USA Today The nightstand iPad was once the most advanced technological feature in a hotel guestroom. Now, Amazon is stepping in to change that. This week, Amazon announced that it has developed Alexa for Hospitality, a new version of its Amazon Echo smart speaker, for hotels, vacation rental companies and other players in the hospitality [...]

Facilitiesnet What’s the connection between maintenance and design in institutional and commercial facilities? In most organizations, that connection is unfortunately limited, according to a new report from the U.S. General Accounting Office. The report highlights the disconnect that exists between those who plan and design buildings and those who are responsible for the facilities’ maintenance [...]

Skift When guests check into the Viceroy L’Ermitage Beverly Hills in California, they shouldn’t be surprised to find members of the hotel staff, from housekeeping and maintenance to the bellmen, all sporting the latest Samsung smartwatches on their wrists. That’s because the hotel is using those smartwatches as part of a strategy to improve the [...]

FacilitiesNet The benefits of LEDs are leading many facility managers to convert linear fluorescent fixtures (e.g., 2×4 troffers) to use LED lighting technologies or to consider doing so. The two options are tubular LEDs (TLEDs) and LED retrofit kits. (A third option is to replace the entire fixture.) Here’s a look at key points to [...]

Hotel Executive As sustainability becomes a larger focus in the hospitality industry, Westin wanted to find a way give back to the community in a way that further instilled our commitment to the environment and the well-being of our guests. We found a clear intersection between community health and the environment and began to brainstorm [...]

By Linchi Kwok Welcome to the era when machines begin replacing humans at work. In restaurants and hotels, machines or robots are already capable of performing many service jobs. Likewise, travelers can now make reservations for their hotel stays online, perform self-check-in on a mobile app or in a kiosk at a hotel, enter the [...]

Skift It’s still light years away before hotels offer voice-controlled guest rooms, but Hilton Worldwide has taken a step toward that happy future by adding a feature to its mobile app that lets your smartphone act like a remote control for key room functions. At select properties, users of the Hilton Honors app can control [...]

Scott E. Rupp The Environmental Protection Agency offers a guide to reducing waste for commercial building facility managers. For those in the profession, the guide might be old news, but for rookies and veterans alike it serves as a good educational tool for those who manage office buildings, schools, stores, hotels, restaurants, and other commercial [...]

Hotel Management Finnish security researcher company F-Secure has found design flaws that allow hackers to open hotel room doors without leaving any record on older model Vingcard’s Vision locks. By getting hold of a used hotel keycard, an attacker could create a master key to unlock any room in the building without leaving a trace, [...]

Condé Nast Traveler Many of us now use small doses of AI in everyday life (like Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, and everything smart home), but hotels are putting this once-sci-fi technology to more widespread use. From concierge robots to personalized rooms to lively chatbots, your next holiday may include help from some artificially intellectualized friends.  

Travel Weekly MagicBands have functioned as a room key at Disney World hotels for the past five years, and soon guests will get another digital key option — their smartphone. To use their digital key, guests must opt in and activate the feature on their check-in day through a brief set-up process in the My [...]

By Scott E. Rupp Lighting as a service (LaaS) solutions in commercial buildings might not be a new development, but the market is growing. Revenue forecasts are expected to rise exponentially throughout a good portion of the next decade as the industry landscape matures and competition heats up. The business model has become more common [...]

Safety.BLR.com Following the deadly chemical explosion and fire at Verla International cosmetic factory in New Windsor, New York, U.S. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer pushed hard in January for a new federal protocol aimed to ensure local emergency responders are notified of serious violations involving flammable liquids and chemical hazards. The senator’s office announced [...]

Hotel Designs Modular construction is an ever-growing market, with everything from hospital wards to student accommodation being built offsite and then shipped to the construction area. There are numerous advantages to this type of construction, making this forward-thinking technique a natural and powerful solution to progressive hotel design.  READ MORE

Construction Canada Guest room acoustics pose a significant challenge for hotels, with noise regularly topping the list of complaints across all property types. Unwanted sounds irritate guests during the day, prevent them from relaxing in the evening, and affect their ability to sleep. Noise issues can be attributed to a variety of interior and exterior [...]

BUILDINGS You can’t rest easy just because you have an evacuation plan. Can you find it at a moment’s notice? Have you updated it lately and practiced it? The threats that require evacuation of a building are many and varied: fire or release of environmental contaminants, weather, criminal threats and building equipment failures. Not all [...]

Youris.com via Phys.org Maintenance represents the bulk of the costs occurring in a building’s life. How can the advent of smart technologies lessen this financial burden? And are citizens ready to deal with the innovations? These are some of the questions we asked Antonio Disi, expert in energy efficiency, researcher at ENEA, the Italian National [...]

FacilitiesNet The Americans with Disabilities Act is in the cross-hairs. The ADA, which became law in 1990, is a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life. ADA’s Title III prohibits private places of public accommodation — from discriminating against individuals with disabilities. READ MORE

Buildings Inspecting your building envelope and roof is no easy feat. The taller your building, the more dangerous it is to gain access to the upper levels. Plus, the time-consuming nature of the work makes it expensive, especially if you have to send multiple inspectors to the roof. But a new technology is changing the [...]

MarketWatch Host Hotels & Resorts Inc. HST+0.39% has agreed to acquire three Hyatt-managed hotels for $1 billion. The three hotels under contract for acquisition are the 301-room Andaz Maui in Hawaii, 668-room Grand Hyatt San Francisco and 454-room Hyatt Regency Coconut Point in Florida, the lodging real estate investment trust said late Wednesday. The contract comes with [...]