Hospitality Trends, Hospitality Management
PRNewswire | August 08, 2023
Sojern, the leading travel marketing platform, and Profitroom, a globally renowned award-winning booking and technology platform, announced a new collaboration. In today's era, where hotels closely monitor their budgets, the collaboration aims to equip hotels worldwide with a powerful combination of advanced booking technology and data-driven marketing solutions. This will enable hoteliers to effortlessly reach travellers searching for a place to stay and drive direct bookings on their website, ultimately leading to increased revenue.
"With travellers increasingly relying on multiple digital channels to discover, plan and book their trips, the hospitality industry is undergoing a profound shift," said Josh Beckwith, Managing Director, Global Strategic Accounts and Partnerships, Sojern. "This collaboration between Sojern and Profitroom is perfectly timed to address the evolving needs of hoteliers of all sizes, helping them navigate the complex landscape of digital marketing and guest acquisition, and ultimately drive measurable results while boosting profitability. In an exciting year for Sojern, we are thrilled to partner with Profitroom to empower hotels with the tools and insights they need to succeed in today's competitive market."
As a leading provider of hospitality technology solutions, Profitroom boasts one of the highest-converting booking engines on the market, complemented by powerful marketing automation tools, an advanced channel manager, and a website builder. By integrating these offerings with Sojern's digital marketing capabilities, hoteliers can optimise their online presence, attract high-value guests, and streamline operations. Furthermore, Sojern recently introduced its suite of Guest Experience Solutions through the acquisition of VenueLytics. Sojern's enhanced Travel Marketing Platform now enables hotels to engage with guests throughout their entire journey.
"We are excited to join forces with Sojern and help hoteliers accelerate growth while increasing direct online revenue," said Samantha Williams, Commercial Director, Profitroom. "By leveraging each other's strengths, we will equip hotels with a winning combination of innovative technology and data-driven marketing solutions. This partnership will enable hotels to stand out in a crowded marketplace, increase direct bookings, and boost revenue. Profitroom has already made significant progress in the Polish, South African, LATAM, UK and Nordic markets with among 3,500 hotels and resorts worldwide. This new partnership with Sojern will further enhance our global reach amongst hoteliers."
Sojern recently announced the latest version of its Sojern Travel Marketing Platform, featuring enhanced AI-powered audiences, showcasing the company's commitment to leveraging its deep technological expertise on a global scale. By continuously advancing its platform and investing in partnerships like the one with Profitroom, Sojern demonstrates dedication to innovation and delivering exceptional results to its 10,000 customers annually around the world. Profitroom, at the forefront of hotel technology solutions, assists hotels in adapting to evolving technology landscapes by introducing innovative ways to engage with customers while saving them time. Notably, Profitroom recently introduced an AI-based automatic copywriter, simplifying the process of creating compelling email campaigns. This cutting-edge technology enables hotels to generate tailored messages for guests with just a few clicks.
Sojern is set to join Profitroom at their On Tour event in Johannesburg on Tuesday, August 22, 2023. The series of events, which will be hosted in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pietermaritzburg, Hoedspruit and Nelspruit, aims to equip hoteliers with the best hospitality booking technology, offering discussions on the latest trends and highlighting strategies to increase revenue. Providing hoteliers with a networking platform and opportunities to develop industry relationships, the event also offers tools to keep them updated with the latest insights and trends, positioning them at the forefront of the industry. Sojern is among an esteemed group of partners joining Profitroom throughout the tour.
About Sojern
Sojern is a leading digital marketing platform built for travel marketers. Powered by artificial intelligence and traveller intent data, Sojern provides multichannel marketing solutions to drive direct demand. More than 10,000 hotels, attractions, tourism boards, and travel marketers rely on Sojern annually to engage and convert travellers around the world.
About Profitroom
Profitroom powers more than 3,500 outstanding leisure hotels and resorts across the world.
