NATIONAL REPORT—Whether it’s celebrating an anniversary, receiving an award, earning a certification, debuting a new product or expanding the business, hotel companies and vendors achieve new milestones on a daily basis. Here’s a look at recent accomplishments:
Outrigger Hospitality Group Launches #OutriggerCares
Outrigger Hospitality Group has launched its #OutriggerCares initiative, a global platform aimed at providing support and offering resources to local communities, including Hawaii, Mauritius and Thailand.
Through #OutriggerCares, the brand has offered housing for healthcare heroes in Hawaii; delivered meals in Mauritius; and donated personal protective equipment (PPE) to a hospital in Phuket, Thailand.
As the brand looks ahead to welcoming future guests, Outrigger’s Clean Commitment will be rolled out company-wide to calibrate even higher cleanliness standards, in addition to a number of revitalization projects, including guestroom transformations and significant enhancements to public spaces.
ProfitSword Joins Special Edition of In Clear Focus Podcast
ProfitSword recently took part in a special edition of the “In Clear Focus” Podcast with the goal of providing industry professionals with the latest expert insight over how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected business intelligence operations. Hosted by Bigeye, the special edition podcast is now freely available online and features up-to-date industry observations and guidance by several ProfitSword company leadership figures.
With the hospitality and senior living industries among the hardest hit by the current crisis, the podcast provides details on how the pandemic is creating a unique set of challenges with regard to ensuring financial stability and meeting organizational needs when compared to previous economic downturns or emergencies. ProfitSword’s representatives further offer guidance on what business intelligence and data management practices are best designed to provide hoteliers and senior living community operators with the greatest probability of success in quickly identifying new organizational priorities, and how to leverage business performance data to ensure the most effective response.
UniFocus Adds New Product Feature Using ADR
To support hotels in identifying the best staffing strategies for this environment, UniFocus has added unique functionality to enable hotels to use ADR as a dimension in calculating work standards.
The UniFocus system has always enabled properties to calculate flexible labor costs based on volume related to required hours. The addition of ADR as a factor utilized by the system makes it easy for properties to use a more difficult three-dimensional calculation of work standards, which serves as a better strategic fit when looking at staffing requirements during the post COVID-19 recovery period.
“With the standard two-dimensional approach to work standards, managers are often left to figure out how to maintain margins in periods of low ADR. This can take hours of their time,” said UniFocus CEO Mark Heymann, “As properties engage in recovery efforts, managers will find themselves busier than ever. By building the ADR factor into work standards up front, it becomes a much more seamless process that enables managers to use smart tools, such as automated scheduling, to save significant time each week so they can remain on the floor where they are needed.”
Ideas Releases Revenue Management Online Learning to Public
Ideas has made its Revenue Management Foundations courses available free of charge to the global revenue management community. Additionally, it has added the William F. Harrah College of Hospitality, University of Nevada, Las Vegas to its growing list of academic partners.
Ideas continues to foster and support tomorrow’s revenue and commercial leaders with educational opportunities:
- Delivering easy access to learning tools: To enable ongoing education in revenue management, Ideas has ungated its online learning resources. Ideas Revenue Management Foundations are interactive, self-paced courses that lay the foundation upon which hotels and parking businesses can build a solid commercial success framework. Designed for those refreshing their education through self-study and students in hospitality programs globally, topics include forecasting, inventory management, demand-based pricing and more.
- Partnering with leading schools of hospitality: In addition to Ideas’ participation on the advisory board of the Leland C. and Mary M. Pillsbury Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship at Cornell University’s S.C. College of Business Hotel School, the company has partnered with UNLV’s College of Hospitality to work toward building a new curriculum path for students focused on revenue management, commercial leadership and hotel technologies.
- Investing in future revenue and commercial leaders: Revenue management roles have increasingly become an essential part of strategic leadership. Revenue and commercial leaders can creatively guide organizations through difficult periods. They act as essential strategists for recovery efforts as the complexion of how they manage their revenue and total profit optimization becomes apparent in the months and years to come.
Crave Interactive Launches ServeSafely
Crave Interactive has launched ServeSafely, a range of solutions that enable restaurants to protect staff and customers by using technology to maintain social distancing at all times and eliminate the need to handle menus, cash or payment terminals.
Crave’s ServeSafely solutions include ordering and payment via mobile phone at the table, and host greeting and seating at a safe distance using video and messaging communications. Services are accessed instantly by pointing a phone camera at a QR code displayed at the table. There is no need to download an app.
“COVID -19 and the need for social distancing means a rethink of how customers are served safely, and how staff are protected from the risk of infection.” explained Gareth Hughes, founder/CEO of Crave Interactive. “We’ve looked at every part of the restaurant experience and have adapted our technology to solve the many potential risks in traditional service. This includes maintaining safe distance from staff and other customers at all times, and avoiding handling paper menus, cash and payment machines, all of which could be transmitters of COVID-19 from one customer to the next.”