Technology

Hotel guests and workers alike emerged from the pandemic with less cash in hand, and industry players — like Wyndham — have taken note. 

Throughout the pandemic, which brought on a rise in contactless payments, hotel guests were carrying fewer bills and looking for a new way to tip. Hotel workers needed a solution for tipping, too, because potentially lower cash tips meant lower total pay — already a concern for many. 

In early 2022, Wyndham franchisees expressed this concern to the company’s technology advisory board. It listened, and so began the process of providing their hotels with a frictionless mobile tipping solution that would cater to both workers and guests.  

In September 2022, the hotel company announced a partnership with Béné to provide a new portfolio-wide cashless tipping solution for its U.S. and Canadian franchisees. 

For hotels that opt in to the mobile tipping platform, Béné provides personalized materials — think business cards and an in-room desk sign — for each employee. This signage includes a personalized QR code, which once scanned shows a picture of the worker. Guests can scan the code, no app download needed, during their stay and choose how much to tip their housekeeper or other hotel employee. The platform accepts multiple forms of payment, including credit card, Apple Pay and Google Pay.

The amount tipped by a guest can be deposited directly into a worker's bank account, into the property's account to be distributed with regular payroll or loaded onto a debit card. 

Approximately 400 Wyndham hotels across the U.S. and Canada are currently utilizing the Béné platform, and there are another 400 in the pipeline, according to Wyndham CIO Scott Strickland. 

The hotel company plans to expand its partnership with Béné, integrating the platform into its property management system to allow guests to add tips directly to their room charge. 

Strickland told Hotel Dive that Wyndham is also exploring inserting mobile tipping at guest checkout with an enterprise solution by Canary Technologies. Strickland declined to provide additional information on the partnership, as it’s in its initial stages. Currently, Canary Technologies provides a variety of digital solutions for tipping, check-in and checkout and guest messaging to more than 20,000 hoteliers. 

According to Strickland, Wyndham hopes that adopting digital tipping solutions will help it retain hotel workers at a time when the industry faces a major shortage — as well as increase guest satisfaction with personalized, frictionless technology. 

The labor impact

The pandemic forced hospitality employees out of work, and many who left did not return, Strickland said. In June, an AHLA survey found that 82% of hotels in the U.S. still report staffing shortages, despite 75% of hoteliers increasing wages to try to attract and retain talent. 

Meanwhile, the fight for fairer wages and improved on-the-job conditions persists, as evidenced by ongoing hotel union worker strikes in Southern California. 

Tips are a significant portion of hotel workers’ compensation, but unlike other industries, the hospitality space has experienced a decrease in tipping following the pandemic, Canary Technologies Head of Growth Marketing Bryan Michalis told Hotel Dive. 

“Making [hotel workers’] compensation more competitive with other industries will absolutely help retention and decreasing turnover,” Michalis said. “Our recent survey found that nearly 80% of hotel employees said they'd be more likely to stay with their current employer if digital tipping was offered.” 

According to Strickland, at hotels with Béné, a housekeeper’s income will increase by about $4 to $5 per hour. “So that helps a lot with the [wage] gap,” he said.

Wyndham properties that have adopted the Béné platform have experienced a 14% average monthly increase in frequency of tips per property and a 45% monthly increase in average amount of tips per employee, according to data provided by the mobile tipping platform. 

Similarly, Canary Technologies’ 2023 State of Tipping in Hotels survey found that 70% of hotel guests would tip more if a digital tipping solution was available, and nearly 40% would prefer to digitally tip staff.  

On average, the survey found, 19% of Americans tip between $6 and $10, while 25% tip $16 to $20 and 13% tip between $21 and $30. 

While the average mobile tip is $9.20, Strickland said, Wyndham hotels have seen mobile tips total upward of $100 through the Béné platform — something Strickland doesn’t believe would have been granted via cash. 

Personalization is key

Compared to other solutions, the Béné digital tipping platform personalizes the connection between guests and housekeepers, even though they rarely meet face-to-face, according to a company statement obtained by Hotel Dive. Béné’s material displays the name of the housekeeper who prepared the room, and when the guest scans the tipping card, the guest is presented with a photo of the housekeeper. 

In general, displaying a tipping card increases the amount of the tip by 70%, and by personalizing the collateral with the name of the housekeeper, the likelihood of a tip increases by 46%, according to Béné, citing a 2019 study by the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. 

