We probably don’t have to tell you about the impact Covid-19 had on the hospitality industry because you likely felt it in your own business. If you’ve had enough of the ongoing restrictions and need some support in revamping your hotel’s offering, we’ve got you.
To help you hit the ground running after the crisis, we’ve put together a list of free resources for hoteliers.
It includes everything from free hotel technology trials and zero-cost basic plans, to brilliant ways to keep your spirits up in these trying times. Use this downtime to upskill, and emerge from the crisis ready to take on the recovery phase.
Let’s get started!
Tech Tools for Hotels
- Oaky
- SiteMinder
- HiJiffy
- STAAH
- Hotel Direct Booster
- Hotelchamp
- Bookboost
- Quicktext
- Experience Hotel – CRM
- ChartOk
- Asksuite
- Hotel Benchmarking
- Pace Revenue
- apaleo
- IDeaS
- Criton
- hotelkit
- Net Affinity
- Right Revenue
Free Resources to Keep Your Spirits Up
- The Science of Wellbeing by Yale
- Headspace
- How to Be Productive Working From Home by Rebecca Brizi
- Collaborative Working in a Remote Team by University of Leeds
- Managing Mental Health and Stress by Coventry University
Tech Tools
You may have been putting off researching and testing new hotel software during normal operations. After all, it can be quite time-consuming and expensive. But during this COVID-19 crisis, many hospitality technology providers are offering advantageous no-risk deals on their services and platforms.
We encourage you to take these companies up on their offer. This could be your chance to discover new tools that will help you reduce cost, drive revenue and improve guest satisfaction when travel picks up again.
1. Oaky
What is it?
At Oaky, we offer an award-winning upselling platform which allows hotels to boost the guest experience and ancillary services through targeted, customised pre-arrival upselling. By sending targeted, customised emails to guests pre-arrival, Oaky allows hotels to increase the average spend and create a unique stay experience.
What are they offering?
Full use of the platform risk-free for 60 days from go-live-date. After that, Oaky stays free until we at least double your monthly subscription fee in upsell revenue. Get started quickly with the simple self-serve onboarding tool now!
2. SiteMinder
What is it?
SiteMinder’s platform offers hotels a cutting-edge channel manager, a powerful online booking engine, business insights and hotel website design solutions. With this full suite of tools, they help hotels make the most of today’s dynamic online markets and boost revenue by increasing direct bookings.
What are they offering?
Get 50% off your first 6 months – that’s like getting 3 months free! Sign up for a 12-month subscription by 31 March and enjoy half the year at half the price.
To access this offer, please click here!
For information about how to navigate these challenging times, visit their COVID-19 toolkit.
3. HiJiffy
What is it?
HiJiffy Chatbot is able to centralise all your communication from Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and OTAs, helping you dealing with COVID-19 questions and more than 120 topics, improving your efficiency, increasing your guest satisfaction and direct bookings. With HiJiffy, hotels can ensure that they will have instant replies 24/7 digital with the new paradigm of COVID-19.
What are they offering?
No-strings-attached free 14-day trial. Reach out to the team by booking a demo here
4. STAAH
What is it?
STAAH provides a suite of technology solutions for hospitality distribution, direct bookings and digital marketing services. This includes a channel manager, a booking engine, a CRM, a gift voucher engine and a simple-to-use website builder. Their goal is to help hotels drive direct bookings and maximise revenue.
What are they offering?
Free use of the InstantSite website builder + 3 months of free hosting when you sign up for STAAH’s Instant Channel Manager before April 30, 2021
To get access to the offer, schedule your free demo now.
What is it?
Hotel Direct Booster offers a live chat and a direct messaging platform to help hotels generate more direct bookings. By being there for guests via your live chat, you can answer their questions, offer them special deals and give them a first taste of what a stay with you will be like.
What are they offering?
Use the live chat feature for free for 30 days
Fill the form in the link above to get the free live chat set up on your website.
6. Hotelchamp
What is it?
Hotelchamp is a digital insight and conversion platform which offers smart technology solutions for hotel marketing and revenue management teams. With the help of its data and actionable insights, hotels can boost direct bookings and online revenue.
What are they offering?
90 days of free access to Hotelchamp’s demand tracker
Sign up via the link above and use the demand tracker to better understand your market and how it’s developing in these unpredictable times.
7. Bookboost
What is it?
