Strategic meeting and event management tool, the online registration software

Video Source: http://www.signup4.com/

There is a trend of meetings and events technology that a variety of softwares are available which can support the meeting or event planners to make the meetings and events more efficient and successful. One category of the software is the online registration software.

For the present meetings and events, 70-80% of meeting professionals use online registration software. Most of the meeting/event registration softwares are cloud-based or web-based, which means efficiency increases of 90% or more from paper-based methods.

By using the conference and event registration software, meeting and event planners can build registration forms that accurately collect data and personalize the registration experience for every attendee. And the software as a service application lives securely in the cloud, giving meeting and event organizers access to all registrant information easy and fast.

There is a list of the mainstream meeting/event management softwares, some are the comprehensive multifunction softwares including the functions of registration process, others are specialized on the registration. They offer a easy-to-use features that will enhance the registration process for both planners and attendees.

amiando.com -XING Events

cvent.com

certain.com

etouches.com

emeetingsonline.com

regonline.com

signup4.com

For the majority of meeting/event registration softwares, there are some common features. 

• Customized online registration forms to ensure your conference branding is maintained.
• Offer meetings/events attendees an easy and secure way to pay by integrating planner merchant account or using software’s account.
• Self-serve registration changes.
• Check in attendee’s on-site quickly and easily, reduce the time and cost of having conference staff administer complicated spreadsheets.
• A good method to communicate effectively with conference organizers by setting up permission based logins.
• Comprehensive and easy-to-use reporting.
• Provide registration websites in multiple languages for international users.
• Keep costs low with simple credit based system.

With the development of events and conferences technology, the online registration software is the mainly specific application of the most meeting and event planners, it is an important step of the meeting and event automation. By using the online registration software, the planner can benefit from different aspects.

• Save time: instead of working between multiple applications, or even processing hand-written and mailed registration forms, reduce planner total workload.
• Save money: the software is greatly reduced registration costs, some even free support.
• A simplified and high-secure method of payment, cancellations and refunds for the attendees with seamless integration with bank accounts.
• Capture and consolidate data, analyze results and create reports that show you exactly what you're doing right and what needs improvement.

The using of online registration software is a meaningful step for the process of meeting and event automation, it is a significant trend of the development of present and future strategic meeting and event management. Further more, by using the end-to-end conference management tools, we can streamline conference registrations, conference promotions and marketing, travel logistics, budget and payment collection, reports and surveys, socializing and networking, blog and feedback and more, it will take the meetings and events management to the next level.

Written by Yi ZHAO & Pinyi LU 

Sources: 

http://www.activeevents.com/solutions/product/active-regonline

http://blog.cvent.com/blog/cvent-blog-2/time-saving-features-of-conference-registration-software-

http://www.amiando.com/

http://certain.com/

http://www.emeetingsonline.com/Pages/default.aspx

https://www.etouches.com/ehome/etouches/home/

http://www.signup4.com/

A new Milestone for Amadeus and Accor

Airbnb is one of the most disruptive websites that appeared in recent years in the hospitality distribution landscape. It is an online marketplace used to book and list spaces ranging from a single room to a whole house (or even bigger places) and its co-founders are currently in the final stages of raising capital that would make the company worth around $10 billion according to Forbes.

For comparison's sake the Wyndham Worldwide and Hyatt Hotels are respectively valued at $9.3 billion and $8.4 billion. If those sources are accurate the Airbnb valuation would make its co-founders the first billionaires of what is called the « sharing economy ».

Jeremy Rifkin, author of the “The Zero Marginal Cost Society, explains that Airbnb success is due to its almost non existent marginal costs and he extrapolates that this is only the beginning of a more fundamental change in the economy.

"This success story is really about a great economic transformation occurring in the global economy, with far-reaching implications for all of us," says Jeremy Rifkin”

"We're actually seeing the emergence of a new economic system alongside the traditional capitalist market, and the new system is a sharing economy."

Indeed while Airbnb valuation is supposedly superior to the Wyndham Worlwide and Hyatt Hotels ones, it never had to build a single hotel or employ professional hospitality personnel.

According to the the chief executive at hotel consulting firm Lodging Advisors in a Wall Street Journal interview, Airbnb provided accomodations to 416,000 guests that visited New York between July 2012 and July 2013 costing the industry around one million room nights.

