InnSpire

With an increasing use of technology anytime, anywhere, hotels have to adapt and propose more innovative ways for guests to experience their stay. Hotels are not only active on Internet via various social media (facebook, linkedin, twitter, pinterest), they are now being technology-active within their establishments, developing apps and all sort of gadgets. 

Martin Chevalley, CEO & Co-Founder of InnSpire, said, "Gadgets are becoming an ever-

more integrated part of our everyday life, but that doesn’t mean that everybody loves the gadgets.  What people love is what their gadgets do for them.  I think that Guest Media Streaming won this award because hoteliers realized that it hits the sweet spot for travelers, being able to easily use their gadget to wirelessly stream photos, videos or music of their choice directly to the TV in their room, without downloads or installations.  This innovation meets that need for hotels." 

Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG) has announced the 6^th March 2014, the 2013 winner of the most innovative hospitality technology award.

HTNG is a global non-for profit organization that coordinates and articulates the technologies related to hotel industry. It aims in fostering the innovation in order to improve the guest experience, increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the professionals.

Hotel Technology Next Generation is a link between innovation, technical practices and the businesses.

It manages every year the most innovative hospitality technology award, during which a technology firm is elected as the most innovative of the year. Different hoteliers and consultants evaluate online or on-site, the technology firms who have developed products and services for the hospitality market. This year’s competition hosted 18 new entrants developing various technologies and systems mainly focused on guest service and entertainment.

The award opens each year a handful of possibilities for innovative firms as well as for hoteliers willing to cope with the continuous and perpetual changes of the technology landscape. 

The winner was the firm InnSpire. InnSpire is an hospitality solution which develops fully integrated technologies to improve the customer experience and the efficiency of the hotel. Indeed, it has systems for staff and resources planning with alerts when there is a peak. It also has a communication software to increase the interaction with the guests, in the case of special requirements or just for a simple room-service order. It enables hotel to follow instantly the activity of their establishments and have a overall view of their sales and for example who are their most profitable clients. 
The awarded service is their streaming solution: guests can easily and wirelessly load their own contents (movies, games, music, photos) from their devices directly to the TV in their room. This technology is possible via the Innspire box; guests just need to activate the system via the TV and connect their IPhone, IPad, Android or Windows phones without any app downloading or any setting up.

This technology respond to a willingness to be connected at all time. It allows guests to be over-connected while travelling, it is a way to facilitate the access to their own data. It also develops value for the hotel implementing the technology, creating an intelligent environment. 

Though this technology seems to be fully integrated in the hospitality industry, we can be critical and wonder if this type of technology wouldn't be a brake to the exploring and wandering implied by any kind of travel. Is the ease of digital accessibility in hotels will change the tourist behavior? 

Sources

Hotel News Resource http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article76818.html
HTNG Organization http://www.htng.org/press-releases/572

Video and Image: http://www.innspire.com

Amandine Peton & Mélanie Lesieur 

Travel is about telling stories: the use of social media

During the ITB exhibition in Berlin last week, we had the chance to attend the conference “How to seduce your consumers to your destination”. Keith Bellows, the editor-in-chief of the National Geographic, shared his experience about the influence of social media and called attention to the content provided by a destination. He said that a destination should offer slow, deep, personal and alternative messages to seduce consumers. Indeed, today it is not sufficient to deliver content. The aim, now, is to bring content that tells a story, like the article of Michael Cohn highlighting: http://rethinkingsocialmedia.com/content-that-tells-a-story.

To be effective, a business should be persuasive and build trust with its consumers according to the article, “the success of your business using social media is based on the relationships that you develop and maintain”. Best businesses’ contents are those that tell stories. Stories can illustrate businesses’ point of view by setting the testimony of a lambda customer with whom readers could easily identify. In other words, by offering high-quality, excitement, creativity, educational content, a business could have the opportunity to convince people. The goal here is to touch the audience by “enhancing, sharing, internalizing, understanding, engaging” content. Words, images, videos, events are such tools which allow to bring sense at a personal level and tell a story.

What are the implications for the use of social media in the travel industry? Airlines, tour-operators, hotels and DMOs are continuously looking for enhancing their content. Each actors of the sector want to attract people attention, seduce new consumers, etc. They compete on the way they provide content, without really know how to succeed in. Social media has to be used to be closer to consumers, to develop and create lasting relationship with readers.

To promote themselves, some destinations even use bloggers or social media influencers to communicate in a more personal way. Most of the time, they are invited to visit a particular destination, and then, they have the ability to tell their own story, share their own experience, putting the reader at the same level. Thanks to bloggers’ intermediaries the destination is talking with travelers and not talking at them. The advantages of this methods are numerous: since they are already established on the web, bloggers have more facility to touch the audience (Caroline Makepeace, through http://www.bloggingstandards.com/travel-industry-bloggers), their messages are authentic and the destination save money (running a blog is a work you can do everywhere you have internet access and doesn’t cost a lot). Of course, this way of communication doesn’t replace the marketing work done by a destination but it can complement it very well.

This clever use of social media gives more credibility to the destination and can lead to a better integration of the local population. Who can better talk about a destination if not its inhabitants? Blogs offer a place of interaction for travelers and locals that can lead to meetings and a better understanding of the local cultures. Social media can contribute to the principles of sustainable tourism by creating a positive experience for both travelers and inhabitants.

So tell us a story and involve people!