Knowland, a provider of data-as-a-service insights on meetings and events for hospitality, announced that HRI Hospitality(HRIH), a fully integrated owner, operator, and developer of premium branded hotels in top national markets, has adopted Knowland’s Portfolio Capture, following a successful testing period. The product is a complement to the Knowland platform and was designed to provide a comprehensive, unified view of meetings and events business performance across an entire portfolio.

At a time of increased pressure on hospitality ROI, it’s essential for ownership and management groups to understand better how a property contributes to the portfolio’s overall performance. Portfolio Capture allows for roll-up reporting and benchmarking all in one place.

• Comparing portfolio properties – This complement to the Knowland platform makes it easy for asset managers and ownership groups to benchmark properties in their portfolios against each other, make investment decisions, view competitive performance, and identify top sales opportunities.
• Standardized KPIs for each portfolio property relative to its competitive set and market – Portfolio properties can be compared against defined competitive sets and operating markets, giving more context to current and past performance. By leveraging Portfolio Capture, HRIH gauges property results against standardized KPIs to measure a hotel’s market share compared to its direct competitors.

Chad Goodnough, senior vice president, sales and marketing, HRIH, said: “Using Portfolio Capture allows our team to see both individual and portfolio data for the meeting, group, and event market. Having access to the key performance indicators has increased efficiency and ensured the right selling strategies, resulting in a measurable positive impact on hotel revenues and market share.

Patricia Shea, VP sales and customer success, Knowland, said: “Portfolio managers need a simple, fast solution to understand their relative market performance and the actions needed to improve ROI. We are thrilled to have HRI Hospitality be one of the first management companies to experience this innovative solution while leveraging the power of data to gain insight into their portfolio.”

Fast-casual restaurant chain Bolay Kitchen announced exceptional results from its partnership with YOOBIC, a frontline employee experience platform for frontline teams in the retail and hospitality spaces. Utilized across Bolay’s rapidly expanding portfolio of restaurants in Florida, Georgia, and Virginia, YOOBIC’s all-in-one platform has dramatically improved employee engagement and communication, operational excellence, and store compliance.    

One of America’s fastest growing fast-casual eateries, Bolay Kitchen sets itself apart by focusing not only on fresh, delicious, and nutritious food, but also by providing staff members with unmatched employee experiences and growth opportunities. Bolay has harnessed YOOBIC to advance these goals, equipping associates with a workplace solution that empowers them to liaise with and learn from colleagues and company leaders, access immersive learning and development (L&D) content, and increase productivity by digitizing time-consuming analogue tasks.   

“YOOBIC has helped us solve a huge number of challenges by offering an all-in-one solution where we can communicate with our team, send out training, and have operational checklists to make sure we’re executing at our best,” said Sam Rubino, Bolay Kitchen’s Director of Operational Excellence. “After doing dozens and dozens of different demos with different LMS systems and different pieces of technology, when we met the YOOBIC team it was almost too good to be true”.

Taking the Pain out of Task Management 

Prior to adopting YOOBIC, Bolay’s frontline team was reliant on a disparate medley of third-party workplace apps, spreadsheets, and pen-and-paper documents. Equipped with YOOBIC’s unified virtual platform, the restaurant’s customer-facing staff can now automate and accelerate the completion of manual tasks — like opening checklists — allowing them to focus on higher-value work, such as building customer relationships. Thanks to YOOBIC’s automated dashboards, store leaders can track their team’s completion of duties, assign new tasks, and provide feedback in real-time. 

Bolay Leads on L&D Thanks to YOOBIC

Since rolling out YOOBIC, Bolay has significantly increased the speed of its staff onboarding process — a vital improvement as the business scales quickly with new locations and employees. Bolay is now onboarding workers 50% faster than before, leveraging YOOBIC’s sophisticated suite of educational courses to speedily integrate new recruits to frontline teams without the need for lengthy in-person training sessions. 

YOOBIC’s comprehensive L&D capabilities have also been revolutionary for Bolay’s commitment to continuous employee development. Restaurant leaders can now integrate training into team members’ workflows, delivering interactive courses on SOP, health and safety, and new recipes straight to their mobile devices in bite-sized chunks. This microlearning process is infused with data, so managers can gain detailed insights into their workers’ progress — and when specific knowledge gaps are detected by YOOBIC’s advanced AI, relevant training materials can be pushed out directly. 

Major Upgrade to Compliance and Communications 

Like most fast-scaling retail and hospitality businesses, Bolay Kitchen’s expansion has brought challenges around compliance. YOOBIC’s workplace solution is helping the company overcome these issues, allowing regional and district leaders to complete audit checklists digitally, assign action plans, send reports to store managers, and monitor progress via automated dashboards. This approach is far more efficient and precise than manually inputting compliance data, helping Bolay achieve better brand consistency and higher health scores across its restaurant network.

