts: Wyndham guest experiences begin with franchise owners. These operators are another important customer for Wyndham and can stay connected to corporate through an online community built on Experience Cloud. The tool also features embedded Tableau dashboards that provide informative insights, such as revenue per available room, average daily rate, and occupancy rates. 

• Tableau-generated insights, which are supported by Salesforce, Amazon Redshift, and AWS data, allow owners to make data-driven decisions and offer actionable next steps like upgrading furniture, conducting maintenance, or modifying pricing.

The Wyndham perspective: “Our agents now have a consolidated view of the information they need to respond to guests efficiently, accurately, and with better personalization. This helps us serve our key stakeholders: our franchisees, our guests, and our team members.” – Scott Strickland, Chief Commercial Officer

Wyndham has additionally leveraged the Salesforce partner ecosystem, tapping PwC as its implementation partner across Data Cloud, Service Cloud, and MuleSoft to realize the value of an AI-enabled approach, enhancing both the franchisee and guest experience across channels.