“Google earbuds speaks in tongues, how good is AI analytics, and Delta doesn’t want to do free upgrades anymore”

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Co-Hosts
Holly Zoba
Robert Cole
Edward St.Onge

Topics

Here are the top ten stories:

Guest Experience

1. Google’s New Earbuds With Real-Time Translation Have Huge Implications for Travel

Google’s New Earbuds With Real-Time Translation Have Huge Implications for Travel

Startups

2. Marriott learns from accelerator as 2017 winners take off
https://www.tnooz.com/article/articlemarriott-learns-from-testbed-accelerator

Intermediaries

3. Hotelbeds Eyes a Viable Wholesaler Path in the Shadows of Priceline and Expedia

Hotelbeds Eyes a Viable Wholesaler Path in the Shadows of Priceline and Expedia

Brand Compensation

4. An Analysis of Franchise Fees
http://www.cbrehotels.com/EN/Research/Pages/An-Analysis-Of-Franchise-Fees.aspx

Strategy

5. Advanced analytics in hospitality
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/advanced-analytics-in-hospitality

Loyalty

6. Delta’s New CEO: Giving Away Upgrades for Loyalty No Longer Makes Sense

Delta’s New CEO: Giving Away Upgrades for Loyalty No Longer Makes Sense

Las Vegas

7. Guests Scanned at the Wynn in Glimpse of Las Vegas’s Future
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-03/guests-inspected-at-the-wynn-in-glimpse-of-las-vegas-s-future

8. MGM creates a new sizzle video (a before & after comparison)
2016 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6tWhUy1uY4
2017 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51yrzw6jWns (2:43) or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=930JwVp3Qu4(1:00)

Entrepreneurship

9. Student Entrepreneur Rob Karp Is Miles Ahead
https://sha.cornell.edu/blog/2017/10/03/student-entrepreneur-rob-karp-is-miles-ahead

How Hotels Get Hostile with Guests and How Guests Respond

10. Report: U.S. Lodging Industry Fees and Surcharges Forecast to Increase to New Record in 2017

Report: U.S. Lodging Industry Fees and Surcharges Forecast to Increase to New Record in 2017

11. Man tries to escape hotel bill by crossing a telephone wire over to the next building
http://mashable.com/2017/10/02/china-cross-building-telephone-wire

While AI is certainly an amazing opportunity for the hospitality industry to leverage more complex data for efficiency and personalization, the industry is still not using the simplest forms of data that are currently available to them. 80%+ of independent hotels who come to us aren’t even tracking the conversion events on their online booking engine because of it being “too difficult” to get cross-domain tracking to work or because their booking engine vendor doesn’t integrate with Google Analytics. Of the folks that do have the data available to them, a lot don’t analyze it to gain insights or make decisions.