31 March 2025 – Dynamically changing rates, micro stays, full-cycle personalised guest engagement, integrated platform plays, new payment options, new partnerships… there’s all this and more to attract the South African hospitality and restaurant industry to the Micros Hospitality Tech Connect 2025 Conference on 7th to 8th April at the Southern Sun Cape Sun, Cape Town.
The speaker and vendor line-up are growing rapidly, with exciting inputs expected from Hamza Farooqui, CEO of Dubai-based Millat Group who has just completed a major digital transformation across the Group; and Darryl Erasmus, COO at South African Tourism. There will also be interesting demos and use case presentations from vendors and solution providers.
Among others:
- Oracle will unveil new functionality for food and beverage management on Simphony Cloud and Opera Cloud’s central reservation and distribution capability for hotel management.
- Samsotech will show off its paperless hotel check-in solution.
- iVeri and Mobipaid will showcase their digital marketplace and seamless mobile payments.
- BroadVision Technologies will demonstrate its Cloud, data, and infrastructure innovations.
“The focus in hospitality right now is on technology that can drive operational efficiency and enhance the guest experience,” says Micros’ MD, Reginald Sibeko. “At our first conference, held in 2022, there was an expectation that the Covid slump would be temporary. While we’ve seen resurgence in some areas, others, like business travel have remained weak. Guest behaviour has also changed – for instance, a contactless experience is now preferred. As a result, hospitality companies have never been more aware of the importance of technology to their current and future success.
“Advanced and cloud technologies are becoming essential to not just manage operations and assets but to gain the insight needed to deliver on the personalised engagement and competitive services customers are now demanding – via the platforms they prefer.”
A key factor that will shape hospitality going forward is payment.
Payment? Yes, any way you want!
How hospitality companies enable local and international guests to transact – from online payments to bitcoin or e-wallet payments and payment prompts driven by QR codes – will become an important convenience factor. There is a lot of innovation in the market on both the hotel and restaurant side and the Micros Hospitality Tech Connect 2025 conference guests will be able to engage with financial service providers, like iVeri and Mobipaid, that are leading the field.
Smarter payment technologies can also help hospitality players increase revenues, not only by capturing income from new pools or sources of funds (e.g. crypto currencies), but by making more services (data, airtime, electricity, movies) available on integrated marketplaces.
Could we upsize you to a suite, sir?
Smarter management of assets using advanced technologies is another big trend emerging. Here’s one example: Quite simply, empty rooms don’t pay – so hospitality providers must look to leverage their assets differently. Yes, they need to make finding, booking, accessing and transacting seamless, but they also need to be thinking about how they can better leverage information.
There’s significant value to be captured with real-time, AI-driven insight into room rates, inventory and competitiveness across the industry. These Revenue Management Systems (RMS) drive intelligent online booking systems, implementing dynamic pricing adjustments (and upselling) based on appetite, risk and loss ratios.
Moving from on-premise and siloed legacy systems to containerised cloud-driven solutions open a world of possibilities. “Migration to Cloud is a big trend in the industry at the moment – because Cloud really is the future,” says Sibeko. “It gives companies the ability to use AI engines, which today form the basis of advancement and efficiencies.”
Cloud and AI give hospitality companies scale and agility. With more channels and touchpoints across which to engage with guests; more insight into operations, supply and cost; and faster time to market with dynamic, risk-aligned upscaling of offers, margins can grow. For example, explains Sibeko, someone booking a double room may easily be persuaded to book a suite at a substantial discount – if the suite will stand empty anyway, the company maximises asset use. Everyone wins.
The ‘experience’ age
“For almost every challenge the hospitality industry is experiencing right now, regardless of where they are on their journey, technology is emerging to close the gap,” notes Sibeko. This includes solutions to meet growing demand for contactless check-in, expectations of platform-like service offerings, and product personalisation.
“In an age of personalisation, guests are keen to access an integrated lifestyle offering that meets their needs. As a result, curating an experience beyond the necessary – say, the ‘business stay’ – or the expected (‘bed and breakfast’) is becoming an essential play.
“This requires hoteliers and restaurateurs to think more broadly, to incorporate not just new platforms for engagement and payment, but new partners that they can trust to deliver consistent high-value offerings to shared customers. In effect, building integrated partner platforms – from vehicle hire to dining, health, excursions, and more — that deliver an unforgettable experience.”
Meet you there – 7 to 8 April
We look forward to welcoming attendees at the Micros Hospitality Tech Connect 2025 Conference. With leading tech vendors and solution providers showcasing everything from guest-facing apps to back-office solutions that reach from revenue management to restaurant operations, this event promises to be a vital source of insight, new partnerships and innovations that will help reshape businesses and the local hospitality industry beyond 2025. Learn more about the event here: https://www.microstechconnect.co.za/.