This week’s Partner News is highlighted by M3 and Asksuite winning Hotel Tech Awards; Virgin Hotels expanding its partnership with InnSpire; and myDigitalOffice receiving a strategic investment from Cove Hill Partners. Read about all that and more below.
More from the Hotel Tech Awards…
M3 and Asksuite were honored with Hotel Tech Awards, organized by Hotel Tech Report.
M3’s flagship product, Accounting Core received the 2022 HotelTechAward for Best Reporting & Accounting Software. In 2021, M3’s Accounting Core usage grew by 110 customers accounting for 286 hotel properties throughout North America. The exponential growth that M3 experienced in 2021 aided the company as it focused on product enhancements and industry partnerships that improve user experience and drive savings to its customers’ bottom line.
M3 had a total of 78 free enhancements for Accounting Core alone in 2021 and completed 60,419 technical support cases throughout the year, with a 97% satisfaction rate. The enhancements included but are not limited to bank reconciliation with transactions from the bank, global tax settings and configurations, updated filtering options throughout AP, invoice copying, mass invoice payment method and mass invoice approval/unapproval updates.
For the third year in a row, Asksuite has been named the Best Livechat & Chatbot based on 177 customer reviews. By leveraging Asksuite’s chatbot solution, hotels can instantaneously push past sales’ blockers to drive direct reservations at scale.
Asksuite’s solution has developed tremendously over the past years, and the solution today is much more than a hotel chatbot. The company provides a full customer service solution that enables hotel reservation agents to improve their sales performances while decreasing the operational demand in customer service through Artificial Intelligence (AI). Asksuite’s omnichannel platform has more than 200 features to help hotels increase sales and revenue in each customer interaction.
The awards rank and evaluate more than 200 of the top hotel technology products worldwide to deliver the ultimate list of best-in-class software products, based on customer feedback, integration compatibility, organizational health, partner network strength and customer support quality.
Virgin Hotels expands partnership with InnSpire
InnSpire, a leading provider of a comprehensive technology suite that helps drive a seamless guest experience for hotels and brands globally, has expanded its partnership with Virgin Hotels following the successful implementation of its suite of guest connectivity and contactless compatible solutions at the newly opened Virgin Hotels Las Vegas (shown above).
Virgin Hotels now leverages its partnership with InnSpire to create a fully integrated hub of guest services that can simultaneously address demands for experience personalization, instant convenience and reduced surface contact across four of the brand’s properties, including Virgin Hotels Dallas, Virgin Hotels Nashville and Virgin Hotels New Orleans, in addition to its Las Vegas property. As Virgin Hotels continues its expansion to new locations across the globe, InnSpire will also deploy its solutions in the upcoming Virgin Hotels New York, Virgin Hotels Edinburgh and Virgin Hotels Glasgow properties, providing more of the brand’s guests with access to seamless and contactless control.
Virgin Hotel guests can exert total control over their entire guestroom environment by using InnSpire’s advanced television system, which integrates Inncom and Lutron smart room automation services to allow guests to adjust in-room lighting, thermostats and drapes. Guests can also use the smart television system to instantly access other property amenities such as the Virgin Hotels Marketplace, which integrates Agilysys’ POS system to allow guests to place room service orders and browse food and beverage promotions, or contact property staff without leaving the comfort and safety of their rooms.
Outrigger recognized for environmental stewardship
Five of Outrigger Hospitality Group’s Hawaii properties—Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort, Outrigger Reef Waikiki Beach Resort, Waikiki Beachcomber by Outrigger, Waikiki Malia by Outrigger and OHANA Waikiki East by Outrigger—have been awarded accolades for exceptional environmental stewardship from the State of Hawaii’s Green Business Program. The properties were acknowledged for undertaking energy efficiency and sustainable business practices to advance Hawaii’s clean energy and sustainability goals.
The five properties selected have contributed greatly to Hawaii’s clean energy and sustainability goals with a reduction of water, waste and electricity. Business practices and initiatives range from offering reusable water bottles to secure bike storage and repairs for guests and hosts (employees), as well as recyclable take-out containers. The properties have also replaced incandescent bulbs with CFLs, low-voltage track lighting, LEDs and other energy-efficient lighting systems.
Outrigger’s Waikīkī properties have not only infused these environmentally friendly business practices operationally, but also continue to encourage guests, hosts and community members alike to practice responsible travel, consumption and sustainability from check-in to checkout.
myDigitalOffice receives strategic investment from Cove Hill Partners
myDigitalOffice, a leading provider of software to hotel brands, operators and owners, has received a strategic investment from Cove Hill Partners to support the company in its next phase of growth.
The investment from Cove Hill will position myDigitalOffice to continue its strong growth trajectory and leadership. Cove Hill’s financial commitment will support product innovation and development, enabling myDigitalOffice to expand its product and feature set to provide even more value to hotel owners, managers and brands around the world.
“Growing top line revenue while also optimizing the hotel’s bottom line is becoming increasingly difficult,” said Ali Moloo, founder/CEO, myDigitalOffice. “Our customers rely on MDO to deliver their daily hotel performance data, and supporting documents, in a way that’s easily accessible and digestible, actionable, consistent and accurate. Our tremendous growth, especially through a global pandemic, is a testament to our incredible people, customers and partners.”
He added, “This investment will greatly benefit our customers by fueling our hiring plans, accelerating our product development and innovation initiatives and solidifying MDO’s position as the hospitality industry’s de facto standard for hotel performance and information connectivity.”
INTELITY’s hospitality technology platform is now mobile responsive
INTELITY, the provider of a guest experience and staff management platform for the hospitality industry, has revealed the latest update to GEMS (Guest Experience Management System), the back-end to its proprietary platform. The patented GEMS system is used by hotels around the world to manage the many guest services offered by INTELITY’s cloud-based platform, but also for general ticketing, staff-to-staff work orders, device management and business intelligence. The new GEMS update includes several improvements to drive operational efficiency, as well as a redesign for mobile responsiveness.
The new features in the GEMS update include a vastly improved filtering system to make finding a specific guest or staff request easier than ever. A redesigned service request and work order user interface and supporting workflow is also included in the update. The new look and feel focuses on a summary card view with easy-to-digest information to enable staff members to quickly engage as appropriate, even during busy periods. Additionally, the new update supports a completely mobile responsive user interface for use on tablets and mobile devices without the need for a dedicated app download, giving hoteliers the same information across teams, whenever and wherever needed.
Raines improves owner reporting with Aptech’s Execuvue
A year ago, 19 properties in the Raines Co. portfolio went live with PVNG, a browser-based enterprise accounting tool from Aptech. The hospitality management, development and investment group operating the world’s leading hotel brands and boutique properties recently added Aptech’s newest version business intelligence tool, Execuvue.
Execuvue is Aptech’s IBM Cognos-based ASP business intelligence application. The solution makes custom reporting and data gathering intuitive. It helps operators make smarter business decisions and answer questions on the fly using AI-powered analytics. Execuvue’s “Dashboard” delivers images of financial and operational data to deliver actionable insights, and the drag-and-drop environment with predictive analytics creates visualizations based on data entered.
