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Techno Upgrades Without Sky-High Price Tag Try out this tech trio of products designed to put more money in your hotel's pocket. Monday, April 06, 2009 Beth Kormanik

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Related Companies Knotice TTI

Hotels do not have to let technology pass them by even in an era of tight budgets. It is possible to make targeted upgrades that will serve guests’ technology needs and keep a hotel modern without breaking the bank.

Here are three companies offering different technology services to the hotel industry.

TVTrip

During the pioneering days of online booking, potential guests were lucky to see a few photos along with the descriptions of various rooms, suites, common spaces and restaurants. Now sites may features more photos, maybe even some panoramic views, as well as customer reviews.

The next obvious frontier in hotel Web sites is providing video. Enter TVTrip, a search engine for hotels that features its own video of thousands of hotels worldwide. “Video a year ago was a nice-to-have,” said Steve Stollerman, vice president of TVtrip. “Now it's becoming a must-have.”

TVTrip does the filming, editing and coding of the video and then loads it onto its Web site, at no charge to the hotels. It makes money from fees for redirecting qualified traffic to a hotel’s booking engine, from advertising and marketing campaigns with tourism board, and from licensing its catalog to online travel agencies and travel portals.

TVTrip also has started distributing the customized video to individual hotels to feature on their own Web sites for a revenue-share deal or a fee.

The company began by filming the hotels in the major cities in Europe, then moved on to Asia and now is active in the United States. By the end of the year the company expects to have 5,000 hotels filmed.

With the economy forcing some travelers to consider three- and two-star properties, they want the assurance that video can provide, Stollerman said. When they can see for themselves what the property looks like, they are more willing to book a stay.

“A lot of hotels are contacting us,” he said. “Their budget got slashed and we provide an affordable solution for them.”

The on-location video shoots usually take about five hours to film, Stollerman said. They cover different room categories, the exterior, lobby, reception and any meeting space or outdoor amenities. He advises hotels to not “window-dress” the hotel to ensure the video shows an accurate portrayal of the property.

“Our position is, we're a transparent, unbiased site,” he said, adding that consumers are increasingly cynical about overproduced, slick videos that the hotels do themselves.
“We open up a distribution platform that gives hotels visibility in markets they would never think to invest in,” he said. “We bring them traffic.”

Knotice

At this point, it’s a given that every hotel has a Web site. But how smart are those sites? Do they know who is visiting, even when that person does not log on? Does it target content specifically for business and leisure travelers? Can the hotel’s technology platform send text messages to guests with their itinerary and check-in time?

If not, then Knotice wants you to know that Web site is behind the times. Knotice, an Akron, Ohio-based direct digital marketing company, focuses on targeting content to guests through a hotel’s Web site, text messaging and email. These campaigns are coordinated so hotels can gather even more information about potential guests and craft specific messages geared toward securing a booking.

“They [hotels] see the benefit of being able to maintain a relevant and consistent message from their Web site, during email and during mobile,” said CEO Brian Deagan.

Knotice is intended for larger chain hotels and hotels with a large share of business travelers.

Through its email marketing program, Knotice integrates email with a potential guest’s Web site experience, so if someone receives an email for a special vacation package, the system will know how many times a person opened the email before actually visiting the Web site and then customize the Web content to match the email. It also allows hotels to track guests even if they do not use a log-in name.

“When they come back to the site, say two weeks from now, we're able to know who they are as if they were logged in,” Deagan said. “We'll know that person is a business traveler and then target content. We give more opportunity for the marketer to know who's on the site.”
Knotice also will test content on a hotel’s Web sites to see what attracts the most potential guests. For instance, when the wording on the site changes, are business travelers more likely to enter the booking process? It can also up-sell guests for special packages.
“We're not running a web site, but we allow sites to be more relevant and optimized,” he said.

Knotice also customizes text messages to guests who have already booked a stay. Deagan said the system can send guests their itinerary or offer special coupons for the hotel’s restaurants. When guests check out, they stop receiving texts.

“A lot of that marketing takes the form of relationship marketing or customer-service messaging that people have opted-in for,” Deagan said. “You're not just sending text messages blindly to people.”

TTI Technologies International

Many hotels are finding themselves with obsolete technology on their hands: pay phone banks that sit unused because of the prevalence of cell phones.

From that challenge rose an opportunity that TTI Technologies International saw. The company would transform that space into a business center, President Steve Blidner said.
“The pay phones have been taken out, so there’s either a cabinet with a vacant space or you have something with holes where screws used to be. It’s an eyesore, empty space,” he said. “We designed a unit that would offer full business center functions in the space of a pay phone.”

The idea came about five years ago when a chain hotel contacted TTI and wanted a business center but did not have the space. At that time pay phones were just starting to go out, and Blidner saw the writing on the wall as revenues from the pay phones were going down.

Guests can use credit cards or cash to use the stations, and TTI then pays the hotel a commission. If a hotel wants to offer the services to guests for free, TTI will sell it the equipment. The average phone booth system runs about $1,600 to $2,000 each, depending on the features, Blidner said.

Now guests can surf the Internet, check their email and access information from USB ports from attractive workstations. Hotels may also choose to offer printers or a Skype phone, Blidner said.

“You have smaller hotels and motels that don’t have space for a full business center,” he said. “If they have space on the wall they have space for this.”

Even hotels that have full business centers may want to offer guests a quicker option with a terminal elsewhere on the property.