Bookboost provides a direct messaging solution that helps hotels connect with website visitors via live chat, while they are browsing. On top of this, Bookboost integrates with the most popular messaging apps, so hotels and guests can easily stay in touch before, during and after the stay.
What are they offering?
Free use of the Unified Inbox guest messaging platform free of charge for the first 30 days – sign up here to secure this deal.
8. Quicktext
What is it?
Quicktext provides an AI-powered chatbot which communicates with guests while they are browsing your website, staying at your hotel and after they have checked out. You can use it to generate more direct bookings, ensure guests have everything they need during their stay and ask for feedback after they check-out.
What are they offering?
A permanently available freemium version of Quicktext is available for all Oaky customers. This offer includes a basic chatbot which can respond to 20 topics. It is meant to help hoteliers capture as many leads as possible on their websites and give basic information. The bot can handle FAQs to reduce the number of time-consuming low value calls and emails and free up the operational team for other tasks.
Contact your customer success rep at Oaky now, and we’ll enable the connection for your account.
What is it?
Experience Hotel is a customer relations management system that allows you to manage your online reputation and stay in touch with guests by sending customized email campaigns.
What are they offering?
Send up to three custom email campaigns to all customers for free in the next three months
When you sign up for this deal, you get full use of Hotel Experience. This lets you create perfectly customized email campaigns so you can stay connected with your target market.
10. ChartOk
What is it?
ChartOk took what used to be known as the intranet and made it more user-friendly and efficient. This tool allows you to create a digital workplace where you can bring together and track all staff interactions to make operations more efficient. Now, no tasks will fall through the cracks anymore!
What are they offering?
Free use of the ChartOk Hotel Operations Software for a free trial month
Reach out to them now, to get a free demo and claim the offer.
11. Asksuite
What is it?
Asksuite focuses on generating more direct hotel reservations through instant guest communication via website chat and chatbots. The platform also centralizes the management of all hotel service channels. It was named best chat & AI chatbot platform for hotels at this year’s Hotel Tech Awards.
To support hotels during COVID-19, Asksuite has added an exclusive feature to address the most common questions guests ask these days.
What are they offering?
Free use of their software for two months
Get in touch to discover more.
What is it?
Hotel Benchmark is a growing community of over 500 hotels in more than 50 countries. Their reporting helps hoteliers to benchmark their websites and digital marketing against the industry and competitors by comparing bookings, visitors, revenue and more.
What are they offering?
A free monthly benchmark report in return for sharing your anonymised data with their community. Hoteliers can also track wider industry performance using our COVID-19 dashboard.
Signup for your free report here.
13. Pace Revenue
What is it?
Pace is a revenue optimisation solution which includes an industry-leading pricing platform and a BI tool. It combines deep science, knowledge from industry experts and takes advantage of modern technology to offer the most complete solution.
What are they offering?
Free use of their software for 3 months to make sure you are prepared for the business rebound.
Reach out for to clement@paceup.com for more information.
14. apaleo PMS
What is it?
apaleo is the cloud platform that will help you build your accommodation business. All types of properties – from serviced apartments to hotel chains – rely on apaleo’s APIs and community to create digital experiences for their guests and staff. Instantly connect the leading hospitality apps to the apaleo interface or use open APIs for unlimited customisation possibilities.
What are they offering?
apaleo lets you start now with an intuitive self-service platform where you can test any third-party app from the apaleo app store. They believe in flat, transparent pricing that starts when you’re ready to go live, meaning NO integration fees, NO long-term contracts, and NO hidden costs.
15. IDeaS
What is it?
As the pioneer of revenue science and a leading provider of revenue technology for hospitality & travel organisations, IDeaS maintains an active role in educating and empowering the industry.
What are they offering?
Ready to enhance your revenue management skills and knowledge? Follow the courses that will lay the foundation upon which you can build a solid commercial success framework for your business and participate in the real-life situational challenges.
Access the list of courses and challenges here
16. Criton
What is it?
Criton is an award-winning guest engagement platform that simplifies digital transformation, helping operators deliver the perfect digital guest journey and maximise in-stay spend. With Criton, hoteliers can digitize their guest information and wrap all-guest facing technology into a sophisticated mobile app for guests to use on their own phone.
What are they offering?
Criton is offering its guest engagement platform completely free for the first three months, enabling hotels to digitize their guest journey, reduce touchpoints and put guests’ safety first with their own branded guest app.
Email the team to find out more or visit their website.
17. hotelkit