This agreement shows once again what has been going on in every industry in the world, and mostly in the tourism field: partnerships to share resources, and overall create bigger corporation makes them more effective both on a local and a local market. This article is about two giants of the tourism world: Accor, the biggest Hotel Chain of Europe, and Amadeus, #1 GDS in the world. This partnership shows the full potential of company joining their forces together to benefit each other. This allowed Accor to open new hotels in other destinations, like Dubai, and the distribution system of Amadeus allowed Accor to enhance its own distribution system. The power of partnership here is awesome, and is said to be just a beginning: this is a turning point for the industry, which will greatly benefit from it, as well as other companies that shall follow the example of Accor & Amadeus and create partnership to combine their strengths and counter their weaknesses.

Article: http://www.amadeus.com/blog/25/03/accor-amadeus-celebrate-new-milestone-1-million-hotel-bookings-2013/

Virtual Tourism

-- Without ticket and suitcase, you can still travel the world.

High-quality multimedia and rich content have permeated every aspects of modern life. Tourism also benefit from the significant innovation of technology in improving the tourists’ sensory experience. Virtual tourism is one of the new form thanks to the wide use of internet and advance technology.

Virtual tourism, the activity that tourists visit one attraction without actually physically being in the scene. The form of virtual tourism changed from presenting tourists with a slideshow or video in the earlier times to photo-based revival of the scene for tourists of today.

In earlier times, virtual tourism was more frequently used by museums. Museums offered a slideshow or video, however within a limited area. The 3D graphical interface were offered by some museums which allowed one to explore the attraction using simple directional camera controls.

Today, the forms of virtual tourism are becoming not only various, but also interactive and customer initiative. At home or in many other places, one can take a virtual tour with the desktop, in a cabin space, or with equipment such as helmet. One can control his own journey. In addition, some apps are also designed for tourists to share experience with others. With the modes of video, or photos, users can share their travel journey with their own voice telling a story or describe in words.

The Advantages of Virtual tourism

•  To know the sight in advance. Virtual tourism provides visitors an idea about the destination. With the preview, visitors know what to expect about the destination or whether the place is worthwhile to pay actual visit.
•  Available to those who are inconvenient to travel. People who are disabled, limited by finance, work, or other issues, can use virtual visit to compensate for their regrets.
•  Rebuild historical landscape or the places that hard to visit. Some historical landscapes were once existing but vanished for some reasons. With advanced technology, these landscapes can be recreated in the form of picture, 3D graph, and even interactive video. It is the same with the places that hard to visit. Places like the Himalaya, South Pole, even outer space can form to virtual tourism, becoming available to the public. 

Recent news, a revival of photo-based virtual tourism raised much interest. Jointly sponsored by NASA, Carnegie Mellon University, Google and National Geographic Society, the GigaPan Project hosts extremely high resolution panoramic photos (a gigapixel-resolution) online. The high resolution offers incredibly detailed images that people are able to zoom in on and pan across at will.

With help of new technologies like Google Street View and Web 2.0, virtual tourism is gradually improved. Google Street View allows users to view the city on the web from a pedestrian standpoint. Some cities are offering videos of the city to uses as well. Being “invited” to the street, users can enjoy short videos about some special places, such as scenic spots, historical buildings, and museums. Collaborating with YouTube, Google introduced the technique of embedding video on google map service. Users can easily access to video that hosted on YouTube and embed them on google map. This attractive and interactive technique can be the trend that leads to a new breed of virtual tourism. Along this trend, virtual travelers and enthusiasts can looking forward even to more exciting travel experiences without tickets and suitcase.

Sources: 

http://www.gigapan.com/

https://www.google.com/maps/views/home

https://maps.google.com/

http://www.mysecurecyberspace.com/articles/features/virtual-tourism.html

Pictures1: http://www.virtualpano.com/com_portofolio.php

Pictures2: http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.fr/

Posted bySang ZHAOandSiqi ZHANG

DineTime: New Consumer Dining App

QSR automations is one of the largest homegrown tech company of Louisville  in the state of Kentucky (USA). Its main objective is to help any type of  restaurants around the world to effectively improve their productivity and profit.
In 2013, QSR developers have introduced the dining host app,  a guest management software tool fully dedicated to restaurants keeping their operators connected to their guests by providing wait list,  reservation facilitations, guestbook maintenance and key operational analytics. It has allowed independent structures  as well as small franchises to improve guest experiences and operate more efficiently.


