Category Archives: Technology

Hospitality Industry Security Update: “Word to the Wise: Phone Scam Targets Hotel Guests”

“…The callers are very convincing. According to hotel guests targeted by this scam,front desk the caller sounds very professional. However, hotels generally handle any questions about billing at the front desk, not over the phone. And they certainly wouldn’t be calling you in the middle of the night…”

Many travelers are trying to squeeze in last-minute vacations before schools are back in full swing. Unfortunately, scammers know this and may try to trick you into divulging your credit card information by posing as hotel employees. The Better Business Bureau warns travelers to beware of a telephone phishing scam designed to steal credit card numbers.

Hotel guests across the nation are alerting local BBBs of the increased popularity of this scam. Since travel and hotel stays tend to increase during the summer, the scammers ramp up their efforts during this time.

For more: http://bit.ly/1ou7mUV

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Filed under Crime, Guest Issues, Hotel Industry, Risk Management, Technology

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “Amid Backlash, Hotel Rescinds $500 Fines For “Negative” Online Reviews”

“…San Francisco Magazine ran a long-form piece last week on the complex relationship between businesses and Yelp,500 fines for negative reviews with San Francisco chef Jeff Mason summarizing the Yelp game like this: ‘You’re in it whether you want to be or not, and that’s what’s so frustrating.’ Even a minuscule number of negative reviews can have a disproportionately large detrimental effect on a business’s margins…”

Apparently recognizing that restaurants and hotels can live and die by their online ratings, the Union Street Guest House in Hudson, NY included a table-turning clause in their reservation policies: if you book an event at the hotel and a member of your party posts a negative review, the hotel will fine you $500.

For more: http://bit.ly/1kDwLkk

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Filed under Guest Issues, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Social Media, Technology

Hospitality Industry Technology Update: “Voyat Launches With $1.8M In Seed Funding For Social CRM Tool Aimed At Hotels”

“…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.Voyat 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.

For more: http://bit.ly/1koFcQs

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Filed under Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Social Media, Technology

Hospitality Industry Management Update: “8 Ways to Improve Guest Satisfaction”

“…The days are gone, Craig said, when travelers respond to “fantasy photos and fairy-tale descriptions on a website.Happy travelers 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…”

An organized and diligent approach to the management of social media and online reputation is a sure way to improve a hotel’s guest satisfaction scores, speakers said Tuesday during a webinar.

“We have very discerning guests with high expectations, so online reputation management is very important in the luxury hotel segment in which we operate,” said Anna Kavelmann, corporate coordinator of digital strategy for Geneva-based Kempinski Hotels, during a webinar titled “Guest satisfaction: 8 best practices,” hosted by ReviewPro.

For more: http://bit.ly/1AyPphH

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Filed under Employee Practices, Guest Issues, Hotel Employees, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Technology

Hospitality Industry Security Update: “Hilton Turns Smartphones Into Room Keys”

“…Ensuring that the technology can be used safely may not be that easy. In September 2012, according to a report published two months later by Forbes, an IT services consultant for Dell returned to her Hyatt room in Houston,hotelkeys 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…”

Hilton Worldwide plans to allow guests to check-in and choose their rooms using mobile devices, and even to unlock their hotel rooms.

By the end of the year, Hilton says it will offer digital check-in and room selection at 11 of its brands, across more 4,000 properties. The service will be available to Hilton HHonors members in more than 80 countries, the company said.

“We analyzed data and feedback from more than 40 million HHonors members, as well as guest surveys, social media posts, and review sites, and it’s clear that guests want greater choice and control,” said Geraldine Calpin, SVP and global head of digital at Hilton Worldwide, in a statement.

For more: http://ubm.io/1la55xX

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Filed under Crime, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Technology

Hospitality Industry Technology Update: “Innovator: Marriott Official Says Technology Will Play a Growing Role in Your Hotel Stay”

“…What we clearly know is not every guest wants to walk into a hotel and not talk to anybody. At a premium brand like JW or Marriott, they want both. If I’m on a vacation and I’m at a resort,Cahill_606 I’m probably going to spend a lot of time talking to a person. If I’m on a business trip and I’m checking in at 11 at night and getting up at 5 in the morning, I may want to bypass people. We’re looking at every aspect of our business model and trying to understand how does technology enhance it from a customer standpoint and a business standpoint…”

From check-in to check-out and every service in between, Marriott International is evaluating ways that technology can improve its hotel business. In an industry where customer service is paramount, that means a strategy that blends high tech with high touch, says Paul Cahill , senior vice president of brand management for Marriott Hotels.

