Free breakfast trumps WiFi as top hotel amenity for travellers

Complimentary breakfast heads the list of amenities global travellers look for in a hotel this year, knocking out free WiFi, last year’s number one to third position, reveals Hotels.com in its latest survey on traveller preferences.

Respondents were asked to rank their choices out of 33 different amenities. Among the top 10 are an accessible restaurant, parking, smoke-free areas and coffee/tea available in the hotel lobby upon arrival (see charts below).

At the other end of the scale, the amenities voted least important included child-friendly amenities, pet-friendly services and hair salons. Conference centres and meeting rooms were also seen to be one of the least important amenities, even though over a third of respondents were business travellers (35%).

When asked for the most important amenity inside the hotel room, free WiFi came out on top followed by a bathroom with a shower, while childcare in the room was voted the least important.

Hotels.com’s Alison Couper said, “Travellers seem to have become fixated on where their next meal is coming from and this is highlighted in the findings. With the ever-increasing importance of technology it’s surprising to see free WiFi has fallen from the top spot in the overall hotel amenities list, though it is still the most important for those when they are actually inside their hotel room, showing that keeping in contact whilst away remains a priority.”

Meet Jess, Jetstar’s virtual helper

Jetstar Asia now has a new 24-hour virtual assistant service, Ask Jess, on its Singapore website to answer customers’ queries on their travel including booking, baggage and seating.

While other businesses have embraced virtual assistants, Jetstar Asia is the first airline in Singapore to use technology that matches the user’s intent and uses conversation rather than straight web links.

Ask Jess uses Nuance Communications’ technology to deliver a conversational experience, which simulates a human interaction allowing Jess to not only understand a customer’s words, but also what the customer wants (the intent).

The comprehension draws on Nuance Nina, an intelligent virtual assistant that leverages innovative natural language understanding (NLU) technology and delivers a conversational interface to web visitors, which simulates human conversation.

Bara Pasupathi, Jetstar Asia CEO, said investing in innovation that creates a better customer experience can also help to drive down cost and streamline the travel experience like its “Like Straight-to-Gate* service. “Creating a leading edge online experience and capability allows our customer service team to focus on our passengers with more specific and challenging requests, improving the experience for everyone.”

Jetstar group head of customer care, Ian Watson, added that the technology was adapted specifically for the Singapore market. “Ask Jess has a bank of more than 250 questions related to Jetstar Asia’s products and services. Jess has also been configured to recognise complex sentence structures, and if there is a question asked in a way that she does not understand we can add this into her vocabulary for the next time she is asked.”

The Ask Jess” service is fully integrated with Jetstar Asia’s existing live chat service, which was launched last year.

The virtual assistant service is also available on Jetstar’s Australian and New Zealand websites, and will be rolled out progressively in different languages on the homepages for other airlines in the Jetstar group.

Country Comfort offers new model of hotel franchising

Country Comfort, an upper midscale hotel brand of Singapore-based SilverNeedle Hospitality, is set to reinvent the hotel franchising business with a modern model.

Based on the simple principle of aligning its economic interests with those of its franchisees, SilverNeedle Hospitality will pass on all savings from negotiating the lowest possible costs for all furniture, fittings and equipment (FF&E) with its suppliers directly to the franchisees.

Sean Flynn, executive vice president, brands of SilverNeedle Hospitality, said, “As franchising is one of the best ways for hotel owners and investors to grow a hotel chain, we want to offer an attractive and cost-effective model that stretches yields.”

He added the company would be one of the few hotel franchisors, which would not make any money off the franchisee’scapital expenditure,

The company has also sourced for the best-quality FF&E at the lowest costs for franchisees, thereby maximising their yields. The FF&E cost of a Country Comfort room will be 25% lower than the average FF&E cost of a midscale hotel room, according to the 2013/2014 HVS Hotel Development Cost Survey.

SilverNeedle Hospitality aims to take the Country Comfort brand, already familiar in Australia and New Zealand, to other parts of Asia Pacific specifically Southeast Asia, North and South Asia. The group is in discussions with interested franchisees in Japan, Malaysia, Macau, Vietnam and Australia.

The company rebranded the 28-year old Country Comfort in October 2013 with a new brand promise, a refreshed brand identity and introduced the Fair Value Promise that includes free WiFi, free local calls, and laundry/dry cleaning at 20% above street pricing.

Google launches Street View of Angkor Wat

You can now explore Cambodia’s famous Angkor Wat’s thousand-year-old temples on Google Street View, as the service added more than 100 of these historic sites available online with on Google Maps.

More than 90,000 new panoramic images of Angkor Wat were taken that include the Bayon Temple, and Ramayana’s Battle of Lanka bas relief carvings,

To give the most complete picture of the temples, each of which has its own unique story, the Google team used tools that include Street View cars, Trekkers, and tripods to carefully photograph their exteriors and interiors.

Beyond the temples you can also explore more of Angkor’s rich historical and artistic heritage through the Google Cultural Institute – from 12th-century sculpture and mid-20th century photography to modern-day renderings of medieval Angkor life. The nearly 300 exhibits across the institute will give you a good insight into Khmer culture through the ages.