Digital disruptions in Hospitality Industry.

Digital transformation is manifesting itself in multiple areas, but some of the important ones for hospitality include mobile, social, analytics and IoT.  The rise of mobile and the growing importance of social media, the hospitality sector is facing huge digital disruption. I have rounded up the latest digital news, trends and insight to help your business stay ahead of the curve.

Mobile:

Previously, it too 1 to 2 days to purchase a bond, a process that required people to apply for Bond CDS Account, submit the form to Central Bank of Kenya then deposit funds with a broker. However, with New M-Akiba, the process is now instant. Using mobile phone the government now aim at raising billions of cash by just dialing *889# we have come that far indeed! But what about our industry?

The growth of mobile is making new demands on hotel companies, especially in the case of their information technology assets. The adoption of the 3^rd platform especially the growth of mobile usage in general increases the expectation that hotels will engage with their guests via this channel. Most guests also want applications that are engaging, intuitive and designed to take advantage of new mobile platform capabilities. Given the frequent updates and introduction of new mobile technologies and capabilities, hospitality companies have no choice but to keep their mobile apps refreshed and continually enhanced. In terms of opportunities to leverage mobile, there are apps that offer mobile bookings, room service ordering and the fulfillment of guest requests. In the future, we are likely to see enhancements that take advantage of guest data and geolocation capabilities to help deliver targeted marketing and offers aimed at adding more revenue to the bottom line. The information officers through DevOpps approach – that is development and operation team talking to each other for continuous innovations.

Social:

The growth of social media channels that are assisting the proliferation of user-generated content is pushing many hotel companies to rethink how to engage with their customers, many of whom use social media as a preferred medium to engage with customer service. Most organization with service cultura at the forefront have appointed an individual to oversee their organizations’ social business initiatives. Customer service is a given, and hotel companies typically need strategies for dealing with their guests who choose to interact via social media. Companies may have an opportunity to truly use social media to drive business. Social media typically falls within the realm of a marketing lead – and can be used for PR – but, it can span so much more and digital tools can drive branding, e-commerce, CRM, media and public relations.

Analytics:

The hospitality industry is blessed in that it has access to a large amount of guest data. Many hotels know about their guests even before they have arrived on property. It is important to be able to take these insights and convert them into meaningful results. Analytics can be used to harness the awareness of customers. The application of Big Data helps hotels to create precisely targeted marketing campaigns, deliver them, measure success and learn from the outcomes. Next-best-course-of-action engines can analyze guests’ clickstream, location, social interaction platform, customer profile, transactions and voice-of-the-customer data to enhance and optimize their journeys and interactions at various touch points. These collectively enable hospitality companies to empower employees with insights they can use to deliver compelling experiences across touch points using customer profiles and preferences, social listening, location and contextual awareness and predictive analytics. Further, interactions across digital channels are able to be transformed as a result of these insights. There are wonderful tools for free that can assist in social listening and report any mention of your organization in the public domain.

IoT:

Internet of Things is becoming a reality with the advent of connected devices, embedded intelligence and the ability to help deliver meaningful information to the embedded sensors that can be used to transform interactions. As hospitality companies consider how to employ IoT, it may behoove them to consider that the most compelling use cases will very likely require cross-organizational collaboration. Also, the desire to play with the next shiny object will likely be strong – therefore it is important to avoid distractions from exciting new technologies by starting with concrete business outcomes in mind. Usability is another important consideration, even if the solution is automated. Given the need to connect sensors, it is important to bear the bandwidth demands in mind. Lastly, standards for IoT will continue to evolve, but it is important to not wait – rather, hospitality companies should help shape standards.

 Receiving CIO100 East Africa Award for best in hospitality category 2015.

What Next for the Hospitality Industry?

Digital disruption by ever changing technology is giving many hospitality companies the abilities to transform their business models, guest engagement and employee enablement and create opportunities to deliver rich and compelling experiences. Taking advantage of these typically requires investments not only in security and privacy to help maintain sanctity of sensitive personal information and personally identifiable information, but also to factor in the additional bandwidth needs. A judicious weighing of potential business benefits against investment requirements should occur prior to taking advantage of capabilities.

These trends will not only impact the hospitality and travel industry but also a wide range of other industries where customer service and experience is an important aspect. 

Now we know.

We Should Learn From The Destruction of Atlantis

Just as man has gazed fascinated into sea, atavistically peering into his past, so has he engaged in a restless quest for Atlantis. In the ocean, said naturalist Richard Carson, he found from whence he sprung, and in Atlantis, a dream of superior culture, prefacing the brief few thousands years of recorded history with which he measured his meager progress.

Since Plato first described the lost continent of the Atlantic twenty-five hundred years ago, more than two thousands books have been written about a legendary land that nobody has seen. There has been books to prove Atlantis, books to disapprove it. Some have been erudite scientists, others by dreamers in search of Shag-ri-La.