By adopting YOOBIC’s all-in-one frontline employee experience platform, Bolay Kitchen has also greatly improved communication throughout the company. With access to private messaging, video calls, and group chats, staff members can now interact with one-another more easily, helping build a strong sense of community. Social media-style newsfeeds enhance this, creating a space for members of the Bolay family to share announcements, swap success stories, and post other pieces of inspirational content. Frontline staff can also use the platform to communicate directly with store managers and company leaders to share their advice, concerns, and feedback — something that ensures all Bolay employees feel heard.  

“We are thrilled to have been chosen by a brand as innovative and exciting as Bolay Kitchen,” said Fabrice Haiat, CEO and co-founder of YOOBIC. “Companies like Bolay understand that scaling fast requires efficiency, attention to detail, and a commitment to delivering a compelling guest experience that keeps people coming back for more. At YOOBIC, we’re committed to providing retail and hospitality businesses the tools they need to succeed now and in the future.”

INTELITY®, a guest experience and staff management platform, announced The Little Nell in Aspen, Colorado, has implemented the INTELITY platform, via smart-room tablets, which provide the property’s guests with a more digital, upscale experience, as well as GEMS®, INTELITY’s collection of staff-facing tools.

Located at the base of Aspen Mountain, The Little Nell is Aspen's only five-star, five-diamond, ski-in/ski-out hotel. The property boasts luxurious amenities, personalized service, beautiful mountain views, renowned restaurants, and spacious accommodations, including 92 guest rooms and suites. 

Each of the rooms and suites now features INTELITY’s robust guest experience platform delivered on a Bluetooth-enabled smart-room tablet that acts as a digital compendium to provide guests with detailed information regarding all aspects of the property, including, services, amenities, menus for on-site restaurants, a list of events, and more. With a tap of a finger, guests can request services and amenities, while staff can easily track and manage these requests via the INTELITY back-end platform and its integration with the property’s internal communications system, ALICE. The Little Nell's team can manage all content of the smart-room tablets from the INTELITY platform’s backend, including real-time updates to their digital compendiums, food and beverage menus, and digital storefront items. Additionally, the INTELITY-powered smart-room tablets provide guests with access to news and media sites, as well as allow them to check their flight status. 

“The INTELITY platform provides us with endless application options to best inform our guests and offer conveniences for them, and the digital aspect of delivery over tablets supports our environmental and sustainability efforts by reducing the amount of paper collateral needed in a guest room, which has long been one of our objectives,” said Henning Rahm, The Little Nell’s General Manager. “We are excited to have partnered with INTELITY on this initiative.”

Additional benefits for The Little Nell are the advertising capabilities that INTELITY’s platform provides by allowing the property to promote its activities, adventures, and on-site events directly to guests. From the menu item tabs to the ad banner, guests can easily navigate through the list of free and for-purchase events and activities to enhance their stay in Aspen. The home screen configuration acts as a smart display with features, such as reservation details, date, time, and weather, plus the ability to set up alarm clocks. Guests can also check on and keep track of their requests and any accrued charges to their room during their stay.

Thanks to the INTELITY platform’s integration capabilities, the smart-room tablets are also integrated with The Little Nell’s internal service request system, which allows guests the convenience of submitting a variety of requests — from fresh towels to ice buckets to dog bowls. 

“We are delighted to have added The Little Nell to the INTELITY family of properties,” said Robert Stevenson, INTELITY’s CEO. “INTELITY’s platform will create a more seamless and memorable journey for guests at one of the best ski destinations on the planet while easing the back-of-house operations for The Little Nell's staff."

ShiftPixy, Inc., a Miami-based national staffing enterprise which designs, manages, and sells access to a disruptive, revolutionary platform that facilitates employment in the rapidly growing Gig Economy, announced the successful beta implementation of its AI-powered recruitment system, leveraging ChatGPT’s open API, designed to address the growing gap in opportunity matching and recruitment efficiency.

For an overview of ShiftPixy’s AI recruiting engagement, please view this video.

Current statistics reveal a significant gap in the recruitment industry, with recruiters receiving an average of 250 resumes for each open position, but only 12% of applicants meeting job requirements. With more than 27 million workers seeking opportunities in the US alone according to Harvard Business School, the need for a more efficient recruitment process is paramount.

ShiftPixy's AI recruiting system tackles this challenge head-on by meeting workers where they are, capturing and aligning the best candidates for each opportunity, and actively guiding workers through the hiring process to start their gig. The platform's sophisticated automation effectively streamlines capturing, qualifying, screening, and deployment in the recruitment process. By continuously tracking and analyzing activity and data, ShiftPixy's AI-driven recruiting platform is constantly learning and adapting to improve its effectiveness, leading to a more dynamic and efficient recruitment process for both job seekers and employers.

