272 | A New Digital Reality: Hotels turn to technology to redefine guest engagement

As the U.S. lodging sector begins to get back to business amid the coronavirus crisis, technology will play a much bigger role in operations than before the outbreak paralyzed the industry. Technological solutions in operations and guest management were emerging in hotels before the COVID-19 pandemic. But experts say the next generation of tech is read more

263 | Risk Adjustment: Hotel tech platforms face their own COVID-19 crisis

Last week, Zoom, a video-conferencing program, was prime bait for hackers who infiltrated conversations taking place among people working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. As if Zoom bombers weren’t bad enough, a day or two later, the internet-based program crashed because it could not handle the surge of users from businesses, schools and friends read more

November 1st week

Breach of Trust: Cybercrime a pervasive threat to the hospitality industry

It’s a given in today’s technological age that your hotel business depends on technology to process customer credit card purchases and to store personal information about your guests that helps you serve them better. Perhaps you believe you’ve done all you can to make sure your customers’ data is secure by making sure your PCI and GDPR compliant. But that does not fully guarantee your hotel data is safe from hackers. There is more you can – and must – do. If you do as little as possible, you’ll pay a big price, say cyber-safety experts.

236 | Breach of Trust: Cybercrime a pervasive threat to the hospitality industry

It’s a given in today’s technological age that you operate a hotel business that depends on technology to process customer credit card purchases and to store personal information about your guests that helps you serve them better. In addition, you probably are aware of cybercrime and that nefarious hackers frequently target payment systems. You’ve done read more

235 | Lodging Leaders Spotlight: Yotel a tech-forward brand worth watching

Taco Bell made headlines when it opened a 70-room pop-up hotel in August in Palm Springs, California. It was a marketing scheme that lasted four days. The day The Bell Hotel began to accept reservations, it sold out in two minutes. The guaranteed novelty of staying in a Taco Bell hotel obviously paid off for read more

232 | Wage Pressures: How to plug cost leaks in your hotel’s labor pool (Labor and Hiring Part 2)

At the peak of a great upward climb from the Great Recession, the U.S. lodging industry is seeing a leveling off in business performance. During the 25th annual Lodging Conference in Phoenix last week, many industry experts talked about a new normal of muted revenue gains and thinner profit margins as expenses continue to grow. read more

September 2nd week

Panic Buttons: Hospitality Workers Sound the Alarm (Hotel Safety Part 2)

When the American Hotel & Lodging Association in 2018 launched its Five Star Promise to improve safety and security for hotel workers, it acknowledged the influence of labor unions in its comprehensive plan that includes arming employees with safety devices by 2020. The time is right to focus on finding and providing solutions to sexual harassment and assault in the hospitality industry, say experts, as technology has evolved along with attitudes and awareness to provide the best available protection industrywide.

229 | Panic Buttons: Hospitality Workers Sound the Alarm (Hotel Safety Part 2)

When Robb Monkman was a college student, he and his roommates were robbed at gunpoint. The home invasion and hostage taking rocked Monkman to his core and determined the course of his career. Monkman is founder and CEO of ReactMobile, which provides electronic security devices, or panic buttons, for businesses, including the hospitality industry. ReactMobile read more

225 | LinkedIn Means Business: How to use social media to grow

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. That career adage is about 100 years old, but it still rings true today, especially when it comes to social media. If you’re not tuned into social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, it’s time to reconsider. With more than 3 billion people read more

208 | Surf-By Lawsuits: Hotel websites in legal crosshairs

Is your hotel’s website accessible to people with disabilities? If you don’t know the answer to that question, you’ll probably end up in court. In this episode, we examine what’s behind the dramatic spike in website accessibility lawsuits being filed against businesses under the Americans with Disabilities Act. And why commercial enterprises found to be read more

197 | Loyalty Program Fraud Awareness and Prevention with Josh Galun

Josh Galun is the Hospitality & Travel Lead at Excella in Washington, D.C. He’s has been at Excella for over 8 years and most recently joined the Excella Leadership Team in 2018. Josh has wide-ranging experience in project management, custom software development, process definition, IT security, data warehousing, and digital analytics. He currently focuses on read more

196 | How to Drive Direct Bookings and Manage OTA Contributions with James Nannos

James Nannos leads the Hotel Partnerships Team at Stay Wanderful, where he’s focused on hotel growth, loyalty programs, and customer success. Prior to joining Stay Wanderful, James was part of the original Breadcrumb POS team (acquired by Groupon), and has held numerous other startup and private-equity related roles. Outside of work, James is a Captain read more

