HTNG Europe & Hotec EMEA are partnering to convene leading hoteliers, procurement specialists and technology partners from across Europe in a joint event set to run Oct. 30-31 at the Hotel Cascais Miragem Health & Spa in Cascais, Portugal. The two-day event will include hands-on demos of the latest in hospitality technology as well as insights from more than 30 industry leaders.
Ahead of the conference, two leaders from guest engagement and experience technology platform Alliants shared their insights on why they wanted to attend and what they hope to accomplish in Portugal.
Alliants helps unify “disparate systems” that don’t always work together to support the guest and employee experiences, said Kevin Brown, senior marketing manager at Alliants. “We wanted to build something that was for the end user, knowing all of those use cases and all of those pain points.” Those pain points, he continued, cover services and consulting as well as finding the balance between “the digital transformation of our industry and the human touch.”
For example, Brown said the company is collaborating with brands that are looking to automate as many tasks as possible and offer contactless options. “We're consulting with them on how [to] do that without losing the integrity or the humanity in your brand and hospitality.” A luxury brand, meanwhile, is working with Alliants on both consulting services as well as technology design. “They want to go in on the human touch,” Brown explained. “They don't know how to use digital transformation to increase the ability of that intimate human touch of hospitality. So we try and find that balance.”
Ultimately, Brown said, Alliants’ consulting side helps hoteliers move past solving the symptoms of their challenges and start addressing the root problems, growing from “a state of reactive change to a state of more organic evolution.”
Digitalization
Custódio Barreiros, senior consultant at Alliants, said Alliants’ platform helps digitalize a wide range of back-of-house functionalities, from property-management systems to revenue management and housekeeping. “How about that concierge that goes out and researches all the wonderful restaurants and activities?” Barreiros wondered. “How does he or she control that data and share it?”
At the same time, Barreiros acknowledged that over-digitalization can be unnerving for hoteliers, especially if they don’t have the staff in place to make the guest experience what it needs to be.
Brown ultimately wants Alliants to be the go-to source for solving hoteliers’ challenges, he added—and that is one reason why he wanted to attend the HTNG Europe & Hotec EMEA event. “Anybody that is going to this event [knows] they need to change by getting out of a state of constant reactive change,” he said. At the same time, “they don't necessarily know where to start, or they've started but they don't really know what the difference between ‘good’ and ‘great' is and how realistic it is for them within their budget or their resources or whatever they have as a constraint.”
Attending HTNG/Hotec can help the company “be good partners to our industry partners,” he added. “When we think about what your event stands for, it's to network. It's to build relationships. If business is a part of that, yes, but it's not the focal point.”
For his part, Barreiros noted specific projects within the region that the Alliants team is working on. “Hotec is the only event that can bring me the expertise that I need to learn to carry to those [projects],” he said.
HTNG Europe & Hotec EMEA will run Oct. 30-31 at the Hotel Cascais Miragem Health & Spa in Cascais, Portugal. Buyers and suppliers can register here.