News Briefs

Engine, a business travel platform used by more than 1 million travelers, has launched Insights+, a premium analytics suite aimed at giving hotel revenue managers a real-time edge in pricing, distribution, and market benchmarking. The new offering is part of Engine’s Partner Hub, already adopted by more than 30,000 U.S. hotels.

With travel demand rising, but revenue managers still lacking confidence in current analytics tools, Insights+ is designed to fill that data gap. According to Engine’s internal survey, 69% of revenue leaders say current analytics fall short when preparing budgets, even as 80% expect to raise ADR and 67% anticipate occupancy growth in 2025.

Insights+ tackles that problem by combining proprietary booking funnel data, competitive benchmarking, and demand forecasting into a single reporting layer, accessible within Partner Hub.

Key features include:

• Demand Forecasting: Forward-looking projections to adjust availability and pricing ahead of demand shifts, especially in high-value business travel segments.
• Competitive Benchmarking: Real-time insights into how competing hotels are pricing, what amenities they’re promoting, and how they’re capturing share.
• Business Segmentation: Breaks down market opportunity by industry, company size, and travel spend—helping revenue teams target high-value verticals.
• Funnel & Price Forecasting: Tracks booking funnel performance against regional competitors, offering visibility into ADR trends and conversion rates.

Why This Tech Launch Matters:

1. It Turns Data Into Strategy Without Heavy Integration Work
Insights+ lives within Engine’s Partner Hub platform, making it a plug-and-play option for hotels already using Engine. For IT leaders wary of heavy implementation timelines or complicated integrations, this tool offers a fast path to actionable intelligence—no overhaul required.

2. It Closes the Gap Between Revenue Strategy and Real-Time Data
Traditional revenue management tools often rely on stale data or manual updates. Insights+ offers access to first-party business travel data from Engine’s platform, enabling more accurate forecasting and dynamic pricing decisions based on how a property is really performing versus the market.

3. It Helps Break Down Silos Between IT, Revenue, and Marketing
By visualizing pricing trends, amenity positioning, and conversion funnel data, this tool gives cross-functional teams a shared lens on what’s working and where to focus next. This type of unified insight is increasingly critical as hotels push for tighter alignment between commercial strategy and tech investment.

4. The Business Travel Focus Is a Smart Differentiator
While many hotel tools center on leisure guests, Insights+ is built for business travel demand, where margins are often higher and lead times more predictable. That makes it particularly relevant for corporate-focused properties or chains looking to grow weekday revenue and build resilience across market cycles.

5. It's a Signal of Growing Competition in Hospitality Data Platforms
As vendors like Engine double down on analytics, IT decision-makers should keep an eye on how next-gen data platforms are consolidating performance, pricing, and segmentation into a single pane of glass. Choosing flexible partners now could give hotels a leg up as pricing strategy becomes more dependent on live market intel.

Radisson Hotel Group is extending its hospitality tech stack to include one of the most underleveraged experiences in hotel ecommerce: restaurant booking. This week, Radisson announced the launch of a new online platform that allows guests and local diners to browse and reserve tables across its global portfolio of 1,900 restaurants—directly on RadissonHotels.com.

The tool supports searches by city, cuisine, and concept, and integrates rich content like menus and photography, offering a seamless, end-to-end digital dining journey. It also uses geolocation and personalized recommendations based on stay details—bringing Radisson’s digital transformation closer to full-service guest engagement, from room to table.

While the functionality is framed as a convenience for food lovers and local explorers, it’s also a strategic move: Radisson is positioning its F&B venues as standalone destinations in the eyes of consumers—and discoverable entities in the online travel and dining ecosystem.

Why It Matters:
 

1. It bridges the “last digital mile” in hotel dining.

Historically, hotel restaurants have lagged behind in online visibility, often buried within hotel websites or dependent on third-party platforms. This move brings restaurant booking into Radisson’s owned digital ecosystem—giving the brand more control over conversion, data, and customer experience.