192 | A Life Improving Customer Experience with Alex Shashou

Alex Shashou is the Co-Founder and President of ALICE, a top-ranking staff Task Management & Collaboration platform with a global customer base of 2,000+ hotels. Born and raised in London, Alex grew up in the hospitality industry, and he’s become a sought-after hospitality thought leader, speaking on technology and innovation in hospitality at conferences around read more

177 | The Hotel PMS: Past, Present and Future with Gary Gibb

Gary Gibb is Founder and President of AutoClerk, Inc. – a Northern California based software company that provides powerful hospitality technology solutions for independent properties, management companies, and hotel chains. Gary is a graduate of the University of California San Diego with a degree in Applied Physics & Information Sciences. Prior to founding AutoClerk, he read more

176 | Make Smarter Pricing and Distribution Decisions with Gino Engels

Gino Engels is co-founder and CCO of OTA Insight, where he leads the delivery and continued development of OTA Insight’s dashboard and reporting capabilities to enable hoteliers to support a profitable revenue and distribution strategy. Gino’s customer-focused objective is to deliver affordable revenue tools to hotels and continuously develop new solutions to help those in read more

174 | Use Microlearning to Solve Engagement and Performance Problems with Isaac Tolpin

Isaac is one of the founders of ConveYour.com, the #1 Microlearning platform for learner engagement. He’s a tech entrepreneur and futurist at heart, on a mission to enable brands to align their training with human behavior leading to breakthrough learner engagement. His success come from understanding the relationships between human behavior, business, and technology. This read more

170 | Why Digital Knowledge Management Matters to Hotels with Rev Ciancio

David “Rev” Ciancio serves as Director, Industry Insights for Yext, where he works to ensure customer success as they deploy the Yext Knowledge Engine on behalf of their businesses. Over his 20+ year career, he has managed business development, digital marketing, and social media strategies for a wide range of entertainment and hospitality companies. When read more

168 | Reducing the Risks of GDPR with Brian Dass

Caveau co-founder and CEO, Brian Dass, is a highly accomplished travel executive and entrepreneur widely recognized as one of the leading pioneers in the hospitality e-commerce and digital reservation industry. In his more than 20-year career, Brian has launched multiple online hospitality technology and marketing firms including Timeless Hospitality (acquired by TravelClick) and Open Hospitality read more

165 | Monetize Room Downtime and Improve Guest Experiences with Yannis Moati

Yannis Moati is CEO & Founder of Hotels By Day, the premier provider of day-stay hotel spaces in the United States. Yannis has nearly two decades of experience in travel, from guiding tours in Europe at a young age, to co-founding an exotic travel agency, to directing a New York-based global tour operator company. Having read more

162 | Helping Hoteliers Make Better Tech Decisions with Jordan Hollander

Jordan Hollander is the co-founder of Hotel Tech Report, the premier global research platform for hotel technology. He was previously on the Global Partnerships team at Starwood Hotels & Resorts. Prior to his work with SPG, Jordan was Director of Business Development at MetWest Terra Hospitality and Research Associate at Sapience Investments where he covered read more

160 | Sales-Focused Live Chat and Messaging with Chris Douglas and Michael Foltz

Hoperator is a sales and messaging platform designed to help travel and hospitality businesses increase revenue, provide customer service and build guest intelligence by connecting with their potential customers and guests in their preferred messaging channel. Chris Douglas – CEO/Cofounder Prior to cofounding Hoperator, Chris built a career in advertising as a creative. During this read more

155 | Modern Messaging for Hotel Teams and Guests with Sudheer Thakur

Sudheer Thakur is the founder and CEO of HelloShift, an integrated messaging platform for hotel teams, managers, guests, and website visitors. Prior to HelloShift, Sudheer worked for Oracle and was the founding member of a number of Silicon Valley startups. Hoteliers named HelloShift the #1 Staff Collaboration software in the 2018 HotelTechAwards. In This Episode, read more

151 | Online Influencer Booking, Campaign and Relationship Management with David Gabriele

Technology entrepreneur David Gabriele is Founder and CEO of Swayy, the world’s leading Influencer booking and campaign management website in the hospitality industry. Swayy changes the way leisure businesses worldwide market themselves. Venues enjoy increased bookings, loyalty and brand awareness through targeted, scalable influencer marketing. Venues can find, evaluate, book, pay for and review the read more

150 | Real-time Integrated Communications for Hotel Operations with Adria Levtchenko

Hotel technology entrepreneur Adria Levtchenko is CEO and Co-Founder of PurpleCloud Technologies, whose flagship product, Cielo, is a software platform that provides real-time access to data and analytics for operational associates and managers in the hotel industry. Under Levtchenko’s tenacity, creativity and guidance, Cielo has become a mature task management and data platform with proven read more

