Autosled, a provider of digital technology for vehicle transport logistics, has promoted vice president of data and analytics David Darden to chief information officer, the company said. In his new position,

Autosled promotes VP Darden to chief information officer

When I recently asked my friends whether any of them were fans of Olive Garden, the snarky reactions quickly rolled in. “Really?” said one. “Silence,” wrote another. A third said their husband liked it,

Why the Olive Garden Experience Continues to Delight Us

A gourmet hot dog joint, a James Beard Award nominee and a longtime soda fountain are among the restaurants that closed recently in metro Phoenix.

Metro Phoenix restaurants that closed recently include 94-year-old icon that opened in 1929

Boston Logan International Airport's expanded international terminal offers travelers four new gates and host of new places to eat and shop. The new tenants were announced Tuesday by MarketPlace Logan,

Here are the new restaurants coming to Logan's new Terminal E

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - University of Virigina Darden School of Business just got a big gift that will help future students. The LaCross family changed their prior gift of $44 million to more than $100 million. This is the largest gift the school of business has ever received.

Darden School of Business receives more than $100 million

Deutsche Bank initiated its Darden Restaurants, Inc. [DRI] rating to a Buy in a research note published on Monday, October 19, 2023; the price target was $159. PT values the company’s stock at a premium of 9.84 to its Monday closing price.

Darden Restaurants, Inc. (DRI) receives a Buy rating from Deutsche Bank

The Darden Restaurants Foundation has donated a refrigerated truck and $20,000 to the Regional Food Bank of Oklahoma.

Restaurant group makes donation

The activist investor who shook up Orlando-based Darden Restaurants now is taking aim at Outback Steakhouse and Carrabba’s Italian Grill, in what could be a less tumultuous move than nearly a decade ago.

Darden activist investor now sets its sights on Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba’s

Darden activist investor sets sights on Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba’s

The next time you're looking to dine at a steakhouse, here are five differences between Capital Grille and Ruth's Chris to consider.

Capital Grille vs. Ruth's Chris Steak House: 5 Major Differences

Get the most recent info and news about Darden Restaurants on HackerNoon, where 10k+ technologists publish stories for 4M+ monthly readers.

Darden Restaurants, Inc., through its subsidiaries, owns and operates full-service restaurants in the United States and Canada. As of May 29, 2022, it owned and operated 1,867 restaurants, which included 884 under the Olive Garden brand, 546 under the LongHorn Steakhouse brand name, 172 under the Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen brand, 85 under the Yard House brand name, 62 under The Capital Grille brand, 45 under the Seasons 52 brand name, 42 under the Bahama Breeze brand, 28 under the Eddie V's Prime Seafood brand name, and 3 under the Capital Burger brand; and franchised 60 restaurants comprising 35 under the Olive Garden brand, 18 under the LongHorn Steakhouse brand name, 4 under the Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen brand, 2 under The Capital Grille brand name, and 1 under the Bahama Breeze brand.Darden Restaurants, Inc. was founded in 1968 and is based in Orlando, Florida.

