This week’s Partner News is highlighted by Hotel Effectiveness expanding its industry partnerships, IDeaS winning two Brandon Hall Group Human Capital Management (HCM) Excellence Awards and the Rise Uptown Hotel in Phoenix implementing Agilysys Stay PMS. Read about all that and more below.
Hotel Effectiveness expands support for the hospitality industry
Labor technology provider Hotel Effectiveness is increasing its investment in the industry via strategic partnerships and unique sponsorships, illustrating the importance of industry alliances. Recently awarded a second “Hottest Technology” honor during the annual Americas Lodging Investment Summit (ALIS), Hotel Effectiveness continues to lead hospitality innovation and easy-to-use technology to promote property-level growth and success.
Hotel Effectiveness is now a silver alliance partner with AAHOA and is expanding its sponsorships and collaborations to assist one of the most affected industries during the continued uncertainty of the U.S. hotel industry due to COVID-19. Hotel Effectiveness will provide AAHOA and its members exclusive productivity, wage and labor benchmarks to improve operating performance and overall profitability in today’s challenging market conditions.
Hotel Effectiveness is currently working to gather new labor data and statistics from hotels across the U.S. for the upcoming labor insights and budgeting guide that is set to be released this fall.
IDeaS wins two management excellence awards
IDeaS won two of Brandon Hall Group Human Capital Management (HCM) Excellence Awards for its client enablement efforts.
The company won the Gold award in “Best Use of Performance Support” in the Learning category and the Silver Excellence in Learning award for “Best Advance in Creating an Extended Enterprise Learning Program” for its G3 RMS activation program.
Entries were evaluated by a panel of veteran, independent senior industry experts, Brandon Hall Group analysts and executives based upon these criteria: fit the need, design of the program, functionality, innovation and overall measurable benefits.
Rise Uptown Hotel implements Agilysys Stay PMS
Agilysys Inc. has revealed that the Rise Uptown Hotel in Phoenix has implemented the cloud-native SaaS PMS solution Agilysys Stay.
The Rise Uptown Hotel is a locally owned, boutique property located in one of Phoenix’s most iconic neighborhoods. With Agilysys Stay PMS, the Rise Uptown staff now welcome guests at check-in with ready access to guest preferences allowing them to connect on a more personal level. With an easy-to-use browser-based UI, Agilysys Stay offers fast time-to-value, through improved operational efficiency and elevated guest service.
Due to its breadth of features and ease-of-use, Agilysys Stay is being implemented broadly across hotels of all sizes, scaling from the largest resort hotels and multi-site chains through mid-size properties of any type to limited-service hotels and small boutique establishments.
HEI Properties identifies $165K in group business with Knowland
Knowland has completed a project with HEI Hotels & Resorts designed specifically to help select properties reinvigorate their sales teams and prepare them for the next phase of recovery. Using the Knowland platform, HEI properties in Boston and Atlanta collectively identified $165K in opportunities during COVID in just two weeks of prospecting.
Over a four-week period, Knowland worked with two HEI properties to provide prospecting training, access to meeting and event data plus sales engagement tools to improve the efficiency of the proactive sales outreach. In conjunction with Master Connection Associates, Knowland implemented a sales refresher program and best-practices training. Teams received engagement tools such as email templates, sample LinkedIn messages and email subject lines to improve the efficiency and success of their outreach.
By incorporating Knowland’s AI-powered insights and historical data into their outreach efforts, a small staff of two (reduced from a staff of 12 during the pandemic) at the Westin Waltham, Boston, quickly sourced new business opportunities with the help of Knowland data. They were also able to refresh their sales prospect list by identifying 46 contacts across several target accounts. The Whitley in Atlanta identified two hidden gem opportunities that resulted in group event opportunities in 2022 in the higher education and healthcare industries.
Amadeus launches Agency360+
Understanding the need for greater business travel insights, Amadeus has innovated to expand visibility into leisure and business travel performance with the launch of Agency360+. The solution helps hoteliers build the most effective leisure and corporate strategies with the widest and most detailed array of business intelligence data beyond GDS channels. Now in one streamlined user experience, hoteliers can gain a better understanding of historical and forward-looking leisure and corporate business bookings at their property, in their competitive set, and in their market.
For more than 20 years, Agency360 has been the industry’s only solution to provide visibility into 100% of travel agent bookings from the three major travel distributors. Agency360+ expands the depth of insights into agency and corporate accounts to also include corporate production, booking volume, room nights and ADR, providing hoteliers with unprecedented visibility and opportunities to build strategic business plans.
The new Agency360+ solution has also evolved to incorporate forward-looking market insights from Amadeus’ Demand360® solution. This includes Amadeus intelligent markets, a proprietary algorithm that allows hoteliers to compare their property’s performance to their closest competitive set within their broader geographic market. By taking guesswork out of the equation, hoteliers are empowered to make more informed decisions using accurate on-the-books data that is refreshed three times per week—a dynamic that is critical with short booking lead times influenced by the pandemic.