The award-winning Profitroom Suite exposes hotels' full business potential with the complete set of e-commerce tools and industry-leading experience personalisation. Profitroom reservation platform supports all channels and yields direct bookings performance. It's built on the guest-centric foundations to strengthen guest loyalty and retention.
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Hospitality Trends
prnewswire | July 12, 2023
Sojern, the leading travel marketing platform, today announced the acquisition of VenueLytics, the hospitality industry's most integrated guest experience platform serving independent hotels, resorts, chains and casinos. Sojern will incorporate VenueLytics' capabilities as an extension of the Sojern Travel Marketing Platform.
Sojern has long been a direct bookings driver for hotels—providing comprehensive digital advertising solutions that help travel marketers find, attract and convert new travelers, re-activate existing guests to build loyalty, and maximize net revenue per available room (RevPAR). This acquisition expands Sojern's Travel Marketing Platform to engage across the entire guest journey with VenueLytics' cutting-edge technology that includes an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered virtual concierge, real-time guest feedback and digital reputation management tools, and a guest marketing suite for email and text promotions. VenueLytics' solutions help marketing, operations, and front-desk teams better serve their guests with less resources required, drive incremental revenue, and maximize profit. With these additional features, Sojern can now help marketers find, attract, convert and engage travelers throughout their journey.
"This is an exciting step forward for our customers as we can empower hoteliers beyond advertising alone, expanding our offerings to be a true end-to-end marketing platform," said Mark Rabe, CEO of Sojern. "We are dedicated to providing the travel industry with innovative solutions that leverage data, AI and technology to drive results. VenueLytics' expertise in analyzing, unifying and activating data from various hotel management and marketing systems will allow Sojern to deepen our relationships in hospitality. This addition helps us to advance toward becoming the #1 travel marketing platform."
One of VenueLytics key customers is Grupo Posadas, the largest hotel company in Mexico with over 180 resorts and hotels. Posadas Director of Quality, Standards and Innovation, Leslie Gomez, commented, "By using VenueLytics AI Concierge throughout the guest journey, Posadas has increased Ancillary Revenue with more than 53K requests over the last 9 months. Our guests satisfaction improved more than 19 percentage points (pp) in NPS (Net Promoter Score) from the guests who had contact with our digital concierge experience."
By extending its platform with VenueLytics, Sojern can now support hotel marketers with an all-in-one platform that drives guests directly to a property, enables upsell mid-stay, remarketing post-stay, and builds long term loyalty. In addition to the multichannel offerings of Sojern, VenueLytics provides the ability to engage customers in an expanded multichannel network that includes SMS, Email, WiFi, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, ChatBot, Alexa, Google Home and other social media and third party apps. This allows Sojern to expand into generative AI with cutting edge tools to drive and optimize booking value for hotels.
VenueLytics Co-Founder and CEO Baskar Manivannan commented, "We have partnered with Sojern for more than a year, and joining forces will strengthen our customer base and reputation while enabling us to offer the hospitality and travel industry a wider and timely range of solutions. With AI, data analytics and personalized multichannel guest engagement at the backbone of what we do, we have a shared vision to empower hotels around the world to drive profitability, and truly elevate guest experience and satisfaction."
Last month, Sojern announced the latest version of its Sojern Travel Marketing Platform with enhanced AI powered audiences. With this acquisition, it further demonstrates the company's rigor and success at integrating new technology and scaling it globally. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Sojern has reported previously that it is profitable, has driven more than $10 billion in global travel bookings, and serves over 10,000 customers annually around the world leveraging its long-standing AI capabilities.
The acquisition will deepen Sojern's hotel expertise in North America where VenueLytics has been focused. VenueLytics will now be able to support the global hospitality industry as an extension of the Sojern Travel Marketing Platform. To learn more about how this acquisition can benefit your travel marketing campaigns, please visit Sojern's website.