Darden Restaurants

Most projects in the world of crypto read like an instance of Prestige Worldwide taking themselves entirely too seriously. So, when a link to Non-Fungible Olive Gardens (NFOG) popped up in a local DAO’s Discord chat, the ridiculousness sold me immediately. Everything about the now delisted project is on brand all the way down to the unlimited breadsticks and family-like atmosphere ( ) of the appropriately in-character chat. wyhyf Discord Of course, I minted a breadstick NFT right away before the topic of Olive Garden proceeded to consume my mind space for far longer than I’m comfortable admitting. Was I alone? Since the project dropped on December 17, the has seen over 82 ETH total volume in sales across 880 unique location-based NFTs, over 1.4k breadsticks minted, and a community bootstrapped token ($ ) up close to 200% in the first 24 hours post-airdrop with over on Uniswap Polygon. NFOG collection bstick $100k in TVL And if all of that means nothing to you, just know that pictures of Olive Garden restaurants sold as NFTs multiplied several times over in value along with a literally made-up token called . Why do all of this? Well, the project has to “complete leveraged buyout of Darden Restaurants, Olive Garden’s parent company.” Breadstick stated plans As of this writing, to NFOG. Unless the intention was to catapult NFOG into the collective crypto zeitgeist, I’m calling that a wrong move. Olive Garden has unsurprisingly issued a DMCA You don’t need to to guess that the attention drawn by delisting will only amplify the Non-Fungible Olive Garden movement as the community moves the collection to . The crypto space exists precisely as a response to overreaches of centralized authority. search hard decentralized exchanges Forcing a crypto-delisting is like punting a wasps nest. Now, what follows is not financial advice. I , however, reflect on what this phenomenon can tell us about the increasing importance of community to brands, money as expression, and intellectual property (IP) in the decentralized and immutable world of Web 3.0. will Non-fungible? I would be remiss if I didn’t at least provide a quick blurb on NFTs — please skip ahead if you’re familiar. Without overcomplicating it, if a widget is , it means that it’s unique. So, in the case of the NFOG collection, each NFT can be distinguished from one another. If you own one, we can verify that you own it, and we know it’s authentic because we can see where it came from. We know those things for reasons we won’t get into here, but you can watch the video below, later if you’re interested in a simple visual explanation of NFTs. non-fungible What does it mean? In a world where jpegs demand millions of dollars on the basis of insane future promises yet to be seen, Non-Fungible Olive Gardens stands out as one of the most sincere. How, you ask, can an unofficial NFT project peddling pictures of Olive Garden — itself serving a diluted simulacrum of “authentic” Italian fare — be anything other than a scam? Well, it’s a joke, and the fact that it’s been as wildly successful as it is makes it all the more hilarious. Regardless of your moral leanings on the topic of NFTs, you have to admit that the absurdity of NFOG’s premise, rise, and aims is at least worth a chuckle. That’s an absurdity as Camus would put it — the futility of a search for meaning in a world devoid of it. It’s maddening. But why, what’s the sticking factor? Jokes are funny because they contain a kernel of truth. Wrapped in this dumb little collection is a reflection of the emptiness inherent to our constructs of money, intellectual property, ownership, and presumed rationality as the basis for the actions of our fellow humans. When new technologies bring about new capabilities, old concepts are forced to be reconsidered and our relationships with them evolve. What does money mean when we can make and exchange our own? How does one enforce ownership of intellectual property when the use of it can go unabated? Why in the world did they just spend $800 on a picture of an Olive Garden in Idaho? I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I can put them out there to start a dialogue. Future of NFOG & beyond 👀 There’s no doubt in my mind that NFOG is the start of a new genre of NFTs and memes more broadly. The recent delisting has inspired a brilliant new collection, , and may even catalyze a new decentralized NFT marketplace for that genre. Non-Fungible Takedowns The organic nature from which NFOG community-driven initiatives have arisen introduces whole new dimensions to the experience and expression of memes, a dynamism that creates a sort of glue tying together those in on the joke. It’s a meme you can walk into and participate in. I’ve said, half-kidding, that the title of and classes like Masterpieces of Western Memes will soon go from absurd to matters of course. Chief Meme Officer The ability to wield memetic powers is a skill that pays outsized dividends for those the memes serve. They can catalyze communities — they’re potent delivery mechanisms for rapid communication that spread virally. But, like any form of communication, this skill does not come easily to many brands. Corporations rarely do humor well, often erring