It’s been a few weeks since HITEC Minneapolis wrapped up, and we’re still filtering through all of the new and innovative technology that was presented or demonstrated during the conference. With over 390 exhibitors with their products on display, there were a lot of contenders for the title of “best” hospitality tech offering. And while we just can’t decide on which one that is, we’ve managed to come up a list of our top 10 from HITEC 2019.

1. HCN DineIn

Allow your guests to dine in or order out from HCN’s guestroom Navigator tablet and the DineIN app. Whether your hotel offers room service, wants to find a profitable replacement or is looking to promote dining on property, DineIN has a solution. The DineIN application is fully customizable to your hotel needs and can fully integrate with a PMS and POS.

• Onsite food and beverage: take reservations, promote your onsite restaurant and grab and go options. Allow guests to order from their tablet and have the food delivered to their room or pick it up in a designated location. Digital menus and instant menu updates ensure fast and accurate ordering and reach every guest.
• Digital room service: Improve the guest experience and generate more revenue. Through innovative up-selling techniques, DineIn have proven a 20% increase in room service orders.
• Delivery from local restaurants: Local restaurants are hand picked to provide a wide variety of local dining options to guests at the same price they would have paid if they visited the restaurant, plus a small delivery fee All menus are digital and orders are placed directly from the tablets and delivered the guest in the comfort of their room. The hotel can integrate and allow guests to bill this service directly to their room or pay via credit card, and the hotel gets a share of the revenues.

2. Ivy Smart Concierge

Go Moment’s Ivy is the world’s first automated guest engagement platform, powered by artificial intelligence. Ivy can help to welcome guests and answer routine guest inquiries via a messaging service, reducing call volumes and wait times, freeing up hotel staff to focus on face-to-face interactions. It can also help to book restaurant or spa reservations, fulfill certain guest requests, send customized incentives, and obtain guest feedback in real time, allowing management to respond to negative experiences before they are posted online.

3. Angie Family Guest Room Assistants

Angie Hospitality has expanded their product line of virtual guest room assistants to include the Angie Spark, Angie Luxe and Angie Luxe+. Each model can help to address a specific set of needs, giving guests 24-hour access to amenities and services, and the ability to control certain aspects of their hotel experience through technology.

With Angie Spark’s sleek, space-saving design, hotels can provide guests the ability to request services such as housekeeping, room service, or maintenance, learn more about the hotel amenities, such as the spa or gym, and they can also use the device to stream music, obtain traffic or weather updates, schedule wake-up calls, and more.

The Angie Luxe and Luxe+ models offer the additional benefits of voice and touch technology, bluetooth speakers, nightlight functionality, USB charging ports and the option of a telephone module. Hoteliers can select the model and customization options to best fit their property’s specific requirements.

4. Vostio Location

ASSA ABLOY’s new Vostio Location Solutions platform uses IoT and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology to instantly pinpoint the exact location of a staff alert signal by floor and room number. With each employee equipped with their own alert device, first responders are sent a text message with the relevant information the moment the button is pressed.

Other feature sets will include the offsetting of operational costs by overseeing the performance of motorized systems, such as elevators, HVAC units, escalators and refrigerators. Using AI and BLE sensors, this can help to provide hoteliers with the ability to identify and correct any maintenance issue as soon as it’s realized.

Future enhancements of the platform will include the ability to use BLE beacons to determine the location of guests, once they have downloaded the hotel’s app on their mobile device. This functionality can increase additional revenue opportunities by sending promotional messaging relevant to where the guest is located on the property — for example, if they are walking past the spa.

5. Jamf

As more hotels are offering integrations with Apple TV, Jamf offers the ability the manage the “Apple ecosystem” to create a seamless and interconnected experience between Apple devices (such as Apple TV, iPads, iPhones).

Harness the power of Apple TV and provide a digital, branded onboarding experience for guests at any location. From personalized digital signage in lobbies to custom Apple TV apps in rooms, guests will feel right at home. With remote wipe and restart commands, you can troubleshoot in-room media anytime, from anywhere.

