Welcome to RemoteHotelier #79!
In today’s newsletter:
🤖 Accor presents its new AI concierge
🔑 Dormakaba wants to stop selling just the lock
🔓 Only 7% of PMS vendors show you their API docs upfront
🔌 + 3 new integrations
🤝 + 2 new partnerships
🆕 + 3 new product updates
💼 + 3 new jobs in hotel tech
🤖 Accor presents its new AI concierge
Credit: Accor
Accor launches an AI travel companion built into its app and website, called ALL Concierge.
It’s available on iMessage and WhatsApp, and the tool handles booking, loyalty status, stay updates, local recommendations, and in-stay questions, with a handoff to a human agent at any point.
It’s also available in 11 languages after a pilot that studied more than a million guest interactions.
Between 30% and 40% of those pilot conversations were about making a booking.
To provide some context, these tasks have been traditionally done by call center agents miles away from the guests calling and from the hotel they’re interested in.
As of today, when you call an Accor hotel, your call can be routed in three different ways:
You reach the hotel directly.
You call the hotel, but nobody can answer and your call gets redirected to a call center.
There’s an automatic redirection set up, so your call never gets to ring in the hotel, and goes directly to a call center.
The traditional approach has its pros and cons. The biggest con, of course, is that when a potential guest has a specific question about the hotel, the call agent isn’t usually able to answer, and needs to reach the hotel to get the info (a hotel that redirected the call to the call center in the first place because they’re probably understaffed).
If you ask me, this is a great use of technology. They already have the process so polished that it is easily replicable in smaller automations. I’m also guessing that a good number of the call center agents can be easily retrained into “AI supervisors”. And the guests won’t have to hold the line anymore if they don’t want to.
🔑 Dormakaba wants to stop selling just the lock
Dormakaba is acquiring Alliants, a guest experience platform, to add digital check-in, messaging, and payments on top of its lock business.
Alliants already supports more than 100,000 hotel rooms and already works with brands like Four Seasons, Nobu Hospitality, and Lore Group.
Its digital keys live in Apple Wallet and Google Wallet, so guests can unlock doors without downloading any app.
This is Dormakaba's latest move in this space, but not the first. It follows moves like acquiring any2any and Vintech Systems plus an investment in SwiftConnect.
If Dormakaba manages to bundle keys, messaging, and check-in into one deal, hotels get one source to buy the whole package.
A lock company buying guest messaging and digital key software is a strong statement: hardware alone doesn't win contracts anymore.
📢 Sponsored by HubSpot
Want to get the most out of ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a superpower if you know how to use it correctly.
Discover how HubSpot's guide to AI can elevate both your productivity and creativity to get more things done.
Learn to automate tasks, enhance decision-making, and foster innovation with the power of AI.
🔓 Only 7% of PMS vendors show you their API docs upfront
A new report audited 343 PMS vendors and found only 7% publish fully public API documentation.
Before we get into this, for what it’s worth, you should know that this report is sponsored by (among others) a bunch of PMS companies. And any result should be seen through this lens: they have a product to sell.
Having said that, any good data is always welcome:
The study scored 18 platforms across ten dimensions, including AI readiness, security disclosures, and documentation quality.
Apaleo, Hapi, HotelKey, and Mews sponsored the research, and the study says sponsorship didn't influence the scoring.
So, what's an open API, and why should you care? It's as if you were thinking about buying a new TV, and you wanted to see the remote first. What this report intends to say is that stuff like room status, rates, and guest profiles should be readable and writable without begging for developer access.
For hoteliers, this is more about asking a simple question when doing due diligence: Can I see your API docs before I sign? If a vendor won't show the documentation upfront, that’s a potential red flag.
RESOURCES
📍 Next Event: Independent Hotel Show (5–6 October).
📅 See the full hotel tech event calendar.
💼 Check which hotel tech companies offer remote jobs.
💻 Get your PMS comparison spreadsheet.
💸 Get your RMS comparison spreadsheet.
INTEGRATIONS
🔌 Apaleo expands its integration with IDeaS: enabling two-way data flows between the PMS and IDeaS revenue management platform for pricing, forecasting, and overbooking controls. [Link]
Two big names expanding their partnership.
🔌 Amadeus strengthens hotel distribution with HyperGuest: adding 15,000 independent properties and richer content to its offering for leisure agencies. [Link]
HyperGuest stays behind the scenes while Amadeus keeps control of the tech.
🔌 Guesty integrates with AirDNA Adapt: syncing portfolio data, market intelligence, and pricing recommendations directly into Guesty's platform. [Link]
This is for property managers who like to keep the final call at the listing level.
PARTNERSHIPS
🤝 Hapi partners with Upgrade: to help hotels support buy now, pay later payments through Upgrade's Flex Pay. [Link]
The integration moves payment data across the reservation system, PMS, and reconciliation on its own.
🤝 Navan acquires BoomPop: to add meetings and events planning to its travel, expense, and payments platform. [Link]
It's the fifth deal in Navan's acquisition streak, and this one puts it in direct competition with specialists like Cvent.
PRODUCT UPDATES
🆕 Unifocus launches Claira: a workforce and operations platform that brings labor forecasting, scheduling, and housekeeping into one system. [Link]
It's built specifically for hotels where headcount is tight and disconnected systems cost the most time.
🆕 Event Temple launches an AI Sales Coordinator: to pick up group inquiries around the clock and turn them into bookings inside the platform. [Link]
According to the article, roughly 75% of RFPs go to whoever responds first.
🆕 Hospitable adds split payouts: letting property managers and owners each get their share of booking revenue from the same transaction on Vrbo and direct bookings. [Link]
Airbnb already had this, so Hospitable is kind of closing that gap.
JOB BOARD
💼 Senior Customer Success Manager | Remote (based in United States) | Duetto.
💼 Remote Sales Development Representative | Remote (based in UK) | RoomPriceGenie.
💼 Kiosk Implementation Specialist | Remote (based in UK) | Canary Technologies.
That’s all for today, thank you for reading. If this was helpful, share it with someone who'd find it useful too:
See you next week!
Jose