Guests have responded positively to the technology at Wyndham properties, and hotels have seen increased tipping as a direct result of Béné’s personalized signage, Strickland said. “We found that if there is a picture [on the signage], people are actually more likely to tip because it feels more personal.” 

The process “makes you smile,” he added. “There’s very little friction [...] and ultimately, it improves the guests’ experience and makes them feel good about staying in our hotels.”

At a time when the hospitality industry is still recovering from pandemic-related labor woes, one online hiring platform is bringing together businesses and employees in an unconventional way

The San Francisco-based Instawork platform is a career marketplace for hospitality professionals. Different from traditional recruiting services, Instawork provides an automated matching solution that connects businesses with a network of more than 5 million workers on its app across the U.S. and Canada.

“We match businesses with workers using more than 30 different data points, including geography, skills, experience and what the business needs, to bring together those parties in a unique and meaningful way,” Kira Caban, spokesperson at Instawork, told Hotel Dive. 

The platform works with businesses across a number of industries in hospitality, from hotels to food and beverage. Businesses can connect and get matched with hourly or seasonal workers to fill shorter-term job opportunities or search out and hire employees for more permanent positions. On the flip side, workers have the opportunity to decide when, where and how they work best, Caban said, driving some workers to positions they may have not considered before. 

Instawork’s purpose — to connect local hospitality businesses with a network of skilled and talented hourly workers — has remained the same since its founding in 2015. But as the industry continues its recovery, the platform’s flexible matching technology is a welcomed solution by both businesses and workers — though some hiring challenges remain. 

Filling critical gaps

As of June, more than 80% of hotels across the country still reported staffing shortages brought on by the pandemic. And hoteliers, on average, were looking to fill nine positions per property, with their most critical staffing need being housekeeping. 

Instawork has helped hoteliers combat these shortages, Caban said. This year, housekeeper is a top-10 most commonly hired role by hotels on the platform. Other top-10 roles include line cook, dishwasher and event server. 

“The platform is doing a really great job of taking the business needs and matching with the workers who can meet those needs,” Caban said, adding that 93% of businesses that use Instawork want matched workers to return. 

Hotels Instawork works with include the “top-five hotel brands in the world,” Caban said. While she declined to name specific brands, the company’s website lists Embassy Suites by Hilton and Marriott’s Ritz-Carlton as businesses it works with.

Beyond matching by position, Instawork also connects businesses and employees based on timing needs. Because of certain demand influxes, Caban explained, a business may need a worker for one day each week or for a full-time gig for several months at a time, so there are a variety of flexible work opportunities available. Businesses get to bring on help at the exact time they need it, and workers benefit from getting to dictate their own schedules. 

Flexibility is key

Flexibility is key for many hospitality workers following the pandemic. According to Instawork’s State of the Flexible Workforce 2022 survey, 64% of respondents said choosing when and how to work was a leading non-monetary motivation for flexible working. 

“There's this evolution happening where people want to have a voice on who they work for, how they work, where they work and when they work,” Caban said, adding that financial stability, which “doesn't necessarily come with a traditional gig economy,” is another motivator for flexible workers. 

According to the survey, pay rates for flexible workers usually exceed those for hourly workers as a whole. But in the hotel industry, specifically, that may not be the case. 

For work in the hotel industry, the average hourly rate on the Instawork platform is $20.69, Caban said. That number doesn’t meet the national average hourly wage for leisure and hospitality workers, which sat at $23.04 in June. And in some regions, hotel workers are demanding an even higher hourly wage to keep up with rising cost of living. 

Challenges remain

In Southern California, hundreds of union workers are taking part in the region’s largest multihotel strike in history, demanding higher wages, expanded benefits and better working conditions. 

According to Unite Here Local 11 — which represents more than 30,000 workers in Southern California and Arizona — Instawork has matched several “gig” employees with local hotels to fill positions left vacant by the striking workers. The union also claims the platform has unfairly penalized these workers when they, too, took to the picket lines. 

At the end of July, Unite Here filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Instawork alleging that the company, along with the Hilton Anaheim Hotel, violated the National Labor Relations Act by canceling the shifts of workers hired through the app after they also began striking. 

Instawork denied Unite Here’s claims in an official statement. “Instawork does not interfere in the relationships or discussions between Partners and their direct staff, whether related to political and/or union activity or otherwise. Nor does Instawork retaliate against Pros for engaging in protected activity, whether related to political and/or union activity or otherwise.” 

