Observations from Knowland CEO Jeff Bzdawka
We’ve come a long way as an industry and as a company.
Hotel reader boards have been used to direct guests and meeting attendees since the late 1900’s. Today, the manual method of posting information is the exception, not the rule. The industry has evolved to a full range of automated, real-time digital signage that integrates directly with property management and sales & catering systems. More efficient, more accurate and offering the opportunity for additional messaging and promotion – it’s how most hotels direct attendees and share information today.
Knowland is evolving and modernizing
Knowland is different today, too. In the past, Knowland gathered most of its data from reader boards using a global network of field readers. It is a labor-intensive and time-consuming data collection model. But things have changed with the rapid adoption of digital signage, the rise of API integration and the propensity of partners to come together and share data. This advancement has allowed Knowland to expand beyond manual data collection methods to include electronic data acquisition using self-reporting and API-driven data sharing. Our enhanced data acquisition strategy enables Knowland to deliver a deeper level of actionable insights and competitive benchmarking than ever before informing sales teams, asset managers and operators, and enabling them to improve decision making outcomes.
We continue to expand our robust technology and data partnerships
Knowland has been growing and evolving over the past several years. For example, our recent partnership with Uniguest announced a universal interface called the Knowland Connector that allows us to easily ingest data across platforms, including a full range of Property Management and Sales & Catering systems. This partnership makes it simple for new brands to onboard Knowland without a time-consuming integration process. Companies are lining up for the simple integration of datasets across applications.
Through our continuing relationship with Amadeus, we are optimizing data and enhancing quantity as hotels enable delivery of sales and event data from their system directly into the robust Knowland database. The event information is instantaneously available to supplement market data and enhance account profiles. Knowland users gain full access to available event data covering seven days a week which overcomes the limitations of physical field reading.
Most exciting, we have a growing number of new partnerships with leading brands such as Hyatt – the first brand to offer exclusive Knowland access to both brand-managed and franchised properties. All these advancements in advanced data acquisition speak to our mission of streamlining our platform and extending our data set.
“Throughout the course of Knowland’s evolution, we have continued to explore partnerships with software vendors to not only streamline the data collection process but also to ensure our continuously improving meetings analytics are readily available and accessible to our clients,” said Knowland CEO, Jeff Bzdawka. “In doing so, we have elevated our data set tremendously and with a strong focus on building data partnerships, we increased not only the depth and breadth of our data sources but also the variety and scope of our data. This has in turn improved flexibility and ease of implementation of the Knowland platform, especially for our brand partners.”
Ongoing enhancements to the Knowland platform allow users to receive actionable insights directly in their inbox, understand what is happening with their competition in a broader sense than just the comp set, see new groups booking in their market, maintain customer loyalty, manage their portfolio, and more. Plus, we know there is broad opportunity to add new types of data using electronic methods quickly and easily – which creates expanded opportunities for integration with revenue management and digital data sources.
