apaleo GmbH · 20 May

Imagine if every time you wanted to install a new app on your smartphone, you had to call the maker of your phone to ask about it, then schedule a date far in the future for one of their representatives to come to your house, get it working on your phone, and charge you heaps of money in the process. You wouldn't stand for it, right? Then why go through a similar process when working with your property management system (PMS)?

apaleo GmbH · 13 Mar

Someone recently told me that humans spend approximately six months of their lives waiting in line for things. Six full months. Those stats might double for hoteliers, if you consider the long wait times for getting a PMS live and the ridiculous queue for interface installations.

apaleo GmbH · 15 Feb

Let's face it hotel technology isn't a supporting player in the guest experience anymore. It is an essential part of every guest journey, an integral aspect of each step of the guest's experience of a property—before, during, and after the stay. As such, it can make or break those guest reviews and has long-term effects on loyalty. It seems most hotels know this because over half (54%) plan to increase their technology spending this year, according to the 2019 Lodging Technology Study. There's a lot getting in the way of bringing technology to the forefront of the experience, though. In the same report, hotels said their tech strategies are held back by outdated architecture (35%), the effort required for systems integrations (35%), and guests that want more technology than properties can deliver (18%), among other things.

apaleo GmbH · 28 Jan

Every hotelier knows that there's not enough love to go around, what with all different kinds of guests wanting all different kinds of things. You've got your high maintenance guests with a thousand questions, your sloppy mess makers that drip pool water all over the floors and leave cracker crumbs all over the room, guests who squeak into the breakfast buffet at one-minute until you're trying to pack it up, and the ones that change rooms three times.

apaleo GmbH · 14 Jan

Here's a terrifying fun fact: some insects have superpowers. Take scorpions, for example. They can flatten their bodies to the size of a small coin, which allows them to get through small crevices, cracks, doorjambs...anything really. This crazy power means that scorpions can invade virtually any area that they want to invade. Yikes. Glad you live in the city now, right?

apaleo GmbH · 13 Sep

Don't lie; you know you've done it. I sure have. The hotel breakfast buffet. You're so hungry and there's so much food. You want your money's worth. Each station looks better than the one before it, and those decorated plates piled with pancakes the size of your head make it all too delicious to pass up (I usually have these as my "dessert course"). How can you say no? Decision fatigue kicks in, your better sense of judgement goes out the window, and you go after that buffet like a boss instead of thinking about how you'll be in bed for the following three hours wishing you hadn't eaten all of the things.

apaleo GmbH · 28 Aug

If you had a pulse in the '90s, you most definitely saw Jurassic Park. And if you are a person who totally loves dinosaurs, like myself, you probably saw Jurassic Park at least a dozen more times in the theater.

apaleo GmbH · 11 Jul

Patrick Fisher of Thomson Reuters notes that, "As technologies become more and more pervasive across industries and functions, companies as varied as Goldman Sachs, Exxon, GE, Citi, and Walmart are all becoming technology companies as well." Hotels may not be peddling technology, but they are profiting off of their ability to offer guests innovative technology solutions as well as their ability to use technology to do better business. Even if hotels aren't ready to be labelled technology companies, hotel operations have evolved from an industry that once utilized technology to a technology-dependent industry.

apaleo GmbH · 21 Jun

With technology, there is "what it does"—the functionality—and then there's "how it does it," as in how fast, how accurate, what the interface looks like, and so forth. Functionality is that by which we decide we need a technology—a new POS, PMS, CRM—and so the "how it does it" becomes a secondary consideration. The way a technology does what it does gains weight as you move through the evaluation process. When you are presented with competing technologies—those that seem to do the same thing on the surface—the differences start to become clear and the "how" takes on a new magnitude of importance. For instance, legacy property management systems can take months to set up, a typical cloud-based PMS can take weeks, and one with self-service set-up (hint hint: apaleo) alows a property to be set up in minutes. That's right, minutes!

apaleo GmbH · 13 Jun

In-room, distribution, messaging, reservations, revenue management, chat, operational… the list of technologies that occupy hoteliers these days could go on and on. Evaluating each technology is just as complicated. Does work with other systems that I am already using? This has been a key question, one that many hotels are still grappling with. Can my staff easily start using this technology? This question is especially relevant when evaluating property management systems, which often require months of complicated training. Will this technology set me up properly for the future? The list of considerations goes on, but one could argue that it all boils down to the technology's ease of use, both in terms of technical integrations and staff usability.

apaleo GmbH · 27 Mar

Ask hoteliers and technology companies alike about their biggest pain points, and inevitably they will mention integrations. Building interfaces between systems proves to be costly and time consuming. Hoteliers want a simple way to connect all the software that is required to run their business, and technology companies want to focus on their products rather than moving personal and monetary resources to build integrations.