Caban declined to comment on the ongoing litigation. 

Looking forward

In May, Instawork raised $60 million in a Series D funding round. The capital, the company announced, will be used to invest in additional AI capabilities for its mobile app and platform. 

Hotels and other hospitality businesses using Instawork are set to see improved operational efficiencies, including quick access to workers within their communities, according to the company. Hourly workers are also poised to benefit, getting access to new “unique training and certification opportunities.”

Expedia and Kayak have partnered with OpenAI’s AI-powered ChatGPT chatbot to provide users with trip itineraries including flights and accommodations, according to a press release.

The AI technology — with access to Expedia’s and Kayak’s travel data — brings “more personalized and intuitive search experiences,” Kayak said in a statement. 

The companies are the first major players in the travel industry to integrate ChatGPT technology, which will be rolled out gradually to test the safety systems. 

Although travel providers have been experimenting with AI for years to remove friction from the travel-planning process, ChatGPT represents the next evolution of the technology, effectively acting as a virtual travel assistant that can respond to natural-language inquiries like “I’m looking for a hotel in New York City that’s close to Central Park.”

“What a large language model like ChatGPT does is enable a traveler to plan their next trip by simply starting a conversation,” said Rathi Murthy, chief technology officer at Expedia Group. “With the Expedia plugin, the traveler will now have access to up-to-date information on the availability and price of flights, hotels, vacation rentals, activities and car rentals across the world during that conversation.” 

While the chatbot will help users ideate a trip, booking a specific hotel or flight will still happen directly through Expedia’s website, Murthy noted. 

“When [users] are ready to shop and book, they’ll go straight through to Expedia because travelers care about the details, like the size of a hotel room, and they want to see options personalized for them, along with exclusive member deals and rewards,” Murthy said. 

Large-scale access to the ChatGPT plugin will gradually roll out over time, Murthy said, adding that the slow rollout aligns with OpenAI’s philosophy of iterative deployment — allowing the company to learn from the plugin’s real-world use and improve its safety systems. Meanwhile, Booking Holdings-owned Kayak said ChatGPT Plus subscribers will be the first with access to the integration. Kayak sister brand OpenTable has also partnered with ChatGPT.

While both brands have a long history of using AI technologies to streamline the travel planning experience — Kayak was among the first to adopt Alexa and Siri Shortcuts, for example — the industry is watching closely to see how ChatGPT will change travelers’ user habits and decision-making. 

A year ago, Allison Howard and her fellow members of the Global Wellness Institute’s Sleep Initiative started hearing a new phrase: “sleep tourism.” 

The term was popping up in travel circles as sleep wellness experiences began to proliferate. Last year, Park Hyatt New York debuted its Bryte Restorative Sleep Suites, rooms featuring smart beds specially designed for relaxation and deep sleep. Rosewood Hotels & Resorts launched Alchemy of Sleep retreats in 20 properties across the globe, designed to promote wellness and rest. Canyon Ranch held its first “sleep immersion experience,” inviting doctors and experts to its Tucson, Arizona, resort for five days (and nights) of all things sleep. It appeared “sleep tourism” had arrived. 

“We [the Sleep Initiative] tried as a group to pinpoint the origin of that term,” Howard told Hotel Dive. “It’s a term that’s really just existed for the last year or so.” 

Whatever the term’s genesis, the Sleep Initiative — a volunteer group of experts from the medical field and related industries dedicated to studying sleep wellness — took note. In the group’s soon-to-be-published trend report obtained by Hotel Dive, Howard and her cohort wrote: “A silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the growing interest of consumers in well-being, and also pent-up domestic leisure travel. [...] Sleep is a fundamental pillar of health and wellness, and also, at the end of the day, a core element of the hotel experience.”

As hotels with wellness-focused amenities look to diversify their offerings, they’re beginning to capitalize on the one thing nearly all guests will do during their stay: sleep. And as awareness of sleep tourism grows, hotels, spas and tech companies are jumping in on the trend. 

In-room tech

A good night’s rest starts with the basics — mattresses and bedding — which at some properties are getting a high-tech makeover.

Bryte is a smart mattress startup that has partnered with 18 hotels in the U.S., including the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach, Four Seasons Los Angeles, Rosewood Miramar Beach, Cavallo Point Lodge, Carillon Miami Wellness Resort and Park Hyatt New York. The company’s Bryte Balance mattress allows guests to customize levels of firmness on either side, and Somnify, its relaxation technology, pairs soothing sounds with gentle motion to ease guests into sleep. 

