The Next Big Thing Innovator Spotlight shines a bright light on some of the most innovative companies and products in the travel and hospitality space. If you would like to be considered or know a company you would like to suggest, please click here. Our panel of gurus will review and select the innovators to be showcased on a monthly basis.
Innovator Spotlight
Proxce, Inc: Hotel check-in experience redefined
Proxce’s Proximity Identity Manager system uses BLE/iBeacons and geo fence to provide auto check-in and keyless entry to guest rooms for hospitality industry.
Working with hospitality partners Proxce is creating a secure and seamless hotel check-in experience. You don’t have to change the way you book hotels to use our auto check-in feature, book your hotel room from anywhere on any website, and if the hotel is one of our participating partners, then your room will be auto-assigned upon arrival.
You can then pick up your room keys from the guest services or walk up to your room directly. PIM notifies you with your assigned room number as soon as you arrive at the lobby – in real time.
You can review the room information and accept the room or request for a change right from your smart phone. No Kiosks. No QR code to scan. No learning curve. To enjoy the perks of auto check-in you have to download the app and register your device once, after that you are good to go.
To sign up for the beta, visit http://www.proxce.com/
Fantrotter: Music and Sports Fan’s Travel Dream
When people reflect on their lives, they never look back at their time spent traveling, listening to live music, or attending great games as time wasted.
Enter Fantrotter: Stubhub meets Kayak meets Trip Advisor that helps fans with travel arrangement, et al, so that they can travel to where they need to be, to get to the events and performers they want to see. Fantrotter kills four birds with one stone. Simply and elegantly. Empowering fans to literally follow their passions — music, sports, festivals, comedy, theater — and do more of what makes them happy.
Fantrotter is a free site that lets fans search the schedule of virtually any performer, and simultaneously shop the best prices for tickets, flights, hotels, and car rentals. Enter your favorite into www.fantrotter.com and see where it takes you.
Checkout the Q&A with Fantrotter founder Mike Coletta – read more…
Groupize Solutions Launches Long Awaited Instant Group Bookings for Hotels
Groupize Solutions, the leading online group booking platform for independent hotels, resorts, and chains, is pleased to announce the Instant Book version of their Group Booking Engine (GBE) as well as the introduction of the Groupize Hub mobile platform. Now organizers of reunions, weddings, tours, sports trips, family vacations and more can shop, book and manage their small group reservations in real-time on hotel websites and their mobile devices.
The award winning platform currently used by over 8000 hotels, is comprised of three integrated solutions to manage the complete lifecycle of a group and removes the hassles and challenges of booking small group travel. It allows the hotel and organizers to interact more productively by automating tedious tasks such displaying instant group rates and inventory, individual credit card payments, name changes, cancellations, deviations and upgrades. What used to take hours, including long phone calls with hotel reservation desk to get rates and hold rooms, signing contracts, inviting friends, arranging payments and coordinating with the group, can now done in minutes.
View the video that shows how a group can be planned, booked and managed in 90 seconds at www.groupizesolutions.com.
bd4travel Personalizes Big Data for Travel
bd4travel (“Big Data for Travel”) offers innovative IT solutions for real time personalization and targeting of customers and customer segments on travel portals. We focus on providing the perfect support for individual customers with their unique travel wishes.bd4travel (“Big Data for Travel”) is an innovative start-up, which is specialized in real-time big data analysis, on-site targeting and prescriptive personalization solutions for digital travel shops.
The products of bd4travel enable online portals and other travel companies to understand and act on the needs, interests and purchase intentions of every single visitor in their digital travel shop. By the implementation of personalized user frontends, visitors can be provided with the most relevant content and product recommendations in real-time and across all communication and sales touch points. This can particularly be done without the need to access separate CRM-Databases with historic customer data.
bd4travel´s unique line of products divides into three focused areas:
1. Personalization
2. Advanced Onsite Targeting
3. Real-time Monitoring
bd4travel offers a unique combination of the most advanced Big Data technologies and extensive tourism industry know-how. Amongst others they utilize and exclusively resell the award-winning international ParStream Big Data Analytics Platform. With ready-made personalization frontends the solutions can technically be implemented easily and at a very reasonable investment.
Chirpify connects social actions to #loyalty and #rewards
Chirpify is working to revolutionize how consumers transact with brands by enabling multi- channel marketing and advertising conversion via social media. Chirpify enables people to make purchases through #hashtags. It first started with Twitter, and later expanded to include other channels like Facebook and Instagram.
Founded by Chris Teso and headquartered in Portland, Oregon – Chirpify’s concept offers several selling points. “You get instant revenue, and you get data,” Teso says in an interview with Portland Monthly. “We can learn, for example, that a particular person on Twitter is interested in a Trail Blazers ticket giveaway. Amazon doesn’t have that—they don’t have social data. The social networks don’t have it—they don’t see e-commerce. We have both. Brands are using hashtags the way they used to use URLs. Now they need to connect what they’re doing on social media directly to the consumer. When we show them how, their minds are blown, because we provide instant results.”
Companies use Chirpify to add social triggers to their existing loyalty & rewards programs and to create new “Social VIP” programs to surprise and delight consumers. To drive real customer advocacy and lifetime value, an ongoing program is what is really needed. By nurturing & rewarding loyal consumers for their actions on social, brands are able to develop deeper advocacy, reach and loyalty because they serve to establish and build upon a customer relationship.
The results for Chirpify customers?
AMPLIFICATION – 8X ON AVERAGE
ACQUISITION – 45% INCREASE
CONVERSION – OVER 50% ON AVERAGE
Chirpify has activated millions of consumers for hundreds of brands ranging from Lady Gaga to Cheerios, and MasterCard to Taylor Made. They are making their move in the travel and hospitality space and are a welcome disruption to the marketing hum-drum.