“There’s plenty of talk about how AI might do for business. We are focused on what we can do today with a high value application for AI in our business flow and it is only getting better” said Scott Absher, Co-Founder and CEO of ShiftPixy. “Our R&D has been to apply AI to human friction points in our human capital workflows. Where people lack speed or attention to the detail, our machine process is highly personal, results focused and always reliable.”

Watch Scott Absher’s recent interview with Market Scale about how AI technology can boost efficiency in recruitment here.

Uniguest, a provider of digital engagement technology to multiple end markets, announced enhancements to its Hotel TV guest room entertainment offering with the launch of a new SaaS cloud solution. 

The release leverages cutting-edge guest room entertainment technology from Otrum, a hospitality platform acquired by Uniguest in 2022 with a proven track record in providing engagement technology having deployed to over two hundred thousand rooms. 

The integration of Otrum technology into the Uniguest Hotel TV offering means that all aspects of creating and managing in-room entertainment is cloud-based. The solution is accessed via an intuitive browser-based portal enabling hotels and brands to access, manage and monitor guest room entertainment services from anywhere.  

Enhancing the Uniguest Digital Engagement Platform with fully-cloud Hotel TV, backed up by the solution’s proven track record, ensure that best in class uptime and redundancy can be offered, with the additional scalability and benefits that a SaaS deployment brings.   

Uniguest’s new Hotel TV platform also provides hotels and brands with: 

• Intuitive drag and drop content editor 

• Flexible customization tools 

• Casting support for guest devices using apps such as Netflix or Hulu 

• System on chip support removing the requirement for additional set top box hardware.  

• Integrations with other platforms, including leading property management systems.  

Price Barnes, Uniguest VP of Product Management, said, "We are pleased to bring Otrum's powerful cloud-based guest room entertainment solution to the US market as part of the Uniguest platform. This solution solidifies our company's aim to deliver cutting-edge, flexible, and easy to use technology. We see these enhancements as the first step in revolutionising our Digital Engagement Platform, which is already well established within many hotels and hospitality brands.  

“As we drive towards our goal of connected content, deployed everywhere, creating engaged audiences this is a huge next step.” 

The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and the Saudi-based Sustainable Tourism Global Center have unveiled groundbreaking new data detailing the total water usage of the global Travel & Tourism sector.

In one of the largest research projects of its kind, WTTC can for the first time ever, accurately report and track the impact the sector has on the environment. 

The findings were launched today at the United Nations in New York at the UN 2023 Water Conference. 

Direct Water Use 

Speaking at the UN Headquarters, Chris Imbsen, Director of Sustainability at WTTC, revealed that Travel & Tourism’s entire water footprint is just 0.6% of the global water use according to the latest figures (2021). 

In 2019, when the sector was at its peak, the sector’s total water footprint was only 50% higher, but still less than 1% of the global total at 0.9%. 

Travel & Tourism’s direct water use is significantly lower – in 2019 it was 0.2% of the global total and has fallen by half to just 0.1% of the global total. 

Much of the sector’s water use is indirect, through its supply chain, with agriculture and food production accounting for two-thirds of Travel & Tourism’s entire water footprint. 

Between 2010 and 2019, the Travel & Tourism sector in Europe and Africa reduced direct water use. In Europe, direct water use fell by 8% and in Africa direct water use by the sector fell by 6%. 

Julia Simpson, WTTC President & CEO, said: “This ground-breaking new data reveals our sector’s water consumption for the first time ever, revealing that Travel & Tourism uses less than 1% of the water used around the world, with the overwhelming majority of that usage coming from the sector’s supply chain.

“The data also shows that whilst the sector has grown economically around the world, its direct-use water intensity has decreased. 

“The data is the most in depth study of the sector’s water use, and like the world-first cli-mate footprint data we released at our Global Summit in Riyadh last year, we can also re-veal individual countries Travel & Tourism sector’s water footprints. This will enable gov-ernments to work with the sector to further reduce water usage.” 
 

Water Intensity 
 

The water intensity of Travel & Tourism per unit of GDP has also fallen since 2010, across both direct and indirect use.  

In 2010, the sector used 0.57m³ of water for every $1 USD contributed to the global economy. 

In 2019 this fell by 19% to reach 0.46m³ of water for every $1 USD contributed to the global economy. 

In a world-first, this comprehensive research covers 185 countries across all regions and will be updated each year with revised figures. 

This research was made possible thanks to the partnership between WTTC and the Saudi-based Sustainable Tourism Global Center. Under the Saudi green Initiative, more than 60 initiatives have been launched in the past year, representing more than $186BN USD of in-vestment in the green economy.