News & Stories

Rockville. Personal data of Choice Hotels customers were freely accessible on the Internet for several days, including names, addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Luxembourg. The operator of a website that features a Facebook 'Like' button can be a controller jointly with Facebook in respect of the collection and transmission to Facebook of the personal data of visitors to its website. By contrast, that operator is not, in principle, a controller in respect of the subsequent processing of those data carried out by Facebook alone.

Augsburg. Innovative, funny and frightening things from the digital world. Today: Amazons Prime Day, Construction sand for desert countries / Facebook's record fine / Hyperloop acceleration / Heart attack saver Alexa & Co / Reading the brain / More millions for German startups.

Munich. The "Innovation Award" from the German International Hotel Association sent Online Birds into the sky - that’s how happy the young Munich-based tech company was when presented with the award in Stuttgart in June. With their new "Hotel Digital Score", they claim to have created a world first - a means to measure the online marketing performance of any hotel in a matter of seconds - not only one’s own hotel, but also that of competitors. The result is presented in the form of a simple number between 0 and 100. That makes comparisons easy.

Stuttgart. 63 students took a close look at "digitised real estate" and programmed the entire process, from property search to cash flow, from location to market, as a seamless value chain. The project was presented on Monday in Stuttgart.

Munich. Algorithms today already influence our lives in many areas. Dr Jörg Dräger therefore calls for a public debate both on the associated opportunities as well as the risks – and pleads for clear rules. Dräger, who is also a member of the Bertelsmann Stiftung Executive Board, warns against either-or-thinking and believes that, in recruitment, algorithmic procedures can sometimes be better than conventional theory-based approaches. Nevertheless, he is clear: The human being should use and control the machine, not the other way around. His examples from human resources also apply to the hotel industry.

Augsburg. Property Management Systems are a major obstacle for hotel companies attempting to digitise: Their technology is old, rigid and does not allow interfaces to smart modern tools which simplify interaction with the guest. The operator is totally dependent on the PMS used and its level of innovation. Yet there is change. Newcomers have arrived on the scene, but have not been able to break through the PMS firewall. An IT-experienced hotelier has sharp criticism for today's PMS providers: Today, 95 percent of their systems are already in a position to follow the customer journey digitally. Yet that’s not what they want, because precisely that would destroy their business model.

Munich. "Jeeves" was the world's first room shopping robot, say its inventors Johannes Fuchs and Oliver Stahl from Munich. The self-driving service robot is already in use as an all-round service provider in several hotels. Three years after the company Robotise was founded, production is now taking off, says co-founder Johannes Fuchs in the following "Digi Talk".

Vienna/Berlin. The hoteliers are devoting more and more to the topic of digitalisation and have recognized their lack of knowledge says the new survey of the German and Austrian hotel associations in collaboration with Roland Berger. They are opening up for start-ups but are also demanding more tools for their own operations.

Augsburg. Every week, approximately an extra 1.5 million people join the urban population worldwide, putting pressure on already heavily populated cities. As a reaction to this development, Swedish furniture retailer IKEA now introduces a flexible interior solution called Rognan reminiscent of a hotel innovation.