“We’ve found from conversations with our hotel partners that guests want purposeful technology with customization, personalization and deep insights,” CEO Luke Kelly told Hotel Dive. “Feedback from our hotel partners on the technology has been extremely positive.” 

Bryte currently offers its Sleep Insights — which track users’ sleep metrics such as sleep duration, stages and efficiency throughout the night — to those who own the mattress at home. But the service will soon be available in hotels, Kelly said. In May, the company announced a partnership with Fullpower-AI, a biosensing platform, which will offer even more insights for the sleep-obsessed traveler when it launches later this year tracking sleep patterns, cardiovascular and breathing metrics and apnea. 

Hospitality management platform Intelity has also introduced smart mattresses via a partnership with FreshBed, a Swiss-engineered ergonomic mattress that filters the air around it and controls temperature and humidity. Guests staying on FreshBeds, which are currently in all rooms at New York City’s RH Guesthouse, can control their bed’s climate via tablet. The company plans to expand the smart bed’s availability in Europe, an Intelity spokesperson told Hotel Dive. 

Even sheets are being specially formulated to help hotel guests drift off. Howard is the founder of Nollapelli, which provides the sheets for Bryte mattresses in some hotel suites. With her engineering degree, Howard designed a patent-pending fabric that stays cooler and drier than basic sheets. Nollapelli sheets can be found at Fairmont and Park Hyatt properties, as well as Florida’s Lake Nona Wave Hotel and Carillon Miami Wellness Resort. 

The lasting impact

Providing the full sleep tourism experience, though, comes down to more than hardware. 

The right room should play to a guest’s senses, Howard said. “Is it dark enough? Is it quiet enough? Is it cool enough?” she said. “There could be a scent component to it too.” Then there are hotel-wide considerations, such as offering guests a wind-down massage at the spa or an alcohol-free beverage, optimized for sleep. 

Some resorts have taken it even further. Bangkok-based Six Senses created a program with renowned sleep doctor Michael Breus available at its resorts in Asia and Europe. Guests who opt into the sleep wellness program receive a tailored schedule as well as services including a meeting with a sleep doctor, yoga nidra, meditation and nutrition advice. The sleep program at Canyon Ranch also offers guests a personalized sleep study with a doctor’s consultation and a nightly group relaxation program. 

But not everyone is sold on the promises of optimized sleep at hotels. In his 2018 book “How to Sleep Well: The Science of Sleeping Smarter, Living Better and Being Productive,” sleep expert Neil Stanley noted that people “usually sleep better when you are in a relaxing environment, so the mere act of going to a spa for a couple of days and having massages, body scrubs, relaxing by the pool etc. will help you sleep better, temporarily.” 

“However, your life is not one long spa weekend,” he cautioned, so any improvements to sleep may only be temporary. 

Howard pointed out that properties like Canyon Ranch that “really lean into the education” may ultimately have the best chance to impact a guest’s sleep habits after they leave the hotel. But sometimes guests just want one relaxing weekend away to catch up on sleep, and there are other reasons for hoteliers to prioritize guests’ sleeping experience.

“If you don't sleep well in a hotel, you are not going to have a good impression of your stay, regardless of what else happens while you're there,” she said.

The Rosewood Miramar Beach in Montecito, California, is seeing the sleep tourism trend take off. After initially offering three Bryte beds in its sleep suites, the property soon realized that wasn’t enough and has since added three more Bryte sleep suites. 

“We are also expecting sleep focused treatments to transition from being seasonal or by request to becoming a fundamental part of our wellness options and programming across all our spas,” a hotel spokesperson told Hotel Dive. 

And while the origins of “sleep tourism” remain unknown, Howard said one thing is clear: “It’s definitely trending up.”

At the Renaissance Las Vegas Hotel, there are two assistants named Elvis and Priscilla. 

Elvis and Priscilla pick up orders from the front desk and deliver them to guests. They show up at guests’ rooms when they ask for more towels or toilet paper. They bring Wi-Fi into zones with no service, and they even go into “mingle” mode. 

The thing about Elvis and Priscilla, though, is that they’re robots. And despite the fact that they lack a pulse, guests still love their service. “[I] had an awesome robot deliver my room service,” reads one Yelp review. “So fun to have robots deliver things to the room,” reads another. 

