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Home2nite is an innovative guest engagement platform that aims to empower the independent hotels as AirBnb did for the travel hosts.

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - Home2nite (Home2nite is an innovative guest engagement platform that aims to empower the independent hotels as AirBnb did for the travel hosts.)

Berichtszeitraum: 2018-08-01 bis 2020-01-31

Tourism is a mega-trend and major economic activity worldwide. It has a wide-ranging impact on economic growth, employment and social development in the European Union, which can be a powerful tool in fighting economic decline and unemployment. Digital transformation is a must for all industries and the hospitality industry is not an exception and mobile technologies are the most convenient channel for this objective.

Although, hospitality is a growing industry, there are big challenges for independent hotels, which are owned and operated independently, without being a part of a global chain hotel brand. Independent hotels, which reach 67% of the all European hotels are facing unique challenges and problems such as:

- high commissions costs to booking partners
- limited investment budgets for technology
- need to increase direct booking
- need to manage their online reputation
- necessity of increasing guest satisfaction
- requirement of creation of additional revenues

Home2nite sets its objective to create a competitive edge by uniting independent hotels under Home2nite platform and by providing “better customer engagement”. The project has ended on 31 January 2020 including the following components:

- Guests use iOS and Android mobile applications for booking and engagement
- Hotels use Hotel Operations Web Application (HOWA) to manage guest requests
- Hotels use Engagement Platform (EP) for marketing, communication with guests
- Hotels use Content Management System (CMS) to manage all their online content

The app is live and can be downloaded from Apple Store and Google Play. Mobile applications support 10 languages and auto-translation.

For more information, please visit our website: home2nite.com
Pricing: http://home2nite.com/pricing/

Please follow us on social media:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gethome2nite/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gethome2nite/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Home2nite/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gethome2nite
Home2nite project successfully finished on 31st January 2020 by using 97.33 % of the planned budget € 1.220.625 which we consider as good project management in general. Home2nite worked on the envisioned six work-packages (WPs) and finished 26 deliverables and successfully reached 5 milestones.

Home2nite iOS App and Android App goes live in Apple Store and Google Play respectively and is commercially available since 19 February 2020. The latest revisions are done on 20 March 2020 and the applications will be updated whenever a new feature is added. All back-end systems of Home2nite are developed, tested, deployed and made commercially available. These are:

- Content Management System (CMS),
- Hotel Operations Web Application (HOWA),
- Engagement Platform (EP) and backend software components, which are deployed on Amazon Web Services. All of these systems are integrated with one and another.

The following activities and results indicate the achievement of objectives defined at the beginning of the Home2nite project:

- It is commercially available now
- 51 hotels have already joined Home2nite
- Home2nite received investment from two angel investors
- Home2nite is represented to the major players of the industry
- Web site and social media (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) are launched
- Home2nite attended 30 international events and conferences
All activities, work packages, milestones are achieved, the project is made commercially available. Sales and marketing activities will be accelerated and the following impacts are expected:

- Digital transformation of independent hotels will provide them all tools to be able to compete with chain hotels
- Independent hotels will create additional revenues, manage online reputation, increase guest satisfaction, communicate with the guests in their own language and serve better
- Social distancing in this COVID-19 outbreak will help guests to make all their requests online rather than face-to-face communication
- There will be a contribution to United Nations Sustainability Goals: gender equality in terms of new employments, environmental protecting because less paper will be used and plastic room cards will vanish after guests will use to open their hotel rooms with their mobile phones
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