147 | Mobile Keyless Entry and Remote Check-In with TJ Person

As CEO and founder, TJ Person made OpenKey the leader in universal mobile key access technology. With more than 17 years of experience in technology, business management and marketing, TJ knows what it takes to make a company successful. He is known for both his strategic leadership and marketing innovation capabilities. Under his leadership, OpenKey read more

143 | Artificial Intelligence for Labor Management with Nigel Beck

Nigel is CEO and Founder of When Labs: artificial intelligence for augmenting management, driving compliance, employee engagement, retention, and productivity. Nigel’s passion for HR and management comes from over two decades of building and managing teams from two to thousands around the globe, and led to his acquisition of Kenexa, a human capital management company, read more

142 | How to Increase Repeat Bookings and Drive Direct Revenue with Marc and Erica

Marc Heyneker is the co-founder and CEO of Revinate, the leading hospitality SaaS company that helps hoteliers drive more direct revenue and deliver exceptional guest experiences. Since being founded in 2009, Revinate has grown its offerings to include targeted marketing and data management, guest surveys, and online reputation management. Prior to founding Revinate, Marc spent read more

139 | Engage Your Guests in Real Time Using Artificial Intelligence with Raj Singh

Raj Singh is a Product Design expert from a family of hoteliers, and CEO at Go Moment, a company dedicated to making customer service instant. Go Moment’s Ivy is the world’s leading automated customer service platform for hotels. Raj brings cross-discipline design, technology, and marketing experience from hundreds of large scale technology projects for leading read more

133 | GDPR Compliance with HFTP COO Lucinda Hart

Lucinda Hart, CAE, MBA, has over 22 years of association management and customer service experience in the areas of human resources, certification, membership, chapter relations, conferences/trade shows, nonprofit legal issues, and governance and administration. As HFTP Chief Operations Officer, Lucinda is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the association, managing 30 staff members, as well read more

129 | Improving Communication for Every Single Employee with Corey McCarthy

Corey McCarthy is VP of Marketing for the digital workplace app Beekeeper, and she has nearly twenty years of experience in the hospitality industry. Serving as the Associate Publisher of Lodging Hospitality magazine, VP Sales at Hotel Interactive and founder of Testarossa Marketing, she has extensive insights into all facets of the hotel business. In read more

115 | Create More Human Digital Relationships to Drive Direct Bookings with Hannah Béraud-Hindi

Hannah is the founder & Chief Emotionist(e) Officer at Hannah Béraud Digital Communications. She helps hotels, restaurants and travel companies create more human digital relationships to drive direct bookings and supports them in their digital transformation. Thanks to a network of partners with expertise in the communications, branding, technology & hospitality sectors, they create multi-dimensional, read more

114 | What You Need to Know About Hotel Data Security with David Durko

David Durko is Founder, CEO and Chief Compliance Officer of Security Validation, the Hospitality Industry’s leading Managed Security Provider. Prior to founding Security Validation, David was responsible for navigating Wyndham through their data security challenges culminating in Wyndham’s first successful PCI Compliance Filing in 2010. David continued to work with Wyndham achieving compliance again in read more

111 | Profit from Guest Intelligence with RJ Friedlander

RJ Friedlander is the Founder & CEO of ReviewPro, the world leader in Guest Intelligence for the hotel industry. He recently negotiated the sale of ReviewPro to Shiji Group, a publicly traded company that is 15% owned by Alibaba and one of the largest hospitality technology companies in the world. Prior to ReviewPro, Friedlander worked read more

104 | Hotel Bids that Fill Last-Minute Rooms with Inder Sharma

Inder Sharma is a visionary, a serial entrepreneur, an angel investor and an environmentalist seeking practical solutions to everyday life problems. He has founded 15 companies over the last 20 years varying from hospitality solutions, to energy efficient lighting, to power generation. Inder founded Hotel.com in 1996 and sold it in 2001. He founded hotelsupplies.com which became the read more

103 | Travel, Tourism and Tech with Martin Owen

Martin Owen joined the industry as a travel agent specializing in corporate travel, before working in reservations and sales for an international airline. He moved back into agency management eventually managing a chain of travel agencies in London. In 1983, he joined Travelbag, a small company of 12 people selling discounted air tickets to Australia. He read more

100 | Improving Online Distribution and Profitability with Erik Muñoz

Erik is a hotel technology marketing specialist, with deep experience across global markets with solutions such as revenue management, online distribution and property management.  Erik started his career in hotel management, then shifted to technical roles in solution consulting and delivery, before specializing in sales and marketing leadership. In This Episode, Erik Reveals The state of read more

