“…For example, he would be welcomed to a property he had visited 20 times before and asked by the front desk if this was his first visit.
The hotels had no knowledge of who he was or how often he had visited. Habbel believes this is due in large part to the impact of online booking, which has taken the customer relationship away from the hotel and given it to the third-party booking engines. Voyat is an attempt to return control of the customer experience to hotels…”
Voyat, a social CRM tool aimed at the hotel industry, came out of stealth today and announced $1.8M in seed funding from Metamorphic Ventures, Eniac Ventures, BoxGroup and several angel investors, including Brett Crosby, who was co-founder of Google Analytics.
Metamorpic Ventures is led by David Hirsch, who worked out of Google’s New York office for 8 years.
These Google connections should come as little surprise given one of Voyat’s co-founders, Benjamin Habbel, worked for Google from 2010-2012, serving for a time as Marissa Mayer’s chief of staff.
The product aims to bring the hotel industry into the 21st century by giving them more insight into hotel customer behavior both online and on-site. Habbel says the idea for the company was born out of his own frustration as a frequent traveler.
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If you don’t deliver on your promises, guests will be disappointed and that leads to backlash…it doesn’t matter whether operating a 2-star, 3-star or 5-star star hotel, it’s important to strive to exceed expectations. He said all guests arrive with expectations, so operators have a choice…”
Texas, to find her laptop stolen. The hotel concluded that the thief had entered the room by exploiting a vulnerability in a digital lock made by Onity. The vulnerability had been disclosed at the Black Hat security conference in July, 2012, and Onity said it shipped a fix to customers the following month…”