“I think the biggest surprise to me [...] is the emotional connection that guests and staff alike have with the robots,” Michael O’Donnell, CEO of Relay Robotics, told Hotel Dive. The San Jose, California-based company has been putting robots — which serve as everything from assistants to entertainment — in hotels since 2014.

In the years since, the robots have joined hotels by Marriott, Hilton, IHG and Wyndham across the country. And they’ve undergone several upgrades. The most recent: the newly launched Relay 2, which offers a 10-gallon payload for even bigger deliveries. 

The company says its robots have completed over one million deliveries to date worldwide.

While these butlers-on-wheels may have raised eyebrows at first, they’ve proved successful enough that Relay is moving past the introductory phase into what O’Donnell calls “full-on growth mode.”

The case for robots

O’Donnell said Relay robots don’t replace staffers; they make staffers’ jobs more efficient — particularly as many are facing longer hours and heavier workloads amid the hotel industry’s labor shortage.  

“Even a full-service hotel may only have one person working behind the front desk at night,” he said. “And what do you do when someone calls for more towels or something to eat? Do you shut the front desk down, or lock the front door, and go up to make a delivery?” 

Deliveries have become more common in recent years, as guests increasingly opt for takeout options. Some hotel chains have capitalized on this trend: Last month, Grubhub entered into a partnership with roughly 500 of Hilton’s Homewood Suites to streamline deliveries to the hotel chain’s guests. Marriott offers extra Marriott Bonvoy points to guests ordering via Uber Eats, and DoorDash has partnered with Wyndham. Chip Rogers, president and CEO of the American Hotel and Lodging Association, previously told Hotel Dive that “Americans became extremely comfortable during the pandemic about getting food delivered to them, and this has transferred its way into the hotel industry.” 

The Relay 2, which was designed with hotelier feedback in mind, helps hotel staff deliver larger food deliveries. “We just did a trial with lunch for, like, eight people,” O’Donnell said. “And [the robots] can do it.”

He added that the robots keep non-guests out of the hotels’ properties too, by replacing the need for delivery drivers to deliver to hotel rooms themselves. 

The robots can ride elevators by themselves, and when they arrive at guests’ rooms, open their own compartments to allow guests to grab their food. 

While deliveries are a cornerstone of the robots’ service, they’ve been used for a variety of purposes — and in a variety of hotels. 

“What's interesting is it's really a cross section of high-end to lower-end,” O’Donnell said. Higher-end hotels often use them as an amenity to enhance the guest experience — O’Donnell noted one that delivers plush toys to children — whereas those on the economy end often see the robots as “a key, integral member of the staff,” he said. 

What robots are used for differs by property, but most hotels that use them have one or two. Some of them prompt guests for hotel feedback on their stay after making a delivery, allowing managers to then address any concerns. Other hotels use robots to deliver goods from their on-property marketplaces or to “greet” guests in the lobby. 

How it works

Relay’s model is subscription-based. O’Donnell said it’s a monthly fee that usually works out to $75,000 over three years, with all maintenance and support costs included. 

When a hotel manager decides to make the investment, Relay works with the property to map it for the robots and train staff on how to use them. Then, Relay pivots to liaising primarily with the companies that run and maintain hotels’ facilities. 

“Who we really work with are the service companies,” O’Donnell said, noting Relay works frequently with elevator operators to ensure their robots have a smooth ride. 

O’Donnell expects Relay’s product line will expand as it continues to refine and develop technologies. There are possibilities for restaurant-focused robots with the ability to open shelves, bigger robots to carry even larger deliveries and, of course, vacuuming robots, which are already popular in homes. “We're looking at all those different types of robots,” he said. 

As robots that can make deliveries and navigate complex facilities on their own, Relay’s robots have a lot of potential use cases. The company does operate robots in one other field, healthcare, where their sterile nature and increasingly large payloads come in handy. 

Hospitality, though, remains core to the company’s mission. O’Donnell credited the robots’ popularity in hotels to “a perfect storm of a huge market, technology getting really good and hoteliers dealing with his labor shortage.” 

“It just made a lot of sense,” O’Donnell said.

June 2020 started with Blackout Tuesday: the day that people across the world posted black squares to social media to show their solidarity with those protesting racism and police brutality toward the Black community. 