While oceanographers, geologists, and ordinary sea divers have been fanning out over Atlantic for centuries in underwater quest, Edgar Cayce merely went to sleep, and saw visions of a magic continent which went through three periods of breakup, the last some eleven or twelve thousands years ago.

Who was Cayce?

Every year, tens of thousands of people from all over the world become interested in the life work of one ordinary man. He was an average individual in most respects: a loving husband, a father of two children, a skilled photographer, a devoted Sunday School teacher, and an eager gardener. Yet, throughout his life, he also displayed one of the most remarkable psychic talents of all time. His name was Edgar Cayce.

For forty-three years of his adult life, Edgar Cayce demonstrated the uncanny ability to put himself into some kind of self-induced sleep state by lying down on a couch, closing his eyes, and folding his hands over his stomach. This state of relaxation and meditation enabled him to place his mind in contact with all time and space. From this state he could respond to questions as diverse as, "What are the secrets of the universe?" to "How can I remove a wart?" His responses to these questions came to be called "readings" and contain insights so valuable that even to this day individuals have found practical help for everything from maintaining a well-balanced diet and improving human relationships to overcoming life-threatening illnesses and experiencing a closer walk with God.

Though Cayce died more than half a century ago, the timeliness of the material in the readings is evidenced by approximately one dozen biographies and more than 300 titles that discuss various aspects of this man's life and work. These books contain a corpus of information so valuable that even Edgar Cayce himself might have hesitated to predict their impact on the latter part of the twentieth century. Sixty years ago who could have known that terms such as "meditation," "akashic records," "spiritual growth," "auras," "soul mates," and "holism" would become household words to hundreds of thousands?

Cayce’s reading on Atlantis, continued to span for over 25 years, the reading were given before the first atom bomb was touched off, before it was known that man finally did have power to blast himself back to the dark Ages, or turn the clock back to stone age and life in in a cave by bleak campfire. Could it be that it all happened before?

Atlantis it was and they destroyed themselves.

Humans are "eating away at our own life support systems" at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases and releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment, new research has found.

Two major new studies by an international team of researchers have pinpointed the key factors that ensure a livable planet for humans, with stark results.


Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded "safe" levels: human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land system change, and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the oceans due to fertilizer use.

Powerful picture on environmental impact.

Researchers spent five years identifying these core components of a planet suitable for human life, using the long-term average state of each measure to provide a baseline for the analysis.

Waste from copper mines.

They found that the changes of the last 60 years are unprecedented in the previous 10,000 years, a period in which the world has had a relatively stable climate and human civilization has advanced significantly.


Carbon dioxide levels, at 395.5 parts per million, are at historic highs, while loss of biosphere integrity is resulting in species becoming extinct at a rate more than 100 times faster than the previous norm.

Tafakari hayo!

The Gold Mask of Tutankhamun. How did they do it 3000 years ago?

Shami my grandchild

  The discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter in 1922 is considered the most important archaeological find of the century. After years of painstaking work in the Valley of the Kings, Carter's patron, Lord Carnarvon, had warned him that that would be the last season of work because nothing significant had been found. On November 22 of that year, Carter's persistence finally paid off. Tutankhamun became a household name, and his magnificent treasures became the measuring stick for all future archaeological discoveries.

I’m a lover of history and I remember the first thing I asked on arrival at the hotel I was staying upon arrival – “where is the Museum?” I knew the pyramids would come later. I was longing to come face to face with especially artifacts found intact by Howard Carter in their original form. And no wonder …

“For the moment-an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by- I was struck dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ it was all I could do to get out the words, ‘Yes, wonderful things.’”

The British archaeologist Howard Carter wrote this account of the moment that he, along with his sponsor Lord Carnarvon, opened the sealed tomb of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun on Nov. 25, 1922 in the Valley of the Kings.

Tutankhamun’s four-room tomb, not seen since ancient times, contained more than 5,000 objects, including many beautiful carved and gold-covered items. A lifelike gold mask of Tutankhamun covered the head and shoulders of the royal mummy. As the world learned of the magnificent treasures, “King Tut” became a popular culture phenomenon all over the world.

And so in May 2015, I came face to face with a life like gold mask of the 19 year old king who ruled 3000 years ago. I remember staring at it in eternity – it is so beautiful. I wonder how they did it 3000 years ago.

I had visited a visited museum in Baltimore in US a while back. courtesy of Tom and Nancy Stuehler. I enjoyed the artifacts tremendously. But I  must say - nothing is complete without visiting the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It houses more than 100, 000 objects. To walk around the museum is to embark on an adventure through time. One of the most rewarding strategies is simply to walk around and see what catches your eye. But it’s hard to shake the sense that something even more stunning is waiting in the next room. I recommend a few highlights – follow the big crowds. Great stuff are easy enough to spot because they usually have crowds around them – but be sure to stop and see some of the lesser items, as they often do just as well, if not better, in bringing the world of the pharaohs back to life.

how did they really do that Gold mask? 

I took this photo - Pyramids of Giza