In March 21st 2014, QSR developers have launched a beta version of their iOS application for restaurant consumers. Dine time would be first available  only for  Louisville customers.  A national distribution, for iOS and Android devices,  will be contingent  on the performances of the beta application by the end of the year.   This new revolutionary application aims to facilitate finding  restaurants that meet customer expectations by using various filtering modes like ratings,type of food, prices and also guidance.


It is very useful and time saving for restaurant consumers since this full-service restaurant guide referenced more than 450 spots in Louisville.  By having the opportunity to order before going the the chosen venue, the consumers are seated quicker, avoiding usual waiting times for food.Besides, consumers are also able to see how many people are on the wait list, and what the average waiting time is.


DineTime offers the possibility to create an account (both for consumers and restaurant managers) through this app, aiming to create a connection between them.From the consumers point of view,  the main benefits are the possibility to  add themselves to the restaurant's wait list and receive  text messages telling the accurate dine times. Also, the “DineTimers”  can choose seating preferences. No more standing around in crowded restaurants waiting for a table.  The restaurant managers are now able to get more efficiency regarding organisation while accessing real-time statistics and collecting valuable guest information, such as visit details and guest notes.

Anja Gunz & Agathe Domenach

Sources:

http://www.qsrautomations.com/contact/

http://hospitalitytechnology.edgl.com/news/QSR-Automations,-Inc--Introduces-DineTime-for--Restaurants-to-the-Louisville-Market91789

http://insiderlouisville.com/news/2014/03/21/available-now-dinetime-launches-consumer-app-louisville-tests-way-national-roll/

http://insiderlouisville.com/news/2014/01/15/louisville-restaurant-tech-pioneer-qsr-goes-indies-hometown-test-new-consumer-app/

How to make an event app successful

As we note since the beginning of this blog through all our articles, new technologies in event management are constantly increasing and improving.

New considerations and expectations born and need to be include in events via new technological tools.

One of the big predilections for 2014 was the growth of the event app. That’s the reason why we decided to choose this topic for this article! Everywhere people are talking about apps, in their personal life but also for their professional activities. For the event industry, it appears more and more as a requirement. Event apps will play an increasingly important role in the delegate’s engagement.

This trend seems to be pretty easy to set up and to use but it’s more complex than most of people think. The first important question is “how to select the good application for your event?” That is a hard choice and the real challenge.

To help people for this decision, some agencies propose services to create the app adapted to the event based on concrete tips and recommendations. Richard Cholot, Digital Solutions Manager at Mclcreate (one of this companies), give us the top 5 useful tips to ensure you get an app that works for your event:

1- Focus on the delegate:

The challenge is not to create a good and efficient app with high functionality but to create one which fit to the attendee’s expectations and needs. Moreover, the app has to be easy to use to make people play comfortably with it. It’s better to focus on the core features to make the app intuitive and simple than to develop a complex tool that people can’t easily understand.

2- Test few times before launch it:

Expectations are high in this sector; this is an upcoming trend so it has to work well to make people satisfied by this new tool. Apps need to be tested few times and precisely. You have to make sure that the app is going to work with all operating systems and versions of iOS or Android. All the attendees will have a different version, even old ones.

3- Evaluation is the key:

Follow the usage of the app is important. Reporting metrics are necessary to define enhancements. It allows noting the unused features and seeing all the benefits of the app to sell it in a better way to clients.

4- Find out what delegates think:

The most important thing is to listen the end users comments about the app and not only to take in account the highly technical people opinion. By defining what is working or not, appreciate or not, you can refine or improve the event app which is one of the great advantages of technology nowadays. The feedbacks make your app stronger.

5- Think about infrastructures:

The success of the app depends on more than just itself. The wireless bandwidths of the venue need to be adapted. It’s worth talking to the venue from the outset to avoid problems about connections and allow attendee to benefit of the entire app.

This new technology trend is an exciting development for the event industry. It’s not hard to set up and make it work but it requires ongoing investment in evaluating usage and enhancing the functionality. Moreover, it has to be considered and included for all events because it’s the new way to respect and improve the environment protection. With all this apps, there are less and less printed documents...

If you're interesting by this new trend, watch this short video from Quick mobile. It will show you all the advantages of an event app in a concrete case: The convention or congress.