2. It aligns with industrywide digital transformation trends.

From Marriott’s revamped Bonvoy dining experience to Accor’s push into F&B as a standalone vertical, major hotel groups are investing in better tech to elevate their culinary brands. Radisson’s approach—fully integrated, mobile-responsive, with geo-personalization—puts it in line with this growing trend of hotels treating restaurants as both guest amenities and local businesses.

3. It’s a content-forward ecommerce model.

By combining functionality with storytelling—like the “Taste of Heritage” culinary series—Radisson is merging marketing and booking tools. This model mimics the success of platforms like Resy or TheFork, but within the hotel’s own digital walls. It shows that content-rich UX can drive transactions, especially when built around emotion (local food culture) and convenience (real-time booking).

4. It prepares Radisson for AI and intent-based discovery.

A searchable, structured database of global restaurants with menus, photos, and bookability positions Radisson well for future integrations with GenAI platforms and voice search, where context-rich, hyper-local content will increasingly shape travel decision-making.

As generative AI platforms become mainstream tools for travel discovery, hotels are under pressure to adapt their digital strategies for new types of search behavior. Lodging Interactive, a long-standing digital marketing firm in hospitality, is meeting this shift with a new solution: Commingle AI Signals, an enhancement to its existing Commingle Guest Review Response Service.

The new service turns guest review responses into a discovery tool by incorporating strategically written “AI signals”—phrases and context that align with how travelers ask questions in generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s SGE (Search Generative Experience). Unlike traditional SEO that targets static website content, Commingle AI Signals takes a more dynamic and conversational approach, injecting fresh, brand-aligned content into publicly visible review platforms.

Key features include:

• Daily human-written, hotel-approved responses posted across major review platforms.
• Language optimized to improve a hotel’s relevance in intent-based, generative AI searches.
• Enhanced discoverability in platforms like ChatGPT, Google SGE AI Overviews, and Perplexity.
• A proactive alternative for branded hotels that may be limited by rigid corporate web templates.

What makes it unique:
Commingle AI Signals tackles a blind spot in many hotels’ digital marketing strategies: the impact of guest review content on emerging AI-driven search behaviors. While most SEO tools focus on websites and meta content, this solution uses review responses—a frequently updated, guest-visible content stream—as a search engine optimization vector. It’s a novel use of "earned content" to influence discoverability.

Why tech leaders should care:
This service offers a low-lift way for properties—especially branded or independently managed hotels with limited control over website infrastructure—to influence how they appear in GenAI search results. For tech leaders concerned with future-proofing digital visibility and maximizing ROI on reputation management, Commingle AI Signals turns routine operations (responding to reviews) into a strategic marketing asset.

Trend tie-in:
With Google and other platforms emphasizing conversational search and AI-generated summaries, the nature of content that gets surfaced is changing. Hotels need to adapt to a world where discovery starts not with “Hotels in Chicago” but “What’s a romantic hotel with great customer service near the riverwalk?” Commingle AI Signals helps properties become part of the answers to those kinds of prompts.

SIHOT has enhanced its integration with Dingus, a channel manager focused on tour operator distribution in Spain and the Caribbean. This upgrade brings real-time synchronization of inventory, rates, and reservations directly into the SIHOT PMS. For hotels working with contracted tour operators, this means faster, automated processing of bookings and deposits, fewer overbookings, and less manual oversight.

Now, reservations from Dingus are automatically linked to specific contracts within SIHOT, allowing the system to distinguish between allotment-based and general availability. Hotels also benefit from automated prepayment capture and invoicing that supports Spanish legal requirements.

For IT and operations leaders, this is a strong example of targeted tech integration that reduces friction in legacy processes. Resort hotels still rely heavily on tour operator contracts, which have long required manual tracking and offline coordination. Automating this through PMS integration not only improves efficiency but also provides more transparent, data-driven distribution management—an important asset as hotels diversify distribution strategies to improve yield.

This move is also in step with the wider “connected PMS ecosystem” trend, where hotel tech stacks are increasingly expected to support deep, bidirectional integrations that reduce error-prone data entry and compliance risks. For any resort group still manually reconciling tour operator contracts, this kind of integration signals what modern, future-proof PMS performance should look like.

