Innovation

📣 Misterbooking, a 20-year French market leader in hotel management systems (PMS), announced a major rebranding on 21/10/2024 from Bouc-Bel-Air. It serves over 1700 hotels across France. The rebranding reflects its commitment to French hoteliers, initiated by comprehensive customer feedback. Founded 24 years ago, Misterbooking offers a cloud-based PMS fully developed in France, known for its excellent local support. Meet Misterbooking at EquipHotel Paris in November 2024, stand H7-3.F040.

🏖️ November 2022: ChatGPT reached 1 million users in just 5 days, a milestone that took Netflix 4 years and Twitter 2 years. Currently, ChatGPT boasts 180 million global users. The AI market is expected to grow by an average of 37%, surpassing €1.6 trillion by 2030. Club Med uses Google's Vision AI to manage over 50,000 precisely indexed photos and has developed an intelligent bot for real-time information retrieval. In Hauts-de-France, an unnamed amusement park has partnered with The Sane Intention to automate calls using a "callbot". Paris's Jardin d'Acclimatation and Vulcania employ AI to predict daily attendance and optimize resource management. The historical mining center of Lewarde offers an enhanced visitor experience through interactive avatars of former miners, while VisitDenmark used AI in a 2023 campaign.

✈ Amadeus is creating a contactless airport experience with biometric technology, allowing boarding without manually entering passport info. Air Asia has offered such a service for two years. Amadeus is also experimenting with next-generation electronic baggage tags and has deployed mobile registration stations operating on 4G and 5G, used during the Tokyo Olympics, enabling check-in outside airports.

🏨 Carine Chausson from Contact Hôtel Arc en Ciel in Colmar highlights how Contact Voyages helped optimize group bookings, increasing conversion rates and revenue. Jacques Barthélémy of Contact Hôtel Le Belvédère in Lauzerte mentions savings through the ENTEGRA sourcing center, combating inflation. Contact Hôtels network enables independent hotels to adopt innovative solutions, generate substantial savings, and offer unique advantages.

🧟 Booking and Airbnb users targeted by a scam involving fake payment error messages by the Telekopye cybercriminal network. Victims are redirected to fraudulent sites that closely mimic the reservation platforms. This scam, active since the beginning of the year, uses real reservation data such as arrival/departure dates, location, and price, making it hard to detect. Both platforms warn users, especially during high-traffic vacation periods, and urge vigilance and verification of URLs and direct service contact to prevent falling for these scams.

🎨 Generative AI allows conversations with artists, historical figures, and artworks. Key implementations include a life-size Alan Turing hologram at Bletchley Park's National Museum of Computing, Arthur Rimbaud’s digital twin at Maison des Ailleurs, Salvador Dalí experience at the Dalí Museum, chatting with 18 WWII heroes at the New Orleans military history museum, discussions with 13 animal specimens at Cambridge's Zoology Museum, and conversing with historical figures like Joan of Arc through Ask Mona magnets. "The Living Museum" by AI engineer Jonathan Talmi enables online inquiries to the British Museum's millions of items.

📱 Apple Business Connect (ABC) now allows professionals to distribute their business information across Apple services such as Maps, Safari, Mail, Wallet (with Tap to Pay), and Siri, targeting iPhone users among over a billion Apple product consumers. The platform enables customization of business listings on Apple Maps and Safari, email branding through Branded Mail, and personalizing Tap to Pay displays. Apple's ecosystem also offers a centralized dashboard for real-time updates, analytics, and customer engagement optimization, enhancing online visibility and performance for businesses.

✈ Google Flights introduced a new feature called "Le moins cher" to filter flight searches by price, announced on Wednesday, with worldwide availability in two weeks. This feature may include trade-offs such as third-party booking sites with lower prices than airlines, longer stopovers, or less direct routes, possibly requiring purchases from different booking sites. Launch precedes the holiday season, aiming to help travelers save.

🧡 At Abu Dhabi, researchers developed an algorithm that identifies hidden archaeological sites beneath desert sands using radar imagery and artificial intelligence. Covering 650,000 km², Rub al-Khali desert in Saudi Arabia is one of the world's largest deserts. The technology can detect objects with 50cm precision and create 3D models of buried structures. Already successful in Saudi Arabia, it is planned to be tested in Mongolia. This could make new sites accessible to tourists, potentially joining landmarks like Chichén Itzá and Machu Picchu.

📣 RoomRaccoon, a leading hotel management system for independent establishments, announced its strategic partnership with Pxier, an innovative event, sales, and catering/spa service management solution. This new bilateral integration is available on the RoomRaccoon Marketplace, offering independent hoteliers an affordable, comprehensive solution to optimize their operations and enhance customer experiences. The integration ensures real-time, automatic data synchronization with Pxier, streamlining operational management from rooms to wellness services without manual data transfer.