From educational collaborations, technology innovations, and partnerships across the hospitality, travel, and technology industries, stay up to date with the latest news from the HI Hub Lab community.

Source: HI Hub Lab Experiential Learning Survey '22-'23

Wednesday, May 17th at 1:00pm

Do you teach digital marketing, e-commerce, and website design in your courses? Wix Education is a free platform and suite of resources to teach web creation, design, and development in classrooms. To learn about Wix's curriculum, interactive learning activities, and resources for faculty and students, please join us for a virtual presentation on May 17th, 1:00 - 2:30pm EST.

Just after Cvent, a market-leading meetings, events and hospitality technology provider, joined the HI Hub Lab community, professor Michaela Boruta introduced Cvent solutions to the students in her Facilities and Venue Management course, which catered to both venue event managers and event planners. The students learned how the platform could help venue managers list their services, receive RFPs, and submit proposals without many complications. Additionally, students learned how listing venues on Cvent could provide an advantage in the competitive market. The demo also covered various tools that event planners could use throughout the event cycle, including pre-event planning, day-of-event management, and post-event analytics. Students were excited about the opportunity to observe how a chosen venue markets itself and provides distinct event solutions for their clients.

Prof. Boruta shares her thoughts on the collaboration with Cvent: "By integrating the Cvent platform for students' coursework, the most significant benefit is that they gain practical experience in analyzing venue practices in marketing and event management, while also learning other event planner tools. It offers various solutions to streamline event planning and management processes, which are widely used by employers. Learning to use Cvent during classes definitely gives students a competitive advantage when entering the workforce."

To foster student learning, Cvent sponsored professional certifications for students in Prof. Boruta's class and extended invitation to Dr. Donna Kelly and six Tisch Center students to attend the annual Cvent Connect conference, taking place July 23 - 26 in Las Vegas.

HTES graduate student club and Dr. Tamer Avcilar's students in Travel Technology and New Media course visited Loews Regency hotel which uses Unifocus labor management solutions to track time and attendance of its team members.

John Maibach, Managing Director, Manjit Manohar, Executive Chef, and Chris Koliopoulos, Director VIP Services demonstrated Unifocus technology and discussed how hotel operations benefited from technology innovations in the post pandemic market.

RivalIQ, a NetBase Quid company, is a social media analytics company in Seattle that helps social media professionals maximize their impact with competitive benchmarking, comprehensive analytics, and automated insight generation. 

Collaboration with RivalIQ is a school wide initiative to facilitate competitive benchmarking in students' projects and faculty research. This a free subscription for NYU SPS faculty, valid for 90 days, but can be renewed free of charge by contacting support@rivaliq.com.

Faculty and Students may register for Rival IQ from the dedicated NYU SPS Registration Page and make sure they use their NYU.edu email address to register along with their first and last name to take advantage of this special service.

Dr. Richie Karaburun and Arianna Olivas, an undergraduate student in the Tisch Center of Hospitality used Brandwatch, a consumer intelligence platform, to enrich their case study on Tulsa, Oklahoma destination marketing with insights from big data. 

Arianna commented on her experience with Brandwatch: "The consumer research platform Brandwatch was first introduced to me by Dr. Vanja Bogicevic
in the Brand Management course as we utilized the platform for our final projects in researching our selected brands. For our current project, a case study on the topics of destination image and branding as well as placemaking strategies focusing on the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, we used Brandwatch to verify conclusions drawn from primary research conducted in Tulsa. The sentiment breakdown and volume of mentions over time features were especially helpful to us. This experience using Brandwatch and working on this project has allowed me to further develop my critical thinking, attention to detail, and overall analytical skills when it comes to
interpreting data and drawing conclusions, all of which I will be able to apply to my career in hospitality after I graduate.”

Cendyn, a company that provides digital transformation solutions for the hospitality industry, has launched a new reporting feature called CRM Analytics for its eInsight CRM product. This new feature will help hoteliers to transform their marketing data into actionable insights that can drive revenue, engagement, and direct channel share. The combination of business intelligence capabilities with CRM data enables decision-makers and hotel managers to track and visualize their KPIs and analyze hotel marketing data across all channels. The new feature aims to deliver a deep understanding of business-critical marketing data that empowers hotels to gain impactful, actionable intelligence about the interactions with each property’s unique brand and customer needs.

Read the full article by Cendyn.

Source: Cendyn

RateGain Travel Technologies Limited, a global provider of SaaS solutions for travel and hospitality, has achieved Elite Connectivity Partner status with the Expedia Group, one of the world’s leading travel companies. The recognition from the Expedia Group comes as a result of RateGain's commitment to maintaining high-quality connections and helping lodging partners grow their business on the Expedia Group marketplace. By earning Elite status, RateGain will work directly with Expedia Group to help shape their future products and technology solutions.

Read the full article by RateGain.

Source: RateGain

In this article Hoteza's CEO, Nikolay Beloshitsky, writes about optimizing business processes in the hospitality industry through the collection and analysis of hotel operations data to foster transparency, profitability, and improve guest experiences. Real-time data and data streaming can make business management precise, responsive, and automatable. Thorough analysis of available data is key to cost optimization and providing the best guest experience. Various types of data, such as timestamps, guest location, and ordered products, can be collected through apps, cloud servers, or hotel infrastructure. The data can be processed manually or through automated techniques to improve decision-making and involve hotel staff in decision-making.

Read the full article by Hospitality Net.

Source: Hospitality Net

Amadeus and IE University have launched the third edition of the Travel4Impact network to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the travel sector in improving their competitiveness and social and environmental impact. The program is open to SMEs with a proven interest in sustainability and digitalization, two or more full-time employees, and a business footprint in their specific market or region. The successful applicants will receive support in the development of their digital strategies, social and environmental impact, and sustainability of their business. For the first time, the network will be extended to include organizations from the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. The program is funded by Amadeus and IE University and is wholly subsidized for SMEs.

Read the full article by Amadeus.

Source: Amadeus