6. SABAGuest

SABAGuest’s automated communication solution won the HITEC 2019 People’s Choice Award. Setting a new standard for breaking down language barriers and engaging guests in meaningful, personalized interactions. Using AI-based technology, the solution will automatically answer guest questions, take requests, manage complaints, and make recommendations – all in the guest’s own native language! This is a tool that truly breaks down language barriers between hotel staff and their international guests.

Additional features also allow guests to order all their food and beverage, make booking requests and view property specials and promotions. All this functionality is accessible via the guests own mobile device, without the need for downloads, and is 100% customizable to meet the needs of each individual property.

7. Skylight

“Smart cities cannot exist without smart buildings”. Designed for hotels, the Site 1001 Skylight tool is an A.I.-backed, cloud-based platform that lets users combine and use Place Data—information from internal occupant commentary, building systems, IoT sensors, financials, third-party apps, weather, traffic, and more—to connect buildings to cities, and make both of them truly “smart”.

With Skylight, you can pull in data from your BMS, utility meters, and other systems and see how your building is working. With that information at your fingertips, you can make smarter, more responsive decisions to help your building be more efficient, comfortable and desirable for your guests. Whether it’s temperature and humidity variations, occupancy and in-building traffic flow, or even detecting hidden water leaks or faulty systems, Skylight’s platform supports dozens of IoT manufacturers and hundreds of different sensor types. Skylight pulls all your building data together into a single platform that everyone can use to improve building operations and performance.

8. REVA

The REVA Hospitality platform is made up of the core REVA Anywhere platform and five additional enhancement modules (REVA Pay, Host, Max, Loyalty and Scheduling) to help your hotel maximize its revenue and guest satisfaction potential for food and beverage, activities, spa, and other hotel services, allowing your guests to order anything, wherever and whenever they like during their stay.

Guests use their own device, in their own language and can pay using credit or debit cards, ewallets or even WeChat to manage restaurant reservations, loyalty programs, spa or activity appointments and more. With the ability to full integrate to PMS and POS, REVA can help deliver a seamless guest experience.

9. TrustYou

TrustYou’s Guest Messaging solution uses hotel software messaging and social media channels to communicate with your guests before, during, and after their stay. Providing real-time service, hotels can quickly respond to guest messages with saved templates and automated replies, and have the ability  to assign multiple guest conversations directly to staff members. Staff members get notified and can efficiently manage through one shared inbox, ensuring guest issues are resolved in less time.

Benefit from multiple communication channels to engage and keep guests informed, manage guest expectations, and offer upgrades.

10. GuestMagic.AI

InnSpire’s GuestMagic.AI is a scalable AI-driven software platform that delivers a personalized guest journey. The system uses machine learning and opt-in social media to break down each guests’ historical data, then enhances all technical touch-points that the guest encounters during their stay. As a result, each guest is delivered a hotel experience that caters directly to their individual needs, highlighting onsite amenities and local activities that are catered to their specific preferences. Whether the guest is an outdoor enthusiast, foodie or just traveling for business, they will be provided with a more relevant and compelling experience.

GuestMagic.AI also integrates advanced facial recognition technology to establish basic levels of categorization before integrating actual personal data. The system will anonymously map guests entering the hotel as male/female, age, type of traveler and even mood – to help the hotel staff cater better to each guest and, when possible, also enhance all the digital touch points as the guest journeys through the property.

—

While these are just some of our favourite tools presented at HITEC 2019, there are many other tech platforms and integrations available that can improve the overall success of your hotel. The key is to determine which area of your property or operations needs improvement, and how technology might be able to help.

RoomKeyPMS makes delivering great guest experiences easier at every step of the guest lifecycle. Contact our team today to learn how to keep guest satisfaction high, while increasing revenue and lowering costs. 

Photo Credit: Alex Knight on Unsplash