Need to increase your productivity and your client satisfaction? RoomChecking is here to help.

RoomChecking is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) app dedicated to hospitality services management. This app is not only useful and functional but also intuitive as it works connected to the PMS (Property Management System) of the hotel.

On the one hand, it gathers and analyses internal information about the hotel. From the front desk to housekeeping or general administration, every employee has access to it through smartphones or tablets. It allows them to improve their communication with each other, performance and reactivity in order to increase the hotel’s client satisfaction.

The app is divided into seven functionalities, including the main duties:

• Housekeeping
• Technique
• Chambermaid
• Client
• Incidents Management
• Client calls
• More… 

For example, if the light is broken in a room, the head housekeeper will either enter the information or take a picture of it and send it directly to the technician.

A regular customer arrives? All of his or her habits are registered in the app so employees can dedicate their service according to the client’s preferences.

RoomChecking is also a great tool for tasks distribution and follow up. Through monitoring in real time, employees can realize the tasks in due time and improve their reactivity. Manager can also communicate with employees through instant messaging and check how the work has been done. This is particularly useful to avoid problems in time or when it comes to reward the teams.

On the other hand, clients can download their own version to facilitate their stay. Indeed, they can find information about the hotel (map of the facilities, list of services, rates, schedule…), but also activities nearby such as touristic sites and restaurants. Moreover, clients can inform the front desk of any demand or issue and rate services through the app, which simplify feedbacks gathering.

The aim is to optimize work time in order to have more time to focus on the client. Employees are more efficient and more autonomous. They focus more on the client’s satisfaction. 

Not yet used by hotel chains, this app has already been implemented in 150 independent hotels. But for sure, this kind of app will be developed more and more as it also gives the opportunity for hoteliers to promote room services or other hotel services like dining or spa services, giving guests the option to quickly contact someone for more information or book immediately – meaning additional revenues.

Sources:

http://www.cdsgroupe.com/blog/2016/01/roomchecking-une-facon-radicalement-nouvelle-de-faire-circuler-linformation-a-linterieur-de-lhotel/

www.roomchecking.com

http://blog.apps-builder.com/hotels-with-mobile-apps/

Pixe Social: Pic your audience!

Pixe

twitter.com

makes your attendees connected and fan to your brand!



Pixe Social was launched in 2013 and since this date, the company register an increasing  number of users. Also large events have made the choice to use this application to attract and to engage the attendees to their event.

For instance, IMEX America in 2014 which Pixe Social, with the ‘Encore Photo Booth app’ has boosted the number of Facebook fans to 17 415, for the event.  Pixe Social is a photo-sharing solution for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that you can use on your smartphone with, tablets with Pixe Snap or with Pixe Wall.

pixesocial.com

PixeSnap is a free app where the attendee can take a snap and share it during the event. PixeEncore is a way to make your attendee become an ambassador of your brand, you can change the back ground of the picture with the brand name and with a landscape for instance (thanks to the famous green background). PixeWall is like a basic Photo Booth where you have the name of the brand and the attendees come and make funny picture, and with Pixe Social there are simultaneously share on social media.

It is the same principle of a photo booth. The participant can share instantaneously their moment
For once, this app is very easy to use and the attendees doesn’t have to log in to use it. As it concern the event planner point of of view, again, for once, Pixe Social is useful and simple to design. It takes very few minutes to set up with your brand’s logo, to configure and to start using it.

The main features of the brand are related to the engagement for the brand and the CRM.
Regarding the commitment, you can make pictures with the logo’s brand (Pixe Social and the one of the company which make the event). You can share instantaneously share your photo via social media and through this promote the event and have the possibility to reach more likes for your brand (one last task for the busy event planner!).

As far as it concern the CRM, as you may increase the number of followers or likes on your social media pages you will be able to increase the number of e-mail addresses and your database. It is brief and very efficient. You may also encourage you customer to grow in the ‘pyramid of relationship’. A simple customer can become an ambassador. In terms of CRM, it allows your company to increase its customer’s and e-mail’s database.

Besides, this application, as many others, has its advantages and disadvantages.

+ You can use it in how many devices and events you want.
+ As you many now, as event manager or future one, WIFI in many venues is not 100% reliable. That’s why you can use Pixe Social offline.
+You can use it on any devices you want in any event you want. As you want!

But…(nobody’s perfect)

-You cannot insure good photo’s quality.
-Some attendees can be bored with all the this pictures.
-You may not want to give your contacts to have the photo. 

pinterest.com

It is a paying application and you can have an annual contract for less than $500 (or monthly agreement for less than $900). As it as been mentioned before, the app can be used on different devices (mobile, tablets, etc) for different  events.

Pixe Social is a useful tool obviously for event managers, who want to promote their brand, make the attendees loyal to the brand and increase their CRM database and for the attendees who wants to share their amazing moment to the events through the social media. It is a win-win mobile device application!

