HospitalityVerse

Crypto acceptance, sustainability and FIVE Hotels and Resorts approach to innovations

Welcome to another episode of HospitalityVerse! Join me today for a great conversation with Mushal Nishtar, Group Director of Revenue at Five Hotels and Resorts.  When we last spoke, FIVE just made the headlines as one of the first hotels opening up to crypto payments. Today Mushal sheds more light on this project. We also chat about the FIVE's plans for 2023, including the new Net-Zero Luxury Living project that is expected to revolutionize sustainable living and begins with FIVE Jumeirah Village (read more here: https://www.fiveglobalholdings.com/net-zero-build-tech-by-five). Naturally, I also ask Mushal about plans for the metaverse and his views on new tech applications in prop-tech and hospitality.  Enjoy and if you like this podcast, be sure to subscribe and follow HospitalityVerse on LinkedIn!

First MEA Hospitality and Travel Tech Marketplace

Hello, welcome to another episode of HospitalityVerse! Today I have the pleasure to talk to Ralph Melis, co-founder of ExploreTECH. ExploreTech is a new digital marketplace connecting Hospitality & Travel tech providers with industry professionals. We all love the concept of online marketplaces, they’re designed to make our lives easier. If you work in the hospitality or travel sector, ExploreTech is your one-stop shop for all things tech related – you can find and compare different solutions and receive subject matter expert advice that will help you improve your business. As a vendor on the other hand, by positioning your product portfolio on the ExploreTech platform you immediately boost your brand visibility, audience engagement and lead generation. In this episode, Ralph tells me what inspired his team to create ExploreTech, how the platform evolves and what features they’re adding to support the users and vendors. We also discuss hospitality tech trends and innovations, taking a temperature check on the metaverse and blockchain developments, which as you know by now, is one of my favourite topics.  If you like this podcast, be sure to subscribe and follow HospitalityVerse on LinkedIn!

Deep dive into the NFTs with Arek Kwoska the CEO of Collectico Labs

In this episode we dive deeper into the topic of NFTs. I’ve invited Arek Kwoska, the CEO of Collectico Labs, to join me and discuss the ins and outs of the NFT projects. Collectico Labs is a growing NFT startup from Poland that I think is doing it right – they’ve created a platform that’s accessible and inclusive and what I mean by that is that it keeps all tech in the background and allows normal people to enter the world of NFTs without the all the hassle of crypto, digital wallets etc. As a practitioner, Arek explains how difficult it is to integrate NFTs with the hotel loyalty program and challenges the myth regarding the high costs and complexity of NFT projects. He says he hates the actual term NFT and thinks that in the next 5 years NFTs will be as popular as emails. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you will too! Let’s dive in!

Hospitality and NFTs

Hi, welcome to HospitalityVerse! In this episode, we discuss another cool thing - NFTs! Some say NFT-mania is over, sales are dropping and those who invested are crying their eyes out. I say - not at all!  Tune in to learn about 3 strong use cases for the tourism and hospitality industry!  Head over to HospitalityVerse Linkedin page [https://www.linkedin.com/company/hospitalityverse/] to share your views and check out https://hospitalityverse.io/ [https://hospitalityverse.io/] for the full transcript and additional resources!  Thanks for listening!  00:13 Intro 05:20 What is NFT 07:37 NFT utility 10:08 NFT flight tickets 13:30 Brand marketing and customer engagement 15:03 Loyalty and rewards 19:58 Fractional ownership and tokenized real estate 26:30 CSR and cause-driven NFTs 30:58 Conclusion 33:12 Outro

Hospitality and Innovation

We've got a special guest today! Dr Sanjay Nadkarni, Director of Innovation and Research at the Emirates Academy of Hospitality Management in Dubai, UAE, joins me on HospitalityVerse to chat about innovations in the hospitality industry.  Sanjay shares his views on new tech adoption, challenges and industry perceptions. We discuss the role of education, the importance of innovative mindset development and the use of open source innovation frameworks. Sanjay explains why some innovations fail and why having a long-term vision and future-oriented leadership is crucial and gives examples of non-standard approaches that have been successful.  Head over to https://hospitalityverse.io/ to get the full transcript of this episode.