News & Stories

Augsburg. Innovative, funny and scary things from the digital world. Today: Legal uncertainty about data / Newcomers to stock market slow down tech IPOs / Start-up superlative in Munich / Restaurants also know new guests / IHG and Expedia.

New York. Facebook's and Instagram's parent company Meta drops 200 billion dollars in Wall Street in one session! Meta is also struggling to transfer EU users' data to the US because of GDPR. The company "threatens" to close Facebook and Instagram in Europe.

Augsburg. HRS and Citi, Sabre and American Global Business Travel as well as Meininger and Hotelbirds will work together more closely in the future. Recent studies look at Big Data in tourism planning, the impact of AI on our daily lives and the use of the Internet of Things in businesses. Betterspace is integrating Covid certification into digital check-in, and in Austria a new course of study is making digitalization human.

Berlin. Automation can and should help with massive staffing problems and still give the customer a good experience. However, even the chains have hardly taken care of automated personalisation yet. A new study goes into depth.

Frankfurt/M. China has published a new five-year plan for the robotics industry: the country wants to become a world leader in robotics technology - and uses robots from abroad to achieve this.

Amsterdam. Booking.com recently posted impressive results boosted by a growing demand for alternate accommodations, the success of its Fintech unit and its Flight search engine. The holding is buying B2B distributor Getaroom and slowly but surely is morphing into the one-stop-shop every travel platform dreams of.

Augsburg. Small countries have the fastest broadband, a new "Selfie-Ident" app saves a lot of time in online identification, Rewe operates its first hybrid supermarket, Girocard customers of the Sparkasse can now also use Apple Pay, myhotelshop and Acomodeo are sold and Ophelia becomes an official Guestline reseller for Germany.

Wiesbaden. Digitalisation in the industry has picked up tremendous speed, individual hotels and groups are introducing new systems in record time to streamline processes and increase bookings. An overview of current measures and innovations.

Munich. Corona has increased the guests' needs for safety and digital tools are an important USP for this. Another one is that digitalisation helps to rationalise processes in the back office and save money that way. A discussion at Expo Real with two software platforms and one hotelier showed what is possible beyond the online check-in.

McLean, Virginia. Hilton yesterday announced three technology innovations within the Hilton Honors app designed to enhance the guest experience across the company's 18 hotel brands: shared digital room keys, automatic complimentary room upgrades for elite members and easy booking of connecting rooms.