I went hunting for some new shoes the other day. It’s incredible how dragging your feet through Europe’s airports actually wears the soles thin. So, as I went through the effort of wandering out to the shops and trying on multiple pairs of shoes, all of which were either too big or too small, I reflected on the return on investment for the sales person patiently serving me. Surely the margin on those leather-soled shoes wouldn’t pay for his hourly salary, shop overheads and its advertisements in the local newspaper. Having finally settled on a pair of rather fetching brown shoes, I rushed to the sales counter to pay and tear off away from the world of shoe shops.  At that point I realised why the sales person had been so patient. Suddenly I found myself purchasing a shoe polish, a special brush for this specific type of leather and that all important water proofing spray that one absolutely needs for an English summer.

How often does that happen when you are at the reception counter in a hotel? Not very, but as some of our customers have proved to us, it can work. Tonight I am in a hotel room having benefited from a 20 euro upgrade which provides me with breakfast, HSIA and all you can watch PayTV. An easy up sell by the hotel reception. With Avatar released Europe-wide, hotels should surf on the hype and let their staff offer great deals to guests and generate some extra revenue for the hotel.

Twitter is being used to predict the future box office takings of films courtesy of researchers at Hewlett Packard. They have studied 3 million tweets about 25 different movies, including Avatar. (is there no privacy??) Apparently the rate at which messages are produced can be used to forecast box office visits before opening. The faster people tweet about a film, the more likely they are to go and see it. They say its “tapping into collective intelligence” and word of mouth builds audience. Their analysis predicted that the zombie film “The Crazies” would take $16.8 in its first weekend and it actually took $16.06m. The forecast for “Dear John” was $30.7 and it took $30.5.

These guys have developed algorithms to analyse tweets in the run-up to a film launch measuring the rate at which they were produced….”Get a life” springs to mind.

Avatar which actually took $232.2m on opening weekend, will showing in Hotels using Acentic systems.

Recently spotted in a hotel bedroom: An alarm clock with the following instructions written on the top:
 
1. Press and hold the “Alarm 1” or “Alarm 2” button until the “Alarm time” appears on the display. Press the “settings” knob and the “alarm hour “ will blink
2. Rotate the “settings” knob to change the hour and press to set
3. Rotate the “settings” knob to change the minutes and press to set
4. Rotate the “settings” knob until “source” appears on the display and press to select I-pod, buzzer, AM or FM and press to set
5. Rotate the “settings” knob until “exit” appears on the display and press to exit

Honestly, after all that would you be confident that your alarm will go off at the right time? Just use the TV system…it’s much more simple!