Sleep Retreat Hotels is a new, luxury boutique brand, launching in August 2016 with a 37-bedroom property in Cornwall, UK. The company is targeting rapid national expansion, with 16 hotels planned by 2018.When evaluating PMS', Nathan Westbury, Managing Director of Sleep Retreat Hotels, was looking for "software that is user friendly, great for guests and can also offer a central reservations system." After reviewing several leading solutions, he settled upon Xn protel's cloud native offering, protel Air.

My 25th HITEC is done and dusted. For the uninitiated, HITEC is HFTP's annual "Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition & Conference," attracting over 5000 buyers, sellers, and a growing number of innocent bystanders who seem to genuinely want to learn. The event has grown too large to lend itself to a concise recap, and whether it was busy or a bust, a boon or a boondoggle, revolutionary or repetitive, laborious or leisurely, will depend on each person's unique experience. Here are the themes that emerged for me.

We're going to assume you've heard of Pokémon Go. In the last week, this game has shot to the top of the mobile app sales charts, has been covered by every media company from ABC to Zee News and was even by co-opted by the U.S. presidential campaigns. But beyond the hype, what does Pokémon Go mean for your hotel and for the broader travel industry?

The latest hotel to opt for Guestline's award winning solutions is London based, Best Western London Peckham Hotel. The hotel, which is part of a group 10 properties with 915 bedrooms, will be implementing Guestline's property management system, Rezlynx, to facilitate group wide operational efficiencies and cost savings in several of their properties.

'The OTAs know more about your guests than you do.' It's a harsh comment but one that rings true for many. By compiling data and learning guest behaviour over time, OTAs have a competitive advantage over hotels in this field. This type of powerful data aids in marketing, advertising and product progression plans. The OTAs have mastered its use but it's time for hoteliers to join in on the party too.

A few tech-savvy hotels are skipping email and social media and are directly texting their guests. Arrive Hotels which just opened in Palm Springs has done away with telephones in the guest room and instead asks guests to text the hotel for whatever they might need. Sixty LES is also embracing texting as a method of communicating with guests. Even bigger brands like Marriott and Four Seasons are texting guests, albeit through their mobile apps.

It is every meeting planner's nightmare when hours are spent arranging the perfect meeting or event but incorrect or missed information or an unexpected change means that the attendees walk away remembering the day for all the wrong reasons. Adjara Group Hospitality has implemented Amadeus technology to ensure not only the flawless execution of its events but also to take control of all aspects of its group business. Using Amadeus' Sales & Event Management Advanced solution, Delphi.fdc, Adjara Group now more efficiently manages its day-to-day operations and has a better understanding of its business performance. Adjara Group, which previously struggled with consolidating information from its numerous hotel properties, now reaps the benefits of Delphi.fdc which allows its staff to work collaboratively across various locations and input information into one central solution, in real-time, and make updates on the fly. The smoother flow of communication between staff members and the intuitive interface allows any team member to address the customer's need accurately and promptly ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction. Adjara Group also takes advantage of Delphi.fdc's reporting functionality and dashboards which provide a complete picture of business operations so all teams, and especially management, can make smarter, data-driven business decisions. Adjara Group has the information to break down its group business performance, understand the growth across each individual hotel property, and correlate this with the wider market. "Implementing the Delphi.fdc solution has made a tremendous impact on our business operations, and not only is our team more equipped to address customer needs promptly and efficiently manage operations, the increased understanding of our performance has enabled the team to make better business decisions" said Nutsa Monadirishvili, Revenue Management Consultant at Adjara Group Hospitality. "More than just the technology itself, we wanted to be sure we were partnering with an organization that supports our objectives. In all phases of our interaction, through the sales process to implementation and project management, onsite training and support responsiveness, the Amadeus team has been committed to ensuring that we are successful," Monadirishvili concluded. "We build our solutions to be intuitive and easy to use so our customers can focus on their customers," said Lee Horgan, CEO of the Amadeus' hospitality division. "Our goal is to provide the hospitality industry with a complete solution, which includes the technology they need to advance their business along with superior, professional training and knowledgeable, dedicated support. We look forward to continuing our successful relationship with Adjara Hospitality Group." - ENDS - Notes to the editors About Adjara Hospitality GroupAdjara Group Hospitality is the largest and the most rapidly-growing holding company in the hospitality sector of Georgia in both quantitative and qualitative terms. From the very beginning, our team aimed to set industry leading standards through accelerated growth, employee motivation, and dynamic development. adjaragroup.com About AmadeusAmadeus is a leading provider of advanced technology solutions for the global travel industry. Customer groups include travel providers (e.g. airlines, hotels, rail and ferry operators, etc.), travel sellers (travel agencies and websites), and travel buyers (corporations and travel management companies). The Amadeus group employs around 13,000 people worldwide, across central sites in Madrid (corporate headquarters), Nice (development) and Erding (operations), as well as 71 local Amadeus Commercial Organizations globally. The group operates a transaction-based business model. Amadeus is listed on the Spanish Stock Exchange under the symbol "AMS.MC" and is a component of the IBEX 35 index. To find out more about Amadeus please visit www.amadeus.com, and www.amadeus.com/blog for more on the travel industry.

ALICE, a SaaS platform that completely connects the guest to the hotel, and connects all service departments within a hotel, announced that the Brooklands Hotel, Surrey, adopted its ALICE Suite solution.

In our world of fragmentation and hyper-targeted micro-niches, few mainstream hits cut through. That's what makes the nearly-instant global popularity of Pokémon Go so intriguing. The mobile app uses GPS and augmented reality technology to lead users on a hunt for the digital pets.

As the Senior Vice President for the Travel and Hospitality practice here at DataArt, it's important that I stay on top of the latest digital trends affecting the industry. So each year I look forward to attending the Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference (HITEC), the world's largest hospitality expo that brings together the brightest minds and hottest hospitality products and services. And this year, it seems I was not alone. HITEC 2016 saw record-breaking attendance, with 6,395 hospitality professionals from 65 countries descending on the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans from June 20-23, 2016.