Cahill oversees the company’s flagship hotel chain and the one where it pilots new technologies before rolling them out to other properties. To date, those technologies include a broad range of mobile services to ease guests’ stay inside the hotel, as well as experimentation with text messaging, social networking and location-based services.

For more: http://wapo.st/X4mEKs

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Filed under Guest Issues, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Technology

Hospitality Industry Security Update: “How Best to Battle Against Cybercriminals”

“…As part of the plan, properties should be aware of laws pertaining to data breach disclosure,CyberCriminal-620x330 educate staff on protocols, contact law enforcement to see who would have jurisdiction in the case of a breach, and put outside data monitoring and incident response teams on retainer…”

Hotels, the bad guys have their beady eyes on you.

“The more credit cards you have, the more interesting you are to someone,” says Suzanne Widup, senior analyst with Verizon’s RISK team. “You have data that they want.”

The hotel industry has a big target on its back, agrees Chris Pogue, director at Trustwave, an information security technology and services company, specifically because property management systems, food and beverage, and retail all reside under one roof and a central integration server consolidates all this customer data.

For more: http://bit.ly/Uy6szg

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Filed under Crime, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Technology, Training

Hospitality Industry Security Update: “Black Hat Preview Shows Hotels, IoT Vulnerable to Hacks”

“…With an increasing number of devices connected to the Internet, the use of insecure or improperly configured devices and protocols becomes a greater riskalertsystem1…Insecurity at hotel locations overall is not a new topic for the Black Hat conference. Back in 2012, security researcher Cody Brocious detailed an open-source system he built that could hack into hotel key-card systems…”

During a session at the upcoming Black Hat security conference that starts Aug. 5 in Las Vegas, independent security consultant Jesus Molina is set to expose the risks of hotel automation systems. In a Black Hat preview webcast July 18, Molina provided a few details on his talk “Learn How to Control Every Room at a Luxury Hotel Remotely: The Dangers of Insecure Home Automation Deployment.”

For more: http://bit.ly/1k8qtsB

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Filed under Crime, Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Social Media, Technology, Theft

Hospitality Industry Technology Update: “In Marriott’s Newest Flagship, Tech is all Behind the Scenes and in Your Hand”

“…Research is showing that more hotel guests are starting to demand certain techie features.marriott-marquis-exterior Research company SmartBrief found that 45 percent of hotels guests travel with two mobile devices – 40 percent carry three. And with these devices, guests are demanding more charging options, mobile-based automated services like check-in/check-out, digital signage in the lobby, sophisticated meeting rooms, and customer service via social media…”

As technology continues to dictate our everyday lives, we seemingly anticipate our environment to respond in the same manner. There are numerous products designed to make our homes smarter, and even restaurants are using tablets to do away with traditional wait staff. In the travel and hospitality sector, some hotels are adapting to new tech trends by adding things like automated blinds, TVs embedded in bathroom mirrors, sophisticated radios with iPhone docks, iPads in lounges, or even a robotic luggage handler (it’s real, it’s called the Yobot, and it’s at the Yotel in New York City).

For more: http://bit.ly/1mobXr6

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Filed under Hotel Industry, Management And Ownership, Social Media, Technology

Hospitality Industry Security Update: “Secret Service Warns Hotels of Data Theft”

“…Given that users at hotels use public computers to check email, print boarding passes, pay for travel arrangements and download private business information,SecretService it’s not too hard to imagine what an imaginative hacker could do with this information. Worse still, there isn’t much that even a savvy hotel operator can do to prevent this misuse…”

The Secret Service has confirmed what you’ve probably suspected for a long time: Public computers at hotels are ridiculously insecure, and you’re taking a gamble with your personal data each time you use one.

For more: http://fxn.ws/1rk6Pfg

 

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Filed under Crime, Guest Issues, Hotel Industry, Maintenance, Management And Ownership, Privacy, Technology, Theft