on the side of woefully out of an unwillingness to take risks. cheesy So, at the point a “ ” have taken…let’s call it from your branding, monetized pictures of your storefronts in the form of NFTs, amassed a cult-like following of alt-brand ambassadors complete with their own bootstrapped cryptocurrency token ( ), deflected a delisting of the NFT in question, ? community of Olive Garden enthusiasts inspiration $bstick what is (fungible) Olive Garden to do Unsolicited advice to the big OG 🫒 Before we go further, let’s consider the fundamental options for a brand in this position, of which Olive Garden will be the first of many: Ignore it exists Shut it down Embrace it Ignorance The first option is to simply ignore the “problem”. When haters rage against its existence, feign ignorance. When the troves of Olive Garden alt-universe fans tag the business incessantly on Twitter and flood DMs, leave them 'on read' and hope that they would tire themselves out. However, this approach has two main weak points. First, it leaves a giant elephant in the room should the community reach critical mass. The second, though, is more important. That is, there is a ton of value to be had in at least acknowledging the movement, its enthusiasm, and creativity. Whole marketing arms are paid good money to resonate with an audience, why in the world would an organization look the other way when that very audience is doing it better than them? Shut it down As I mentioned earlier, it looks like Darden is trying to shut things down. But let’s be real, the internet is tireless. Try to shut anything down, and you’re signing up for a game of whack-a-mole. There have been numerous instances of attempted . Headlines will write themselves, the value of the NFTs and $bstick surge, and the community continue to grow and evolve only to manifest more formidably. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. censorship that backfired Between mentioning the delisting above and this paragraph, the as well as on NFOG collection is already listed on a decentralized exchange called Zora Rarible Regardless of what law states, a creation takes on a life of its own in the collective consciousness once it’s unleashed. To a sophomore in college, Coca-Cola may mean getting blasted off rum while to you it may mean refreshing picnics in the park. These associations have their own emotional reverberations. Perhaps instead of trying to homogenize through control, brands are better served by learning to influence and let the best expressions arise on their own. It’s in the interest of a brand to ride the waves of evolution, capitalizing on enthusiasm rather than trying to corporatize the brand’s form. Let it be. Let it mean different things to different people. A brand can exist in parts and live on in subcultures far beyond what corporate suits can imagine. Rolling with these changes and embracing the emergent expression of the idea of the brand has the potential to increase the scope of its emotional impact. Good luck trying to cut the head off of this hydra. That’s not a threat, it’s a fact of nature nowadays. Web 3.0 is not your daddy’s internet. Between smart contracts, decentralized storage (IPFS) and exchanges, and , we’ve been collectively ushered into a new way of getting things done together without the need for permission or the fear of censorship. DAOs Who do you take down when there is no leader? Who do you talk to when the website isn’t centrally hosted and the exchange platform lacks control over listings? Embrace it Look, there is no playbook for this. So why not run with it and write it as you go? This is a fandom Tolkien would have dreamed of — a group of individuals who love Olive Garden, bonded by nostalgia and wholesomeness the restaurant represents, and create new forms of expression through memes, material goods, and tokens while having fun doing it. I mean, when was the last time you read something inspired by Olive Garden? : Invite and incentivize collaboration from your community in deciding what you become — . In doing so, you create a group of superfans financially and intellectually invested in the propagation of your brand and product. If you , they will run with your idea for you. echoing this sentiment. The biggest takeaway is this think bottom-up, not top-down give people ownership Here’s a thread No doubt it’s risky to embrace them. It’s like herding cats. But this is where things are headed. Plus, it’s way more fun doing things together. When people are given the tools to communicate as a group, create a unit of value, exchange that value, then incentivized to perform work for the sake of moving the group toward some goal, the sovereignty they reclaim is unassailable. It doesn’t matter whether people are initiated through absurd memes or reading the whitepaper of an obscure cryptocurrency; whether the intention is to buy Olive Garden, , a , or . Once the power of decentralized, permissionless, censorship-resistant collaboration is experienced, there is no going back. Might as well join the party. wyhyf. Blockbuster golf club the Constitution Thanks for reading some of my words to kick off your new year. Let’s connect on , or wherever you are . Twitter online Also published . here