That same year, Martinique Lewis, a diversity in travel consultant and president of the Black Travel Alliance, released her ABC Travel Greenbook. Inspired by Victor Hugo Green’s The Negro Motorist Green Book — which provided safe travel recommendations for Black American road-trippers during the Jim Crow era — Lewis’ book features hundreds of Black-owned businesses and travel destinations in the U.S. and abroad, updated for our modern era. 

Earlier this month, on Blackout Tuesday’s three-year anniversary, Lewis launched the ABC Travel Greenbook app. 

The app helps travelers locate Black-owned hospitality businesses, which stand in the minority in the U.S. Last year, the National Association of Black Hotel Owners, Operators and Developers said less than 2% of U.S. hotel owners were Black. 

The app also aims to keep Black travelers safe while vacationing, Lewis said. “When [Black people] travel, we still come across those microaggressions, and sometimes that safety net is just going to an African restaurant where you know ‘Okay, at least I'm safe here.’”

A digital Green Book

Within the first 10 days of its launch, the app was downloaded 3,000 times, exceeding Lewis’ original expectations of 2,000 downloads in the first month.

The app features more than 20,000 Black-owned businesses in the U.S. alone, including hotels and other lodging, restaurants, recreation centers, transportation companies, Black history tour companies and even barber shops — practically any resource a traveler may need, Lewis said.

Among the 217 listed Black-owned hotels in the U.S. are The Downtown Clifton in Tucson, Arizona; The Gabriel in Miami; Hotel Dryce in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas; and Wanderstay Boutique Hotel in Houston. The app also features 76 international hotels, including Black-owned properties in Morocco, Kenya and Canada. 

In addition to spotlighting businesses and travel destinations, the app allows users to create a profile and connect with other travelers, build trip itineraries, find recommended events and post reviews. Users also can suggest additions, expanding the map of Black-owned businesses. 

It took roughly three years to transform The ABC Travel Greenbook into an app, but Lewis said now is the perfect time for it, as travelers hit the road (and skies) following the pandemic and are looking for digital resources to guide their journeys.  

“Because we know that travel [planning] is moving over to being digital in its entirety, what better time than now to release an app that also helps to amplify Black-owned businesses, and if you're not a Black traveler, helps to make sure you're finding out about new things [in this space],” Lewis said. 

The app helps Black travelers “know how to find places and communities of people that look like us,” she added. “Because when we travel, there's still a safety issue.” 

The changing climate

Lewis’ app launched the week after the NAACP released a travel advisory for Florida, warning travelers that the state is “openly hostile” toward “African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals.”

Following the advisory, the Black Travel Alliance, along with Future of Black Tourism and Blacks in Travel & Tourism, issued a joint statement that said any disruption of visitors to Florida could “cause devastating financial losses considering many Black businesses are still trying to fully recover from the impact of the global pandemic.” 

The joint statement, signed by Lewis, also asked: “Does the NAACP understand how small Black businesses in [the hospitality] industry have had to work extremely hard to become better positioned to be sought out by Black travelers and others seeking diverse, authentic local experiences?” 

While Lewis believes the motivations behind the travel advisory are laudable, she said it would be better to encourage visitors to patronize Black-owned travel businesses in Florida and beyond. 

Building a global travel community

Deidre Mathis, hotelier and owner of Wanderstay Hospitality Group, has already seen a positive response from being featured on the app. 

Lewis was Mathis’ first guest at Wanderstay Boutique Hotel, which opened just five weeks ago in Houston, Texas. When Lewis posted on the ABC Travel Greenbook Instagram page about her stay and experience, Mathis saw an influx of social media followers to the hotel’s page. Mathis believes traffic from the social media post boosted reservations in recent weeks. 

The app is a “great thing for the Black travel industry,” Mathis said, noting it will make traveling easier and more enjoyable and, in turn, promote Black-owned businesses. 

“[The app] just makes the entire process of planning a vacation so seamless and easy,” Mathis said. “Especially for those adamant about putting their dollars in Black-owned businesses.” 

“One of the biggest reasons why people say they didn't get to Black-owned businesses is that they didn't know they existed, because Black-owned businesses don't get the attention or the press and so people don't know about them,” she added. “This takes the legwork out of it.”

Meryanne Loum-Martin owns the Jnane Tamsna Hotel in Marrakesh, Morocco. She has also seen a significant number of travelers patronizing her business because they found it through Lewis’ book — some just visiting the pool for the day, others stopping by the restaurant, and many staying the night. 

Loum-Martin said the app goes beyond helping Black travelers — it can connect travelers of all kinds, from all places, with diverse experiences. 