Source: http://www.pixesocial.com/public/enter.aspx

Organizing an event? Use the crowd to your advantage!

Source:

http://www.pcma.org/be-in-the-know/pcma-central/convention-and-meetings-news/news-landing/2014/02/17/this-trade-show-breaks-attendance-records-year-after-year#.VTzbKtLtmko

Nowadays, everything is customer-focused. It is not enough to offer a good product or service anymore, we need to involve the customers in the process to create the most successful experience possible for them. And of course, event planning is not an exception. On the contrary, events are particularly impacted by this trend as an event is by definition an experience where emotions and feelings take a prominent position. That is why, it can be interesting for each event planner to wonder if they use their crowd effectively; because who knows better than themselves what attendees or customers want?

Three crowd management tools benefited from the technologic progress to establish themselves as not-to-be-missed trends: crowdfunding, crowdsourcing and crowd shaping. They offer great opportunities to improve events while attracting the millennials, as they are mainly implemented on social media. 

Source:
http://www.journaldugeek.com/2014/02/18/crowdfunding-78-millions-deuros-leves-en-2013-en-france/

During the preparation phase of events, crowdsourcing and crowdfunding are amazing tools. First, crowdfunding enables the event organizers to show their project, especially when the event is new, and to know if the event has enough potential to be economically sustainable or not. For already existing events, it is a good way to fund new features of the event or to prevent some of its aspects from disappearing such as free entrance days that are not profitable for the organizers and that can be made sustainable through crowdfunding. A good use of crowdfunding can be to establish some level of funding; for instance if 5,000€ are raised, there will be this many more speakers, and if 10,000€ are raised the event will last one more day. In this way, attendees feel involved in the event’s creation process and this increases their loyalty. There is more than 1,000 crowdfunding platforms online, keep looking and you will find the one that fits your needs.

Source:

http://www.eventindustrynews.co.uk/event-technology-news/event-tech-live-launches-vote-crowdsource-content/

On another hand, crowdsourcing can be used to empower attendees not only to improve the event design but also to improve the content. That is what A.M.P Events Ltd, the organizer of Event Tech Live, did by launching an online vote last year that enrolled delegates to vote for the topics and the speakers during the conferences. This is a great innovative and interactive way to make sure your content corresponds to your attendees’ requirements and needs. By using this kind of solutions, each of your participants will feel unique and totally involved in the event as they have a certain control on it. This personalization of events perfectly fits with the growing demand of the new generations Y and Z to create bespoke events.

Using the crowd effectively can also help event planners to improve attendees’ experience in real time during the event with crowd shaping. By using data generated by your attendees thanks to RFID technologies for instance, event organizers can analyze live the behavior of their attendees and they can deduce from it their preferences and tastes to finally adapt the event. Knowing your target is essential, even though we know that there can be a difference between what people say and what people do. That is why crowd shaping, when properly used, is a golden source of information that can lead your event to a greater success.

Belonging to the generation Y, we truly believe these new ways of interacting and communicating with your target audience is the future of events. Our advice: don’t wait to use them, tomorrow is today. 

Sources: 

http://www.bizbash.com/when-crowdfunding-an-effective-event-tool/new-york/story/30246#.VTzJ8NLtmko

http://www.eventindustrynews.co.uk/event-technology-news/event-tech-live-launches-vote-crowdsource-content/

http://www.bizbash.com/why-crowdshaping-can-give-guests-the-event-they-want/new-york/story/29948#.VTzJ9dLtmko

Moodies, the New App Measuring Attendees' Emotions and Moods at Events

Photo: Freedigitalphotos.net, 2014

The importance of collecting post-event feedback has becoming one of the main concerns to any event planner in order to keep gaining market shares. Regardless the event size or kind of venue, one of the most important aspects of running a successful event stays the collection of feedback from your delegates.

The question is why? Because it allows both to analyse positive and negative consequence of the event. This step also allows analysing the data’s collected and then better understood from mistakes and improve the job of event planner. Thus, this is the most cost effective and simplest way to better understand the expectations and needs of your audience to successfully improve future events, attract more attendees and grow the event year on year. In addition, it improves the customer service experience, by better understanding the customer’s needs and feelings. It shows that you really listen and value the customers’ views and thoughts.  By the way, it will increase the loyalty process.

The event planners have nowadays various options in order to gather feedback. A new apps has been patented named BeyondVerbal. It analyses the tone of voice of a person in order to determine their emotional state. Even if this kind of technology has been developed for 20 years, it was only used for call centres in order to determine the intents of customers. This app was firstly introduced in the event industry during a huge market research conference gathering 700 attendees. The technology of voice analysis have been used at various times during the 3-day conference: asking attendees about their first impressions, recording their comments and analysin speakers’ voice. Then, according to the tone of voice, eleven moods are represented such as angry, anxious, enthusiastic, tired, hungry, etc. 

