FITUR Showcases Major Technological Innovations In Tourism for 2021

This year 2021 begins with major technological innovations in the hotel and tourism sector, which will be on display in the TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY section of FITUR 2021. These are some of the main innovations this year:

Delta Tecnologías de la Información

Delta Tecnologías de Información  (Delta Information Technologies) has developed a cloud system for location-independent guest registration, with a pre-check-in option. The company’s CEO, Bernardo Pujol, explains that “we’re specialists in digitalisation systems for personal identification and identity documents, and we’re presenting our new system for registering guests with tourist accommodation.” He adds that “the big difference with our solution is that you can complete your registration wherever you happen to be.”

Pujol says that “in addition to the conventional solution for hotel check-in desks, with a document scanner connected to a computer, ours allows you to complete a check-in using any Android tablet.” So, “in a few seconds, it takes a passport photograph of the user, retrieves their data automatically, and allows them to sign.” This enables a user to “register without being present at the desk, for example, in the hotel cafeteria or their room, and the only other technology they need is an internet connection.”

The system also enables pre check-in so that guests can send all their documentation in advance and sign it from home, reducing or eliminating paperwork at reception. “That option can be combined with kiosk type units for self check-in at the reception desk itself. This innovation is especially aimed at small tourist accommodations without technological infrastructure like PMS. There’s also a module that software vendors can integrate into hotel management apps, and the DELTA ID Cloud document OCR recognition service.” Pujol says that “these types of solutions improve user experience, help prevent queues and crowds while improving compliance with hygiene regulations in the establishment.”

Bi4hoteliers, by Revenue Management World

Jaime López-Chicheri, CEO of Revenue Management World, highlights Bi4hoteliers, the RMS for independent hotels and small chains, which will be present at FITUR 2021. “This software tool (https://bi4hoteliers.com/) is part of our ecosystem of projects. Its price-quality ratio has positioned it as the most efficient and economical solution in the market. It provides hoteliers with real-time information, by integrating its database with a control panel, to display information fully ordered and segmented.”

According to López-Chicheri, “it’s the only tool in the sector that offers sales management analysis, price comparisons, rate disparity monitoring, weather forecasting, web analytics, price recommendations, online reputation monitoring and much more, in a single interactive platform.”

Nixi1: Connecting Tourism Companies

Nixi1 has gone a step further in connecting with tourists. Juan Prim, the company’s CEO, explains that this is a Chat Management System, a cloud-based software service to enable tourism companies to connect with their customers using instant messaging, such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram or SMS text messaging. “Just as email took over from fax in the 1990s, today asynchronous and real-time channels like WhatsApp are increasingly replacing traditional email and phone channels.

Using Nixi1’s tool and its instant messaging implementation, companies can “increase operator productivity by over 200%, increase customer satisfaction by 80% and increase cross-selling by 20%.” Nixi1 takes companies to 4.0 or conversational commerce, the new generation of e-commerce.

Travel Compositor’s Patents

Marta Oliver is Sales Assistant for Travel Compositor. She highlights the company’s over 250 innovations up to 2020, including three new patents. “The first was Routing TC, a booking engine with all the usual TravelC features, which also allows users to create a route on a map and add stops along the way.” That engine had a very positive reception and enabled us to “detect an upward trend in demand for private tours to the detriment of regular ones,” so the Travel Compositor team launched Private Tours TC, an engine that combines Routing TC’s features with the services of a driver-guide.

The company’s third patent is for MBox TC, “the definitive tool for generating cross-selling after a first booking and multiplying the revenue per booking.” There are three different models available, aimed at hotels, flights and packages. “There’s a box placed on confirmation pages to allow you to offer a range of services related to the initial reservation, before, during or after the trip that the user has just booked.”

Avantio Introduces Unified Inbox
 

Unified Inbox for holiday letting agencies (https://unifiedinbox.avantio.es/) is Avantio’s flagship product. Nicole Bayer is Head of Corporate Communications for the company. She explains that “one of the problems for holiday letting agencies is handling all the messages, both from tourists (including reservations through OTAs), and from suppliers (such as maintenance, cleaning, third party services) and owners of the accommodations they manage, arriving through different platforms.” And he concludes that “our tool makes it easier for agencies to communicate with all of them, centralising messages on a single platform, enabling them to respond in real time.”

She highlights the following advantages of the tool: “it reduces and saves management time, as you don’t have to handle incoming messages on different platforms, and it simplifies an agency’s internal organisation, as you have all the message history in one place. Also, it optimises your daily tasks, enabling you to solve requests from tourists, suppliers, and owners in minutes. It increases customer loyalty by offering a better experience for guest and owner, as it provides a more direct and agile communication channel for responding to requests. It also provides greater conversion, as agencies have a more direct communication channel with guests, so they can offer extra services that generate additional income.”

EISI Hotel’s Solution

EISI SOFT has developed EISI HOTEL, a specific solution to meet the needs of the hotel sector. It unifies all the operational and regulatory, technical, legal, and hygienic and sanitary processes of a single establishment or a chain in a single cloud application. “It’s easy to use and do calculations, and features a powerful diagnostic and decision-making management panel, with alarms and automatic reporting,” explains Xavi López, the company’s Operations Director.

EISI HOTEL is conceived as an ideal complement to a PMS, covering the operations management of a hotel’s different departments. “It does that using two-way communication with the PMS and other applications. It can also be used in parallel to digitalise operational management, preventive and corrective maintenance, tasks in any department, energy and waste management, and housekeeping, minibars, quality plans and health and hygiene standards.”

Implementing an application like this is especially useful for improving the main day-to-day operational processes. “These solutions don’t require a big up-front investment, and they provide great value with tangible returns in speeding up and optimising processes, which in turn makes for a healthier business, better customer perception and satisfaction, and lower operating costs.”

Digitalisation at MasterYield

MasterYield is also supporting the tourism sector, focusing on digitalisation for accommodation establishments using a platform that enables easy and safe online check-in, both for guests and the reception desk team. “The main new features we’ve incorporated into the new Check In Express include scanning documents like ID cards and passports, customising documents such as privacy policies, and digital signature for the traveller.” The new system allows guests to “pre check-in before they arrive at the establishment, using a link sent by email, to cut waiting times and avoid the need for contact with other people at reception.”

Tools from Go Global Travel

Go Global Travel is a leader in the B2B hotel distribution market. It has been working on improving its technology and implementing new features to provide clients with tools that not only optimise their daily work but also to enable them to offer a complete booking experience. The company is committed to big data, “offering analysis tools to keep abreast of new market trends and information on customer behaviour at all times,” its managers say.

These are the tools it provides: “Marca Blanca (Own Brand) for B2B distribution of our products, fully self-manageable. Increased accommodation product to more than 510.000, with a great variety of different accommodations. We’ve added 52,000 global destinations to our portfolio. A domestic and luxury ‘tab’ that provides fast and flexible searches, and a Business Intelligence reporting tool, accessible to all customers.”