Innovation

🚢 Navigator, owned by Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, is set for a full renovation exceeding $50 million, with design by Lissoni & Partners, Journey, and MAWD. It will feature 210 residences priced from $750,000 to $8 million, white-glove butler service, and Starlink internet. Sales open April 9, with a Miami showroom. The inaugural voyage is scheduled for December 2026. Crescent Seas will announce four more luxury residence ships within five years. Russell W. Galbut spearheads this initiative.

⚽ Legendary Rooms by Novotel honor PSG icons with memorabilia and interactive digital experiences. QR codes grant access to dedicated pages with exclusive content. Jean-Yves Minet, worldwide president of Novotel at Accor, aims for unique guest experiences blending football excitement and hotel comfort. Nicola Ibbetson of PSG sees this as extending the club's reach. The first room opens on March 20, 2025, at Novotel Jakarta Cikini, Indonesia, dedicated to Javier Pastore.

🏕 HolaCamp, a Spanish startup founded in 2023 and based in Barcelona, secured €10 million from Belgian venture capital fund Amavi Capital to digitalize outdoor hospitality. With a team of 50, the company aims to modernize equipment and centralize technology for the sector. Currently partnered with 11 campsites in Spain and Portugal, HolaCamp plans to hit a revenue of €30 million by 2025.

📱 Meta AI launched in European messaging apps, integrating with WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. Deployment is set for 41 European countries, including EU states and 21 overseas territories, supporting six European languages. Accessible without updates, users mention @MetaAI to initiate interaction. Aimed to enhance mobility and travel, with no current availability in France, the AI tool boasts 700 million monthly active users globally.

🏠 Locabnb is an online platform designed for accommodation professionals, offering the creation of hyper-realistic, easily-integrated 3D floor plans for listings or digital welcome books. It caters to apartments, hotels, and cottages, providing a detailed overview that eliminates surprises for clients with virtual first visits.

💰 Accor's loyalty program ALL (Accor Live Limitless) reaches 100 million members, offering access to over 5,600 hotels and 7,700 global experiences. Alix Boulnois, Chief Business, Digital & Tech Officer at Accor, highlights the program's role in customer engagement and revenue growth. Launched in 2019, ALL doubled its membership, significantly increasing member spending.

🚢 Viking® has delivered the Viking Nerthus, a new Viking Longship® with a 168-passenger capacity. The handover ceremony took place at Meyer’s Neptun Werft in Rostock-Warnemünde, Germany. The ship will sail the "Paris & the Heart of Normandy" and "Christmastime in Paris & Normandy" (both 8-day itineraries) on the Seine. Viking’s Torstein Hagen expressed pride in the fleet expansion. The Viking Nerthus features hybrid propulsion, shore power connectivity, and solar panels for enhanced energy efficiency.

💸 During Concur Fusion event, SAP announced the integration of its AI assistant Joule into SAP Concur Solutions, specifically with Concur Expense to automate expense management in business travel. Joule's generative AI can provide natural language user assistance and streamline procedures. Available initially to SAP Early Adopter Care members, the global rollout of Joule within Concur Expense is scheduled for the second half of 2025. SAP Concur also extended its partnership with Amex GBT.

🏡 Atmosphere Core, a hotel group with headquarters in the Maldives, announces its expansion from Asia to Europe with BORGO MONCHIERO HERITAGE BY ATMOSPHERE in Italy, projected to open in 2026. This marks the brand's first entry into Europe, adding to its portfolio of over 25 establishments in India and South Asia, grown significantly over the past decade. The new luxury residence in Italy will feature 19 rooms and suites.

💻 In 2022, France's digital sector had a carbon footprint of 29.5 MtCO2e, with data centers responsible for 46% of emissions, 4.4% of the country's total carbon footprint. The Shift Project highlights uncertainties in measuring AI's carbon-energy footprint. Regarding energy, digital consumption was 11% of France's electrical consumption, but estimates vary widely, from 3 TWh by RTE to 12 TWh by ADEME & Arcep. Transparency issues also affect the impact of AI generative models, with no data shared by NVIDIA or TSMC, controlling 80% and as the leading semiconductor supplier, respectively. Meta's communications on its Llama models' carbon footprint are considered narrow by Carbone 4, which also notes a 50% carbon emission increase over three years for Meta and Google. Ten daily queries to a LLM can add 100 kgCO2e to a user's annual personal emissions.