Maestro PMS, a web browser-based cloud and on-premises all-in-one PMS solution for independent hotels, luxury resorts, vacation rentals, and multi-property groups, is set to unveil an upgraded Spa Module at HITEC North America in Indianapolis. Join us at Booth #2411 from June 16–19 at the Indiana Convention Center for an exclusive look at the new functionality designed to simplify day-to-day operations, reduce no-shows, boost revenue, and deliver exceptional guest satisfaction.

“We designed this upgrade with direct input from spa professionals who use the all-in-one Maestro PMS every day,” said Lisa Jane Wheaton, Maestro PMS Senior Product Strategist. “Our goal is to help properties elevate the wellness experience for guests while simplifying day-to-day operations for staff. HITEC is the perfect stage to showcase what’s next in spa and hospitality technology.”

With a growing demand for personalized wellness experiences and operational efficiency, Maestro’s enhanced Spa Module features new tools for improved payment processing, guest communication, and staff management — all designed to support spa and facilities operations with ease and flexibility.

The upgraded Spa Module introduces powerful new features, including:

• Reduced No-Shows, Increased Revenue Security
  Properties can now configure rules for pre-authorizing credit cards specifically for day spa and activities guests.
• Flexible Advance Deposit Policies
  Customize advance deposit rules based on treatment type, activity, stay date, or payment tier. This offers operators precise control over financial commitments and guest accountability.
• Frictionless Guest Communication
  Guests can now receive their Spa or Activities folio via email at check-out, promoting a paperless experience while adding convenience.
• Smarter Staff Scheduling with Color-Coded Therapist Breaks
  Therapists’ break times can now be color-coded for better scheduling clarity, helping balance workloads and streamline appointment management.
• Enhanced Messaging with GuestXMS
  Maestro’s integrated communication platform has been expanded to offer:
  • SMS/email confirmation, cancellation and modification notices for spa bookings
  • Pre-arrival appointment reminders sent via SMS or email at customizable intervals
  • Full guest itinerary via SMS when spa treatments are linked to a room reservation

“These enhancements are a result of direct feedback from our users in the spa and wellness space,” Wheaton said. “From improved control over payments and deposits to elevate guest communication and smarter staff scheduling, these upgrades make every touchpoint more efficient and enjoyable for both guests and operators alike.”

Maestro invites all HITEC Indy attendees to Booth #2411 for an exclusive look at the upgraded Spa Module and fully integrated PMS suite. Experience live demonstrations showcasing how Maestro empowers properties to elevate guest experiences while simplifying daily operations.

To schedule a demo in advance or learn more, visit www.maestropms.com or email [email protected]. Click here to book a meeting to speak with our team at HITEC.
 

TakeUp, an AI-powered revenue management platform tailored for independent hospitality operators, announced a new integration with Cloudbeds, a hospitality management system. This partnership enables boutique hotels, inns, and similar small properties to automate dynamic pricing based on market trends, competitor rates, and demand—all without leaving the Cloudbeds environment. In addition to AI-driven automation, TakeUp provides access to revenue strategy experts who help fine-tune pricing to maximize profit.

The integration allows users to seamlessly activate TakeUp through the Cloudbeds marketplace, streamlining workflows while introducing enterprise-level pricing intelligence. Core benefits include real-time rate optimization, performance analytics, and human-backed strategic guidance.

Key Takeaways:

This partnership highlights two key trends in hospitality tech: the democratization of revenue management and the rise of AI-assisted operations for small and independent properties. Historically, advanced revenue optimization tools were reserved for large chains with deep pockets and specialized staff. With platforms like TakeUp integrating directly into PMS providers like Cloudbeds, those barriers are dissolving.

Cloudbeds continues to expand its ecosystem to help independent hoteliers remain competitive in a tech-driven landscape dominated by OTAs and major brands. This move also reflects a broader shift toward platform interoperability, where tech vendors prioritize seamless integrations to reduce friction for users and accelerate ROI.

In a market where labor shortages and compressed margins persist, automation tools that offer both efficiency and intelligence are increasingly valuable. The TakeUp-Cloudbeds alliance exemplifies how AI can augment human strategy, not replace it—offering small operators a smarter, scalable path to profitability.