Camille et Clémence


Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkAdDv9OPEQ

http://www.eventindustrynews.co.uk/2014/03/18/top-tips-successful-event-apps-mcl-create-appy-attendee-feature/

See more with Wikitude

Nowadays, app. stores are filled with applications allowing you to book best price hotel or to consult a list of recommended restaurants near you. However the team of Wikitude just made it better with their location-based augmented reality application. First launched in 2008 the first version of this application was the first publicly available application that used a location-based approach to augmented reality. Since then Wikitude was voted “Best Augmented Reality browser” from the years 2009 to 2012.

How does it works:

http://www.androidcentral.com/sites/androidcentral.com/files/postimages/79186/lg_wikitude.jpg

The Wikitude application lets you visualize in an existing and immersive way the world around you by providing you with live content. It uses geo-localization and augmented reality to display all these information’s on your camera image as opposed to other similar application that use conventional map, which provides an abstract view from above. Easy to use, you simply have to open the application and then select the content you want to appear on your camera while you are filming the environment around you.

What information can you get from Wikitude:

Wikitude gets information from several databases, calling up points of interest from hotel recommendations to tweets to local reviews on restaurants, activities or local places to visit and everything in between. You can narrow down your search to categories such as accommodation, travel and sights. Moreover, Wikitude application has partnership with several travelling services such has TripAdvisor, Yelp, Hotels.com and Foursquare making it rich on relevant and reliable content. Also, an interesting feature about this application is that it displays Wikipedia articles when simply filming important monuments like the Eifel Tower, or the London Bridge.

We think that Wikitude is on the good path to become a must have application for travelers. It really gives its user an immersive experience making it an exiting application to use. Moreover the content, which is available trough Wikitude, is all a traveler needs to really discover and learn more about the environment around him. Also, we think that Wikitude should implement, in its next version, a booking platform for hotels directly on the app instead of just offering the information and rates. Another recommendations that could give a huge competitive advantage to Wikitude would be to affiliate with museums so that people could get interactive content with augmented reality while visiting the museum.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vfzkFfIK1U

- Ludovic Sacier & Jessica Gourdji

References:

 http://www.wikitude.com/app/

http://en.wikipedia.org

http://www.augmentedrealitytrends.com/ar-app/augmented-reality-app-wikitude-your-third-eye-to-browse-the-surroundings.htmlg/wiki/Wikitude

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/augmented-reality-map-apps-wikitude-v-acrossair-20140306-3480j.html

http://digital-lifestyles.info/2008/10/23/wikitude-android-app-with-augmented-reality-mind-blowing/

Site Minder – Channel manager

Controlling its distribution and the parity rate became very complicated for hoteliers in the last 10 years. It is due to the large amount of distribution channel.

Controlling it is the KEY!

This is why we saw in the hotel industry the creation of some companies specialised in distribution on the different channel.The case of site minder is not exclusive; many others appear we can quote “rate tiger”, “channel rush” or “Yield planet” and much more.

The goal is for the hotel to send his different update rates everyday to the channel manager that will manage to inform all the distribution channels (GDS, OTAs, Wholesaler, Travel agents, own website), but also to be instantly informed when a room is book online ! Thus, the hotel and the revenue manager will gain time. 

We will study a SWOT analysis of this technology in order to give you enough knowledge to use it.

Strengths	Weaknesses
-          Time saving & efficiency      -          Simple to use      -          Increase revenue      -          One interlocutor      -          Instant information about a booking or an update rate      -          Connection worldwide      -          Flat monthly rate ( NO commission)      -          No contract      -          2 way integration (Work with PMS & CRS)	-          Less control to direct suppliers       -          Cost (>60€ for a hotel with 20 rooms and > 300 for a hotel with more than 200 rooms)      -          Not necessary for small and/or individual hotels      -          Control the over booking so might not be useful sometimes where overbooking is necessary!
Threats	Opportunities
-          Other competitors (cheaper or faster)      -          Technological problem might appear and have huge impact on the hotel	-          Really control RATE PARITY!      -          Contract according to online booking (for small hotel only)

A channel manager such as Site Minder seems to be the best option to control distribution channels and in the same time save time and target other markets. The different strengths can help you to take a decision for your hotel.

Save time, control your distribution channel and increase your revenue.

Sébastien Haag & Anne-lucie Talarmin

Source: Siteminder website