About Sojern
Sojern is a top digital marketing tool for travel marketers. Multichannel marketing from the company boosts direct demand. AI and traveler intent data enable these solutions. It is the leading travel marketing tool designed to help marketers overcome travel buying cycle challenges. It provides unparalleled traveler information and automatic optimization to match its clients with the right travelers. In addition, the company optimizes across the platform to help clients grow and profit.
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Travel Technology
prnewswire | June 27, 2023
Our commitment to care for our guests comes in all forms, including improving their travel day. To help do that, Alaska Airlines is partnering with CLEAR – the secure identity company – to provide friction-free and predictable travel experiences with CLEAR Plus. With our new partnership, Mileage Plan members can take advantage of a discounted rate for a CLEAR Plus membership and also receive bonus miles for a limited time. This is the first step in the partnership to accelerate the adoption of digital identity and remove friction throughout the travel journey.
CLEAR Plus is an opt-in program that allows its members to travel faster through security at 52 airports nationwide by verifying their identity with their eyes or fingerprint, replacing the need to take out their wallet and driver's license. After verification, a CLEAR Ambassador escorts members through a dedicated lane and directly to TSA physical security, saving them time waiting in line at the security checkpoint.
"We understand from our guests how important it is for them to have the best possible experience when traveling with us, and part of that is saving time when they're at the airport," said Shane Jones, vice president of real estate and business development at Alaska Airlines. "Our frequent flyers are already big fans of CLEAR Plus. With a discounted CLEAR Plus membership available to all of our Mileage Plan members, we believe more of our guests will appreciate this valuable travel benefit."
All Mileage Plan members can enroll in CLEAR Plus at a discounted rate of $179 a year at clearme.com/alaska. Plus our elite Mileage Plan members – MVP, MVP Gold, MVP Gold 75K and MVP Gold 100K – who enroll will receive 1,500 Mileage Plan bonus miles. Elite Mileage Plan members who renew an existing CLEAR Plus membership and link it to their Mileage Plan account will receive a total of 1,250 miles every year upon renewal.
In addition, to celebrate the launch of the partnership, between now and July 16, 2023, all Mileage Plan members – elite or non-elite – who enroll in a new CLEAR Plus membership will receive 1,000 Mileage Plan bonus miles.
"CLEAR is obsessed with delivering the best customer experience, so we're excited to provide Alaska Airlines' Mileage Plan members with the confidence and predictability of CLEAR Plus," said Kasra Moshkani, executive vice president of operations at CLEAR. "We look forward to expanding our partnership with Alaska to continue unlocking seamless experiences for their frequent flyers from home to gate and beyond."
CLEAR Plus is available at Alaska's key hub airports in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Mileage Plan members who join CLEAR Plus can add up to three family members or friends to their account for just $70 each. Family members under 18 years old can always join CLEAR members in the CLEAR Lane for free. CLEAR has more than 16 million members.
While CLEAR Plus and TSA PreCheck are independent of each other, many passengers use CLEAR Plus and TSA PreCheck together for the fastest way through airport security.
About Alaska Airlines
Alaska Airlines and our regional partners serve more than 120 destinations across the United States, Belize, Canada, Costa Rica and Mexico. We strive to be the most caring airline with award-winning customer service and an industry-leading loyalty program. As a member of the oneworld alliance, and with our additional global partners, our guests can travel to more than 1,000 destinations on more than 25 airlines while earning and redeeming miles on flights to locations around the world. Learn more about Alaska at news.alaskaair.com and follow @alaskaairnews for news and stories. Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air are subsidiaries of Alaska Air Group.
About CLEAR
CLEAR's mission is to create frictionless experiences. With more than 16 million members and a growing network of partners across the world, CLEAR's identity platform is transforming the way people live, work, and travel. Whether you are traveling, at the stadium, or on your phone, CLEAR connects you to the things that make you, you - making everyday experiences easier, more secure, and friction-free. CLEAR is committed to privacy done right. Members are always in control of their own information, and we never sell member data.
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