077 | Using Video to Grow Your Business with Tim Danyo

Tim Danyo is a film maker, an educator, and an entrepreneur. His training is in visual communications and has worked on many successful film, documentary, television and web video projects. Based on Missoula, Montana, Tim’s company, Imagination Media, provides video production, editing, and duplication services for Web, TV, commercials, promotional, corporate and training videos. In read more

062 | Sell More Rooms for Your Hotel Tonight with Jared Simon

Jared is a co-founder and currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer of HotelTonight, the on-demand hotel booking app. Prior to HotelTonight, Jared led partner development and served on the founding executive team at online video production and distribution pioneer TurnHere. Jared previously worked at online travel agency Orbitz, serving on the launch team for read more

040 | Leveraging Facebook: Insights and Techniques to Grow Your Business with Anna Botha

Anna is the Founder of 23 Degrees North Digital Marketing – a boutique agency that specializes in ROI-based marketing. Their approach focuses on determining which tactics and channels produce the results which add revenue directly to your bottom line. 23 Degrees North currently manages over $30k in monthly ad spend for their clients. Anna prepared a FREE read more

037 | Why Digital Marketing is Key for Independent Hotels with Gaurav Varma

Gaurav Varma is Product Marketing Manager for Milestone Internet Marketing – a leading provider of Internet marketing solutions for the lodging industry. Milestone does it all, from Website Design to Search Engine Optimization, Pay-per-Click marketing, Social Media Optimization, Email marketing, you name it. Milestone currently works with nearly 2000 hotels and retail customers, driving over read more

027 | Actionable Performance Data: Knowing is Growing with Bobby Bowers

Bobby Bowers is the Senior Vice President of Operations for STR – formerly known as Smith Travel Research. STR is the leading global provider of competitive benchmarking, information services and research to the hotel industry. STR gathers performance data from over 50,000 hotels located in more than 160 countries, and those properties use STR products, such as the read more

026 | Redefining the Technology Toolbox with Mark Lewis-Brown

Mark Lewis-Brown is a hospitality industry veteran with 25 years of experience in online distribution, hotel operations and airline sales. He’s recognized as a visionary for product development, client services and marketing efforts at Vertical Booking, Centric Hospitality Group and Genares. Mark founded InnPoints in 1995, giving independent and boutique properties the chance to establish a loyal client base and read more

025 | Bringing Magic To Hotels With Kunal Patel

Kunal Patel grew up in the hotel industry. The son of successful multi-property owners, he learned firsthand how difficult it is to make a hotel run efficiently. Kunal commenced studies in Business at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Fla, before transferring to Florida State/Florida A&M College of Engineering, where he majored in Chemical Engineering. After read more

020 | Leveraging Your Network to Grow Your Business with Gillian Morris

Gillian Morris is the co-founder and CEO of TripCommon and Hitlist, building technology to bring online travel search and booking into the 21st century. TripCommon was born out of cofounders Gillian and Timo de Winter’s years of struggling with outdated, buggy travel search and booking tools. The company’s first product, Hitlist, helps users travel more read more

019 | Technology Innovation, Big Data Analytics and Cyber Security with Fortune 500 CIO Les Ottolenghi

Les brings 30+ years of experience as a Fortune 200 IT executive, an entrepreneur, and a creator of several of the travel and entertainment industries’ most game-changing technologies. He’s been lauded by top executives at many of the world’s most respected technology companies including HP, Microsoft, Google, Dell, and Cisco as the best CIO they read more

010 | Success by Association with HFTP CEO and Technology Trailblazer Frank Wolfe

Frank Wolfe is CEO of Hospitality Financial & Technology Professional’s (HFTP) – a global association serving hospitality professionals that provides members with superior networking opportunities, industry-leading events, comprehensive certification programs, unique educational opportunities, and other essential resources for professional growth. Throughout his career, Frank has been recognized as an industry leader. In 2000, Lodging Magazine included him in read more

008 | Managing Your Online Reputation with Geordie Wardman

Geordie Wardman is Founder and Chief Conversion Officer of WaveReview.com, a Software as a Service platform that helps businesses improve their online reputations by proactively increasing the frequency and effectiveness of customer interaction. Over the last several years, he has become an expert in managing your online reputation. Resources & Links Email: geordie[at]wavereview.com Geordie on LinkedIn   read more

002 | Using Technology for a Better Tomorrow with RP Rama

Raman “RP” Rama is the Vice President and Chief Technology Officer/Chief Information Officer of JHM Hotels. Born in Malawi, Africa, RP obtained his education from a few different places. While he was waiting for his U.S. Visa, he taught economics and business administration to students who are still in touch with him. Once he obtained read more