The new system enables guests to alter lighting, temperature and make room service requests at the touch of a button. This smart system also lets hotel staff know if a room is occupied and helps them to respond quicker to guest requests, providing useful information to improve the guest experience, optimize operations and save energy.

The main selling point of the new system: the lights come on automatically when guests enter the room; lights, HVAC and other systems shut down to conserve energy when they leave. The guest room uses artificial intelligence to remember preferences and know when guests are in or not.

Interact uses an open API that enables its connection to a variety of hotel systems, so that real-time information can be fed into everything from housekeeping to engineering systems. This helps make hotel operations more efficient. It also benefits hotel managers by integrating lighting, sensors, HVAC and property management systems,  allowing them to monitor their entire property via a single dashboard.

One of the key operational benefits of Interact Hospitality is energy savings. In hot climates especially, HVAC can consume more than half of a hotel’s energy use. By using data from occupancy sensors located in guest rooms and information from PMS’s, Interact Hospitality can automatically turn down systems – including HVAC and lighting – when rooms are unoccupied. This allows managers to reduce electricity bills while ensuring rooms match guest preferences.

The room management system also displays information on room status so that staff do not reach out to guests unnecessarily. If a room is set to “Do Not Disturb,” the laundry delivery is automatically paused to respect guest wishes and save staff unnecessary trips and time. This also helps to increase staff satisfaction through more seamless processes.

The post Swissôtel The Stamford Turns on the Lights with New Room Management System appeared first on .

The event spaces are designed with all the right ingredients for successful meetings, perfectly located for transport links and attractions – and all come with complimentary, secure, multi-device Wi-Fi, excellent AV technology and food from our restaurants. Whether you hold a meeting at The May Fair Hotel or any Radisson Blu Edwardian, London hotel, we aim to orchestrate your event flawlessly.

Edwardian Hotels London are also engaged in a major development in Leicester Square, incorporating a luxury lifestyle hotel, restaurants, bars, spa and cinema.

Most Edwardian Hotels London properties are popular for business and social events, including weddings, drink receptions, press and product launches, AGMs and intimate private dining events to name a few. All meeting and event spaces are equipped with state-of-the-art presentation and communications technology, offering multi-device Wi-Fi as well as dedicated and fully trained hotel staff ensuring efficient operations. The destination restaurants offer bespoke, flexible menus and are available on-site for any event. Edwardian Hotels London has earned a reputation for delivering exceptional and consistent service for both business and social events. “Our meetings promise is simple,” the company states. “We offer flexibility, efficiency and reliability.”

Edwardian Hotels London owes at least part of its success in delivering on this “meetings promise” to its hospitality technology infrastructure – in particular, its advanced sales and catering management solution. In 2011, the company implemented OPERA Sales & Catering for event management operations. The next-generation solution is seamlessly integrated with the company’s Property Management System and other hospitality technologies across the enterprise.

According to Avi Schlagman, General Manager of Meetings and Events at Edwardian Hotels London, the events business accounts for more than 10 percent of the company’s overall revenue on a group level – not a small contribution, given the size and scope of its overall operations. He notes that upwards of 50 to 60 hotel staff use the sales and catering management solution at any given time.

“Everyone now has access to all the information they need in order to perform at a high level,” he says.

Equipped with powerful analytics, reporting tools and real-time booking engines, OPERA Sales & Catering provides a unified view and comprehensive account of all function space business operations across all 12 properties in the hotel collection. In addition, flexible options enable customization of the solution to fit the unique needs of each individual property. Aided by the solution’s intuitive features and graphical screens, hotel staff across different departments and functions quickly achieved proficiency in its operation.

Advanced features include fully customizable catering packages, instant menu creation and resource inventory control. The function diary includes multiple viewing options and drill down features that, according to Schlagman, provide a dramatic improvement over previous systems in terms of driving efficiency in event planning and coordination.

Also impressive are the solution’s sales management features, which include flexible booking options for multiple conference and meeting rooms and multiple events. Because the solution provides access to all relevant data on a real-time basis, account managers and sales reps can develop effective sales strategies with easy data sharing among the hotel sales offices and PMS or regional offices and hotels.

Regardless of location, account managers and sales reps gain single-point access to vital information they need. Identical customer account information, availability and controls are shared throughout the enterprise and are archived for future reference.

The benefits are obvious: If, for example, a group that hosted a meeting at one Edwardian Hotels London property now wants to rebook at a different property with the same parameters, there is no need to start from scratch.

“If a customer wants the exact same meeting setup that they had at a previous meeting at a different property, then we can simply copy and paste that booking,” Schlagman says. “All the details are readily available. We were not able to do that with our previous system.”

For his part, Schlagman relies on OPERA Sales & Catering for tracking an array of financial performance metrics, including expected event revenue, margins and final consumption based on customizable revenue types.

“I can easily analyze the performance of individual hotels, including booking conversions and function space utilization,” he says. “I can also take a holistic view of what’s going on in meeting and events for the entire group.”

Built-in business intelligence dashboards and ad-hoc analysis capabilities allow senior management to generate valuable insights about their function space operations as well as the sales and catering market as a whole. They can identify emerging trends, make comparisons and focus on business areas that may require attention.

Edwardian Hotels London prides itself on the enormous success that its meetings and events business has enjoyed over the past 40 years. But the company’s quest for continuous performance improvement across its sales and catering operation is never-ending. And it knows that sustaining such success and revenue growth lie in embracing hospitality technology innovation.

“We’re not resting on our laurels,” Schlagman says. “We’re constantly investing in technology upgrades. With every upgrade comes more functionality and better reporting capabilities that can help improve our event management operations.”

The post HTN Case Study: Edwardian Hotels Utilizes Next-Generation Sales and Catering appeared first on .

Henn-na (which aptly means both “strange” and “strange” in Japanese) Hotel first opened its doors in 2015 at Nagasaki’s Huis Ten Bosch theme park and has opened a second property in Tokyo’s high-end Ginza shopping district this week. Now the hotel’s parent company, H.I.S., has announced plans to construct eight more humanoid robot-staffed Henn-na Hotels. According to the company, the plan is to build four robot-staffed hotels in the Tokyo area this year and four others in Osaka, Fukuoka, and Kyoto.

While the hotel brand has so far enjoyed success in deploying robots as a way to both draw in business and reduce staffing costs, which are significant given the country’s shrinking population, the novelty of being greeted and served by robots is no doubt part of the draw for guest, which include a growing number of foreign tourists. The impact on staff reduction and cost savings is nothing short of monumental. Originally, 30 staff members were assigned to work at the 140-room hotel. The robotic staff and automated check-in system enabled H.I.S. to reduce the number of staff to seven.

According to H.I.S., the company created the hotel in part to respond to societal issues in Japan. Recent reports indicate that there may be a shortage of as many as 3,000 hotel rooms in Tokyo for the 2020 Olympics. Robot-staffed hotels may be part of the solution to this problem. Whether, and how soon, the concept translates into other geographic markets — including, perhaps, other planets — is yet to be determined.

The post Henn-na Hotels In Japan to Open Eight More Locations Staffed by Humanoid Robots appeared first on .