Olive Garden Gets NFOG Delisted And Triggers Streisand Effect: Marketing and PR #Fail

126 Stories To Learn About Stablecoin

Food and Flavor: A Gastronomic Guide to Health and Good Living: Chapter XI - GASTRONOMIC AMERICA

When I first started KinkBNB in 2015, I bought an off-the-shelf AirBNB clone codebase to build the first version on. One of the things we had to do was hook it up to with an API key. It was amazing to me how it transformed the dead piece of software we’d gotten from an off-shore programming company into something that seemed to work. It was only after we got into operation that the problem became clear — despite the fact that the software worked, it didn’t actually monetize our traffic because AirBNB’s business model only works at scale. It took us two different packages to come to this realization in 2017. Google Places API This became the impetus for — a completely custom written piece of software. Based on my research I chose the Django framework to write this version. There were a few advantages to this. I’m a pretty hands on guy and I know python like the back of my hand from writing IRC bots in the late 90’s. It allowed me to keep the old databases and userbase intact, and that was pretty cool. But above all I figured out how to drop this Google API into our codebase. This gives KinkBNB the spark of life it would not have otherwise — you can type in an address and it will not only autocomplete based on your location, it will give us the GPS coordinates to do a Point based search in . KinkBNB Mark III Haystack I’ve revisited this particular API a few times for KinkBNB. I have used it in other projects for clients as well. It’s pretty good for building dealer locators as well as finding the nearest restaurants to your sex dungeon. I am still all about this API. It’s Google that I have a problem with. Specifically, their non-communication in making changes. I don’t have much of a reason to pay attention to the backend of this API in the — at least I didn’t before June of 2018. It was then that Google decided they wanted to make money off this API and started charging for it. We didn’t actually notice this for a few reasons. Google Cloud Console We’re in a very weird area with KinkBNB. We get a lot of traffic and we are profitable, but it’s that weird kind of profitability you get in that first year of profitability. Namely, everything affects your bottom line. We exhibit at the and it’s not an inexpensive proposition — but this year we paid for it completely with profits. It was about this time that I started getting notices in my personal mail about our credit card being declined for small payments. Folsom Street Fair Of course, several years ago when I wasn’t thinking I’d signed up for this with my personal email. I shrugged it off until after the Fair, how bad could it be? This photo by the captures me (left, in my trusty hat) on my phone trying to figure out why Google is charging us so much despite all the stuff going on around me. SF Chronicle As it turned out, it was pretty bad. Not only were we badly behind, for some reason Google had given us a credit or something going forward several months. We were pulling a LOT of requests and at their full pricing tier. My best guess is they knew folks would need time to fix it, but in the meantime here is $500 a month credit for several months to make your bills not pile up. I sat up and took notice when that credit stopped. Here’s the fun code portion of the article! The very basic call to Places is simple. You grab an and throw up this piece of HTML and Javascript which is and VOILA — you have a map. API key from the API Dashboard currently on their website <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Simple Map</title>
    <meta name="viewport" content="initial-scale=1.0">
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <style>
      /* Always set the map height explicitly to define the size of the div
       * element that contains the map. */
      #map {
        height: 100%;
      }
      /* Optional: Makes the sample page fill the window. */
      html, body {
        height: 100%;
        margin: 0;
        padding: 0;
      }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="map"></div>
    <script>
      var map;
      function initMap() {
        map = new google.maps.Map(document.getElementById('map'), {
          center: {lat: -34.397, lng: 150.644},
          zoom: 8
        });
      }
    </script>
    <script src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=YOUR_API_KEY&callback=initMap"
    async defer></script>
  </body>
</html> Now, the piece of code to focus on is that maps.googleapis.com call at the end. <script src="https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?key=YOUR_API_KEY&callback=initMap"
    async defer></script> That piece of code right there is the very BASE call. You can use that as the basis of every call to Places API, whether it is the maps or the geocoding or the autocomplete. Notice also that is only has two values being passed — the API key and the callback. Folks, that piece of code controls how much you are being charged. If you just call it with your API key, it charges you the maximum amount they can, per request — because ostensibly it returns all the data in their databases about what’s near you or in your coordinates. Google Maps and Places now has a new If you want just basic address capabilities, that’s a very low rate. But if you grab everything in their API, the bill piles up VERY quickly. Luckily you can staunch the flow of money pretty quickly. pricing structure according to their website. December is my traditional month to do a good code sprint on KinkBNB. This year I had to fix this problem ASAP, and code a new GPS enabled search function for our user directory. I took the time to figure out and understand what was going on. It takes a few days sometimes to figure out if your code actually worked when you have an external API, and I can report that the following problem was definitely fixed by some simple additions to the Places API call lines. First off — you need to make your Google Places API calls priced by session instead of by every API call. Luckily in Django it’s just a matter of adding a value to your API call. <script type="text/javascript" src="//maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?libraries=places&&v=3.34&key={{ GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY }}&sessiontoken={{request.session.session_key}}"></script> Next, you need to limit what data you are calling from Places. I wrote the following Javascript function that runs when the page loads — it lets me access the location data from the browser, stores it for the user who is logged in, and sets up the Autocompleting search bar on our search pages. {% block head_js %}
<script type="text/javascript" src="//maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/js?libraries=places&&v=3.34&key={{ GOOGLE_MAPS_API_KEY }}&sessiontoken={{request.session.session_key}}"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    function showError(error) {
        switch(error.code) {
            case error.PERMISSION_DENIED:
                alert("User denied the request for Geolocation.");
                    window.location.href = "https://www.kinkbnb.com/explore/";
                break;
            case error.POSITION_UNAVAILABLE:
               alert("Location information is unavailable.");
                    window.location.href = "https://www.kinkbnb.com/explore/";
                break;
            case error.TIMEOUT:
                alert("The request to get user location timed out.");
                    window.location.href = "https://www.kinkbnb.com/explore/";
                break;
            case error.UNKNOWN_ERROR:
                alert( "An unknown error occurred.");
                    window.location.href = "https://www.kinkbnb.com/explore/";
                break;
        }
    }
        function initialize() {
            var input = document.getElementById('geocomplete');
             if (navigator.geolocation) {              navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(position) {
                  var pos = {
                     lat: position.coords.latitude,
                     lng: position.coords.longitude,
               };
                   document.getElementById('id_lat').value = position.coords.latitude;
                   document.getElementById('id_lng').value = position.coords.longitude;
                      $.ajax({
                    url : '/kinksters/{{ request.user.id }}/gps/',
                    type : "POST",
                    data : {
                        'csrfmiddlewaretoken' : "{{  csrf_token  }}",
                     'lat':position.coords.latitude,
                     'lng':position.coords.longitude,
                    },
                    success : function(result) {}
                   },showError);
                   }, function() {
                             });
            } else {
              // Browser doesn't support Geolocation
                    window.location.href = "https://www.kinkbnb.com/explore/";
             }
            var autocomplete = new google.maps.places.Autocomplete(input,{fields: ["address_components", "geometry"],
      types: ["geocode"],});
            google.maps.event.addListener(autocomplete, 'place_changed', function () {
                var place = autocomplete.getPlace({placeIdOnly: true});
                var lat = place.geometry.location.lat();
                var long = place.geometry.location.lng()
                document.getElementById('id_lat').value = place.geometry.location.lat();
                document.getElementById('id_lng').value = place.geometry.location.lng();
            });
        }
        google.maps.event.addDomListener(window, 'load', initialize);
    </script>

