Operations: Technological solutions are here to make your life easier

Increasing productivity and efficiency, saving employees’ time, creating new marketing/promotion channels for products/services, or optimizing internal processes, are some of the essential desiderata for every tourism business nowadays, whether this is a hotel or a restaurant or a café-bar, etc. At the same time, the customers’ maximum satisfaction is always the first priority for every business’s efforts.

It would be an oversight – to say the least – not to indicate as “usual suspects” of achieving all the above, the modern technological solutions that are currently used on a daily basis by a big number of tourism businesses. Such applications can bring tangible positive results not only for businesses, but also for customers.

HotelToolbox and MintQR, two of the startup teams that have completed CapsuleT’s Acceleration Program and provide innovative services for the implementation of the above, have already managed to enter dynamically the tourism market, quickly gaining many tourism professionals’ trust – even during the turbulent times we are currently living in – thus ensuring multiple benefits for all stakeholders. The team of HotelToolbox has developed a series of subsystems (modules), with which hoteliers are able to organize and track more easily their hotel’s operations, reduce operational costs, and provide better services to their guests. MintQR’s team of experts, through its innovative software, creates digital menus, uniquely designed for each tourism business, and provides access to the admin page, with many tools available for further possibilities (such as, the creation of additional marketing channels).

So, which are the specific benefits from using such applications? We spoke with the co-founders of the 2 startups to find out more. Ioannis Charalampakis, CEO of HotelToolbox, highlights upon that: “The mission of our applications is to increase the turnover of each hotel, reduce the costs, organize better the internal processes, improve the personnel’s communication, and increase the efficiency. Through the use of our technological solutions, we are able to provide hoteliers with access to data and indexes that they could not track, until today.

And he adds: “HotelToolbox provides a series of valuable services when it comes not only to the customer service, such as a guest app – for orders, room service, restaurant reservations, hotel offers, check-in etc. – but also to hotel operations, offering tech solutions for the damage monitoring, the Housekeeping department, the assignment of tasks, any service requests or even for advanced analytics and reporting. An indicative example of the added value provided by the HotelToolbox team is the fact that, by leveraging our services, one of the best resorts in Greece during last summer’s limited reopening, saw total benefits which were 5 times more than our subscription cost”.

For its part, the MintQR team and, more specifically, its Co-Founder Thomas Karkaletsos indicates: “The access to a digital menu from any mobile device is not only limited to displaying the products, but also gives the opportunity for a two-way interaction between businesses and consumers. The customer’s instant participation in the operation process of our partners/clients gives us the chance to lead FnB services to the next level. The use of MintQR software reduces paper use, operational costs and time while, at the same time, it simplifies the operation process of tourism businesses and is friendly to all users, without exemptions for visually impaired people”.

Despite the unfavorable current circumstances brought about by the pandemic, it is worth noting that an indicator of the increasing relevant demand for such innovative services, is the fact that the growth/development of these 2 particular startups not only has not slowed down but is still in full progress. Indicatively, HotelToolbox recently proceeded with adding new services and features, such as COVID-related protocols/processes or additional options for the Housekeeping department of hotels. Moreover, the company is currently working on developing further features for the period 2021-2022.

“So far, we have already managed to collaborate with several businesses from different sectors, indicatively from small neighborhood café-bars to hotel chains. The most important for us is the fact that, even during this difficult period and with a newly launched software, after testing our services last summer when tourism restarted, we have already received excellent reviews. In addition, we should not omit to mention that a big hotel chain has confirmed its partnership/collaboration with our team for the upcoming summer period”, says Thomas Karkaletsos, on behalf of MintQR.

Last but not least, regarding the advice he would probably give to any company out there that intends to provide technological solutions in the operations field, Thomas underlines: “Although it may sound quite romantic, any difficulty is – actually – an opportunity. Usually, during such periods, new needs emerge for consumers as well as for businesses. The catch in such cases is a short-term thinking or some hasty decisions. From our perspective, technological solutions provided by startups like ours, will have to – first and foremost – provide a simple, instant, and complete solution to a problem of the market while, at the same time, they should be able to support their own existence and further expansion/development in the ‘new normal’”.

A few words about the 2 startups

With HotelToolbox, hoteliers can organize and track hotel operations, reduce their operating costs, increase their turnover and provide better services to their guests.

MintQR is an innovative application for FnB. Its team of experts provides tourism businesses with unique digital menus and gives them access to the admin page, with many tools available for in-house marketing or gamification.