“An app like this can also be a real [help] for people who are not people of color because it will lead them to cool places, period,” Loum-Martin said. “We have guests from all over the U.S., all over the world, and it's a safe haven for people of color because I'm one of them, and I'm the owner. But it's also a place where everyone can meet and network, and we've had some wonderful friendships [blossom] between people who never had the opportunity to meet before our hotel.” 

Lewis aims to grow that international traveler network this summer, hoping to reach 20,000 users on the ABC Travel Greenbook app by September.  

More than 600 Black-owned businesses from across the globe have already been recommended to be featured on the app since its launch. With downloads exceeding expectations, a list that once was limited to a book’s page count now has the opportunity to grow far beyond that.

Commercial kitchens discard between 5% and 15% of the food they purchase, costing the hospitality industry around $100 billion every year.

To help hotels reduce food waste — and the associated costs — London-based software solutions provider Winnow has developed an AI tool that allows commercial kitchens to track, measure and control what’s being thrown out.

Founded in 2013, Winnow initially developed a food waste solution that included an Android app, reporting suite and camera, allowing hotels to manually track, record and measure the food they threw away. Then in 2019, Winnow launched an AI-powered tool to streamline the food waste management process. 

Called Winnow Vision, the technology is designed to increase the accuracy of data collection, which, when done manually is around 70%. The solution also provides timely results on the amount and type of food going to waste, allowing chefs to adjust food purchasing or preparation decisions. 

Winnow Vision has been deployed at hotels including Iberostar Hotels & Resorts, which has integrated the solution at 20 properties in the past several months, and Hilton and Marriott, which utilize it at properties in Dubai.

How it works

The Winnow Vision system features a wall-mounted camera above a kitchen garbage bin that sits on a set of smart scales. The camera captures what is thrown away into the bin. Then, using a similar type of machine-learning technology found in autonomous vehicles, Winnow Vision “learns” to recognize different foods that are discarded. 

Throughout the day, the system’s smart scales measure the specific type and amount of food discarded into the bin and calculate the financial and environmental cost of the waste. A report detailing the day's waste is provided to the kitchen the following day, according to David Jackson, director of marketing and public affairs at Winnow. 

“[Winnow Vision] technology is designed to be able to give feedback to our chefs and employees — to say, ‘I'm detecting a little bit more pink on the salmon skin, maybe you can improve upon how you're preparing salmon,’” said Iberostar Global Director of Sustainability Megan Morikawa. “It's a great tool for us to be able to ensure that we're being as efficient as possible in the production of foods.” 

The results

Winnow Vision is expected to reduce food waste by from 40% to 70% and reduce food costs by from 2% to 8% at commercial kitchens, the company said. 

The technology and the company’s other non-AI-assisted solutions are implemented at 1,700 properties across the globe and currently save 36 million meals from being thrown away each year, equal to about $42 million worth of food, Jackson said. 

Since deploying Winnow Vision at its properties last fall, Iberostar has saved 533,000 meals and 213 tons of food, according to its Wave of Change 2022 Year in Review report. 

Additionally, Iberostar reduced its per-stay-waste sent to landfills by 35.61% last year and predicts that number will increase to 40% in 2023, Morikawa said. The company also predicts the cost savings from Winnow Vision will exceed $7 million annually going forward. 

That said, Morikawa noted that the technology does come with a cost — increased staff training and operational changes to an already “complex” kitchen environment — though so far Iberostar food and beverage specialists, including chefs, have responded positively. 

One Iberostar staff member told Morikawa they use the solution not only because it allows for greater efficiencies in the kitchen, but also because of the sustainability aspect.

According to Morikawa, Winnow Vision helps Iberostar work toward its sustainability goals, including becoming waste-free by 2025 and carbon-neutral by 2030. These goals align with the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism, of which Iberostar is a signatory. 

Other hotels utilizing Winnow Vision include Marriott’s Grosvenor House property in Dubai and Hilton Dubai Jumeirah, both of which reduced their food waste by approximately 70%, according to separate Winnow case studies. 

While Winnow mainly operates in international markets, Jackson said there is a pipeline of interest from hotels and resorts in the U.S. driving company progression. 

“We've been going for 10 years internationally, and we've raised over $30 million, most of which is pointed at product development to make [Winnow Vision] as fast, easy to use and effective as possible. Now we're bringing all of that experience to the U.S., and we’re very excited to see how it develops.”