{% endblock head_js %} As in the previous little codeblock, there are specific lines you need to pay attention to here. var autocomplete = new google.maps.places.Autocomplete(input,{fields: ["address_components", "geometry"],
      types: ["geocode"],});
var place = autocomplete.getPlace({placeIdOnly: true}); This is how you limit what data you get back from Places API. You are limiting your fields to geometry and address data, and the type of call you are making is “geocode”. The second line is to specify that you don’t want all the Places Details in your call. If you leave these lines in without specifying the code type, placeIDOnly, or the address fields, then Google will charge you at the full data rate for their Places Details API — and this is what took a few days to figure out after I figured out to make all API calls part of a session. Naturally if you want to get more data back from them this is where you do it as well — but all the tiers cost more on top of what Google is charging as a base. Per Google’s website, here are the available fields and pricing tiers: Basic The Basic category includes the following fields:address_component, adr_address, alt_id, formatted_address, geometry, icon, id, name, permanently_closed, photo, place_id, plus_code, scope, type, url, utc_offset, vicinity Contact The Contact category includes the following fields:formatted_phone_number, international_phone_number, opening_hours, website Atmosphere The Atmosphere category includes the following fields: price_level, rating, review If you want to include reviews and ratings, then you can do this. Just be warned that this is charged at the maximum rate possible. If you get between 20,000 and 30,000 users a month on your search bar and every API call is at maximum rate, that’s going to add about $1000+ a month to your bill. The minimum rate is much more palatable so far. I had virtually no help from Google to solve this. I say virtually, because I actually used Google to search the internet for the answers — and those were not published officially by Google except in their dry documentation that just assumes you’re starting from scratch. I didn’t get or notice an email warning about the change in pricing, nor did I find anything explaining this change and how it would affect older customers. It to be a trick to get as much surprise revenue as possible before their users fixed it. Nobody would be that evil, would they? seems And so it comes full circle to my article’s title. Google used to have a motto. It was “Don’t be evil.” Unfortunately they seem to have left this motto by the wayside, sometime around the time they bought that company that builds scary military robots. Surprising people with pricing changes is about as evil as it gets. I hope someone at Google sees this and tries to do better next time they want to implement a large change that will affect small businesses like mine if we don’t jump right on fixing our code.