 

Here is a short video showing how the app works:

The developers of the app observe that easy improvement can be done as event planners in order to reinforce positive moods. For example, they see different emotional spikes according to the moment of the day. Globally speaking, before the lunch, people were more in a tired and hungry mood whereas after a break they feel more enthusiastic.

The event organizers encouraged attendees to download this application in order to record their own analysis. This is a valued time saving because it allows learning what was happening and what feeling they have in real time without using any survey or any other kind of feedback tools. Once the data’s collected, it can be shared or posted through social network, company website as well as email.

 

Photo: Courtesy of Beyond Verbal

  

Commonly, we try to analyse facial expression in order to better understand the emotional state of the speaker. But the Moodies app is a great opportunity to do it quickly thanks to an innovative technology. With one single app, it allows in real time to better understand people's moods, attitudes and emotional characteristics.

We decided to highlight this new tool since we all know the increasing importance of IT during events and the permanent demand for more interactions both for attendees and organizers. In addition, this is a great opportunity to collect some feedback easily and particularly in real time. They don’t have to wait attendees to fill a survey,  they can take into account the customers’ expectations and adapt themselves faster during the all day long of the event. 

Source

Sorrells, M. (2014, 08 12). New App Measures Attendees' Emotions and Moods at Events. Retrieved from BizBash: http://www.bizbash.com/new-app-measures-attendees-emotions-and-moods-at-events/new-york/story/29026

Eve Dellinger & Elsa Yenigotchian

Social medias’ good practises for the hospitality industry

The social media plays an essential role in the tourism industry. This graph below shows a clear growing trend of social medias on travelers.

                                          Source: MarketingZ

We may wonder why a such enthusiasm? Is it only an ephemeral or a lasting trend?

In this article, we will highlight two major aspects, discussed by I. Katemliadis in Travel Daily News, that clearly show the significance of the social media in the travel industry. However, we will also investigate more about its legitimacy.

In our ultra-connected era, social medias play a significant role in the tourism industry.

Firstly, it allows tourism specialists to better know their consumers: indeed, thanks to social medias like Facebook, Twitter or TripAdvisor, they can easily identify and understand their consumers’ needs and desires. Travelers post about their experiences and expectations, giving hotels the chance to have a better understanding of them. As such, it also allows a better targeting. However, the author insists that tourism specialists should keep in mind that social media’ users do not constitute the totality of their clientele. The risk here is to forget this other part of their consumers by focusing exclusively on their ultra-connected clientele.

Hotels also need to be aware of the very fast changing trends of social medias. We can here take the example of Facebook which was the most popular social network for the 18-24 age group very recently whereas it is now slightly shrinking in the same group. The 65+ age group has now a bigger growth presence rate than the 18-24 age group. Hotels always have to adapt their way of communication to their targeting customers. Furthermore, the Travel Daily News’ article highlights that Youtube is today an incontournable tool of communication since it has the highest visitation rate. Most of largest hotel groups have now their own Youtube Channel, where they can regularly upload videos about their properties.

                                   Source: Carlson Rezidor Youtube Channel 

Therefore, social medias are a good way to find and collect accurate information about customers. However, this is not the unique way anymore to manage it. Indeed, as mentioned by T. Rokou in Travel Daily News, an artificial intelligence has been recently introduced in the travel industry. Now, “Phil le Voyageur” is able to communicate with travelers, by chatting, and to give theme advices and information.

Furthermore, reputation and company’s image are increasingly managed through social medias. It is significant for the company to find the most appropriate tools for the image that the company wants to give to its clients and potential consumers. The company must take care and keep a close watch on what is written about itself and how it could affect it.

Besides, a recent TripAdvisor survey indicates that responding to comments could be favourable to the company. Positions, such as Community Managers, are now crucial for any kind of companies which want to manage their online reputation. However, it is here important to note that one third of the online reviews are fake. Tourism companies should necessarily work closely with the social medias in order to avoid this practise. Not all the travelers write online reviews: it could be either because they are not familiar with social medias or because their trip was not remarkable. Hotels need to also take into consideration these kinds of travelers. For instance, properties could offer to their guests to fill surveys in their room before their departure in order to have their opinion.

Finally, it is still difficult to distinguish serious issues from benign problems met by consumers and explained in their social media’s reviews. That is why the face to face contact, by phone or by e-mail remains always necessary and beneficial.

Clothilde and Louise

Sources:
http://www.traveldailynews.com/columns/article/51220/social-media-and-the-hotel

http://www.traveldailynews.com/news/article/64577/the-birth-of-a-new

http://marketingz.fr/etre-hotelier-a-lheure-des-reseaux-sociaux/

https://www.youtube.com/user/REZIDORHOTELGROUP/videos