10 Fastest Growing Travel & Hospitality Companies 2017
The Silicon Review
Built for the 1928 Summer Olympics, the Olympic Stadium is now Ireckonu’s headquarters, and home to a wide spectrum of like-minded, innovative businesses. In early 2014, Ireckonu’s data-driven consulting practice identified a unique opportunity within the hospitality industry. Working closely with citizenM hotels, a unique “middleware”, flexible enough to glue all a hotel’s disparate information systems together was born. Ireckonu was founded in late 2014 to focus on commercialization and execute on the innovative new platform’s technology roadmap. The Ireckonu platform has already demonstrated astonishing results in the hospitality industry, in major hotels as well as boutique operations, recording growth in overall guest satisfaction of more than 14% in some cases, including one entire hotel chain.
Excellence is all about happy clients
Traditionally, managing many rooms also meant managing a big payroll. More guests have always meant more staff. Past experience has shown that skimping on operations support will always lead to poorer guest outcomes and long-term reputational damage to your brand. Since your front desk doesn’t handle air-conditioning servicing, and housekeeping has its own schedule, there has traditionally been no way for anyone to connect the two data points, in time to prevent disaster.
Operation Excellence works 24/7 to notice those things that nobody else would notice. And when it detects trouble looming, the right staff members get notified of the exact issues to resolve, easing the burden of vendor management. It combines data feeds from every one of your systems into a single dashboard, with real-time alerts and monitoring, and advanced artificial intelligence that actually learns about your hotel, and helps you predict failures even before they happen, based on thousands of different operational variables. Customers can increase operating efficiencies so drastically that they can service 1,200 rooms with a single support staff member. And they’ve achieved double-digit increases in guest ratings at the same time. In this increasingly connected, real-time world, Operation Excellence means you can have happier guests and few staff at the same time. It’s not the way of the past. It’s your best way forward.
Monitors every system with the state-of-the-art AI
Data Science is about making sense of all your data, all at once. The state-of-the-art artificial intelligence continuously monitors every system you have, with an uncanny sense of urgency. By detecting point failures as they happen (or even before), the right staff is able to take immediate action, rather than waiting for a guest to tell them. Operational Excellence correlates data across your systems to identify root causes quickly. That means your team doesn’t waste time with one vendor when another vendor is actually to blame. The system notifies each of your staff using the communications technology that works best for them: phone, SMS, dashboard alerts and more are all possible in this truly connected future.
Seize the opportunity with delightful conveniences
The company has invented a way to teach your old systems some very cool new tricks. Its consolidated guest profile lets you re-imagine your guest experience by re-mixing different systems’ capabilities into new, delightful combinations. Since a typical guest now carries a phone-sized supercomputer everywhere they go, Ireckonu has decided to make it easy for you to enhance their journey through the hotel with simple, useful, smart options. Like the option to open their door with their phone instead of a key and options for automatic check-in upon arrival. Delightful conveniences add sparkle to their day, and because they are genuinely helpful as well, they can drive big increases in repeat visits and overall brand loyalty.
Personalization is the new luxury
One-size-fits-all brand experiences are dead and gone. A friendly smile and simply being greeted by name builds more trust and more brand engagement in three seconds than three whole nights of 1,000 thread-count sheets can ever dream of. Guest Experience’s rich guest profile capabilities are the perfect fit for designing tailored micro-experiences to suit each guest’s individual tastes and preferences. Runners appreciate tips on local tracks (especially if they are loaded into a smartwatch that comes with their room). Weary frequent flyers feel at ease and at home when their favorite cocktail is ready and waiting for arrival. Even a simple re-ordering of TV channels based on past usage preferences is a subtle, nuanced way for your hotel and brand to say “welcome back”.
Live without a live staff member
When a guest wakes up disorientated in the middle of the night, let them ask the room for what they need, instead of stumbling around in confusion. Any controlled system in the room, including lights, is just waiting to be told what to do. Crafting integrated experiences let guests ask for what they need, and get what they really want like dimming the lights at the same time as switching on the video screen when they ask for the sports channel. So now, even without a live staff member present, your hotel can still delight and enhance their stay, in the most personalized way possible — by responding to their natural voice commands.
Testimonials
“The Ireckonu team includes some of the most capable people our team has ever worked with. We appreciate their ability to quickly solve issues we had been working to resolve for years.”
- Todd Wood, VP Technology, Global Applications, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group
“Ireckonu continues to innovate and bring new capabilities to their unique platform. It has been great to see their offerings grow and the value they bring to a transformative industry”
- Greg Jones, Managing Director, Worldwide Hospitality & Transport, Microsoft