Dear Google: Don’t Be Evil

Breadsticks, of all things, were the reason for a huge backlash at the famous Olive Garden chain of restaurants both from customers and employees. When the parent company of the restaurant had its board changed, a few policy changes were done including the limitation of free breadsticks to just one plus one refill for every customer. And the reason? Breadsticks turned soggy quickly, losing their taste and were thus wasted. Apart from unhappy customer faces, waiters were found scratching their heads taking count of every member at the table repeatedly and giving them their portion of breadsticks. An of 2500 recent glassdoor reviews showed that the problem behind dropping employee ratings was the frustration of serving the right number of breadsticks as seen in the below image. intense text mining *Image courtesy: Content Marketing Institute Looking at similar sentiments voiced by customers, the restaurant owners were pushed to go back to their initial rules of unlimited breadsticks! They speak. You better hear! Customer sentiment lies at the heart of the hospitality industry which is exploding and is expected to reach by 2026. As lucrative as that may sound, the industry has its own set of challenges with rapidly shifting consumer demands and behaviors. 211.54 billion The hospitality sector is forced to stay in pace with the technological advancements that are imbibed in the everyday life of a customer. For example, voice-activated searches on Alexa imply having smarter hotel rooms that respond to a guest’s voice commands. When there’s a mobile app to shop and eat, booking agents and hotels are forced to "appify" bookings and services. Posting experiences online has become second nature to Gen Yers and the ripples they cause can’t be overseen. travel based on recommendations from friends with 87% of them being inspired by Facebook posts. 82% of these travelers consider online hotel reviews as vital, reading at least before booking. 76% of Millennials nine reviews Studies also reveal that travelers and foodies tend to write about their negative experiences rather than ones that left them satisfied. The frown doesn’t stop with them but is spread to an average of , bringing down the hotel brand reputation. 9 to 15 persons As scary as the stats may sound, it’s quite reassuring to know that timely responses and engagement initiatives would go a long way in building customer loyalty when brands are ready to listen to their audience. Cultivate the art of social listening - Be an online bat A bat is known to locate its food and avoid obstacles by hearing the sound signals bounced off objects. Taking a cue from the nocturnal mammal, hotel brands can tune in to the online chatter voiced on various channels like - : Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, and YouTube Social Media : TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Google listings, Yelp, Foursquare, Expedia, Trust Pilot Online review and booking websites on blogs and online news articles Brand mentions Hotel review monitoring done over these platforms go in vain when their true intent and context are not perceived clearly. Apart from finding if your brand has a positive or negative influence on people, business owners can utilize the insights gleaned for various other aspects as specified below. 1. Gain clarity on market segments When your hotel caters to a global audience traveling for a number of reasons in different seasons, giving a customized travel experience becomes vital. For example, identifying the rising trend of “bleisure” travel among Gen Y, The Marriott has opened - the MOXY for leisure loving Millenials and the AC hotel for business travelers. two chains of hotel While standard market research and surveys are carried out for market segmentation, customers leave a wealth of information through online content, stating their likes and dislikes outright. It’s all about asking the right questions and the answers are there hidden in plain sight. Few questions you could pose include  - People from which nationality like your services better? Are people from one particular region complaining by any particular service of yours? If so, are you making a mistake with any of their societal practices? Are you striking the right chord with your target age group? During which time period is a spike in bookings seen from a geographic location? What are the reasons for travel undertaken by people of different backgrounds? What criteria does a guest look for in their stay? - Do they belong to the budget-friendly, luxury, or comfort-seeking category? Take a look at the information that can be gathered from the below review of a luxury hotel in Sweden. Insights derived about the customer -  Name, geographic location, age group, time of stay, reason for preferring the hotel. Segmenting and thereby promoting your hotel offerings to people of similar age groups and demographics would now become more focused. 2. Devise well-targeted marketing strategies With enough guest insights gathered from online hotel reviews, CRM, and other analytics tools, it becomes easier to relate to your customers and know their expectations and problems in a deeper way. Customer personas could then be developed to segment and further plan marketing campaigns that reach out to your audience at the right time in their preferred channel with the right messaging. Emails, which surprisingly have the highest conversion rates to date, when thoughtfully crafted and sent to segmented audience is to yield a 760% increase in total email revenue. found Landing in your customers’ mailboxes with the most relevant content would boost bookings and thus revenue per guest. Loyalty programs and attractive rewards that would make your customers feel valued and lead them to pick you over the rest can be built for different customer groups. Planning your hotel ambiance, choosing music that appeals to the biggest chunk of your audience, and making your premises more Instagrammable are small steps that add to a satisfactory guest experience. Rich and relevant content frequently updated on social media handles, blogs, and hotel websites ensure that guests’ have your brand name on their mind during their next booking. 3. Play to your competitor’s weaknesses Observing reviews and online content of hotels operating in your vicinity reveals a ton of information on prices and amenities offered (or not offered) by them. Pricing strategies can be tweaked accordingly and strategic decisions that would attract customers who had a negative experience with rival businesses to yours can be framed. Say my flight arrives at 2 pm but the cut-off time to check-in at the hotel I booked is 12 pm and I’m forced to pay a day’s extra charges. I ain’t a happy guest and I would take to TripAdvisor to warn fellow travelers of the rigid timings. A shrewd hotelier like you would notice my review and extend or make check-in timings flexible and further highlight the feature in your advertising campaigns. Unhappy folks like me would then throng to your hotel and a spike in revenue is not to be missed. Variations in the food and beverages menu, uninterrupted WiFi, cleanliness of rooms, staff attitude, leisure activities, and transportation facilities are areas of concern voiced by guests online. Identifying where your opponents lack and making necessary changes in your premises goes a long way in staying ahead of the competition. Keeping a close watch on your competitors also helps you differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack and stand out amidst the number of options a customer has. 4. Keep your brand reputation intact The value of a brand name is an enigma by itself. The intangible asset of a brand name invokes trust and confidence for the brand among people. It takes years of patient customer service, constant innovation, and a deep commitment to brand promise in order to create a strong brand voice. But the bricks you add to building your hotel brand reputation could come tumbling down with a handful of bad experiences shared vividly over social media and online review platforms. When ignored, negative reviews have the power to wade off of potential customers if more than 3 negative articles about your business are found on the first google search page! 70% Yet, all’s not lost as timely responses by hotel owners could save and also their impression when done in a polite and genuine manner. increase Timing is the key here. Listening to the online lament, a bad ending could even be turned into a memorable one when immediate action is taken. Who wouldn’t like a box of chocolates and a handwritten note promising rooms with better views when you that the view from your rooms was ugly? tweeted Nice gesture, Delta hotels! 5. Build brand loyalty with an engaged audience 2008 saw a novel open innovation campaign titled “ ” that did more than just crowdsourcing suggestions. Coffee lovers over the world could share their ideas on improving the overall business, with fellow users upvoting and commenting on others’ ideas. My Starbucks Idea Starbucks representatives who were also part of the community would manage and monitor the suggestions, showing that the brand genuinely took interest in what their customers had to say. Through this campaign, customers felt more important, involved, and soon became part of the Starbucks family. And who wouldn’t endorse their own family? A reveals that most travelers are willing to pay more - anywhere between $10 to $50, to stay in the brand they prefer and are loyal to. People are even willing to forgive occasional mistakes made by establishments that have earned their respect in the past. study Listening to customers online, gauging their sentiments, and responding with thoughtful comments and witty posts on social media help grow a vibrant fan base and thereby increase brand loyalty. 6. Review and renew business strategies periodically Trends and fads among people keep changing from time to time and so do their tastes and preferences. Sticking to a safe business strategy that only partially fulfills consumer demands isn’t going to be profitable in the hospitality sector. Constantly reinventing the way your brand operates and interacts with people is a mandate. Hence, a retrospection of your hotel's online reputation (in terms of reviews, social media, and news mentions) is necessary to know what influenced people to choose or turn away from your hotel. The review activity can be done quarterly, biannually or annually, and you can find answers to  - When you have a spike in your bookings and what’s the reason behind those ups? Can you capitalize further during the peak seasons? Customers from which demographic choose your brand more and what positives do they cite? Is there a recurring complaint you’ve missed to address? How do guests respond to any changes you’ve made to your operations or prices? Are there new activities or local attractions that can be included in your packages? Reports can be generated to analyze booking patterns and useful insights can be drawn to make strategic business decisions. Discover true customer sentiment and accelerate your brand growth The hospitality industry revolves around customer satisfaction and to gratify people’s needs it’s imperative to heed their voice. Hotel online reputation management goes way beyond calculating ratings and identifying negative words in a review. The context and intent of a customer’s statement are to be examined which would reveal what their true experience was. Opinion mining or sentiment analysis is a growing field of determining the actual attitude and feelings expressed in textual content. It helps hotel brands feel the pulse of the customer and align business goals accordingly, ensuring a rise in revenue. If you’re still wondering if a hotel online reputation management solution is needed for your establishment, I would highly recommend you to go for it. Disclosure: I work for Xtract.io . We can help you listen to your customers with its NLP-based online reputation management solution that provides valuable insights for you to act on.

What Soggy Breadsticks Taught Us About Service and Social Listening 

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Let's learn about via these 43 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. Sentiment Analysis /Learn Repo 1. 14 Open Datasets for Text Classification in Machine Learning Text classification datasets are used to categorize natural language texts according to content. For example, think classifying news articles by topic, or classifying book reviews based on a positive or negative response. Text classification is also helpful for language detection, organizing customer feedback, and fraud detection. Though time consuming when done manually, this process can be automated with machine learning models. The result saves companies time while also providing valuable data insights. 2. Why You Shouldn't Use a Database as Your App’s Data Source Most apps and APIs use databases as their data source and that is for a great reason. Databases have been designed to be scalable, resilient, and fully featured to support many types of use cases and scenarios. 3. The Importance of Social Media Analytics Nowadays, brands have discovered that social media is an indispensable cog in their golden wheel of success. As such, the activities that take place on every social media platform needs to be kept in check by these brands to maximize profit. Social media analytics helps you keep tabs on the progress of your marketing strategy as well as the welfare of your clients and competitors. 4. How Machine Learning is changing Financial Services in 2020 An Introduction to Machine Learning for Finance. 5. Sentiment Analysis using AWS Comprehend Sentiment analysis uses AI to identify the core emotion behind a piece of text. In this article, we will look at how to build a sentiment analyzer using AWS Comprehend. 6. Importance of Sentiment Analysis as a Key Marketing Tool Sentiment Analytics can help your marketing team to understand the sentiment of your target audience and identify any potential issues or concerns. 7. Thrilled to be Recognized as #1 Startup in Budapest We’re really proud that we can be in a group of like-minded technologists and be acknowledged by them. 8. Introducing aasaan.ai: No-Code Yelp Sentiment Classification Introduction 9. Analyzing Sentiment Of Tweets Is Really Easy If You Follow This Tutorial Hello, Guys, 10. Explaining the Idea of Mood Blogging Mood Blogging is primarily location based blogging that captures & enhances spirit of blogging. 11. Using Sentiment Analysis to Attain and Retain Customers Analyzing customer sentiment allows businesses to look into how customers feel about their products & services. 12. Say Goodbye to Surveys and Hello to Sentiment Analysis For the past several decades, surveys have been the main method for a business to gain insights on how customers feel about their products. 13. Text Classification in iOS using tensorflowlite [A How-To Guide] Text classification is task of categorising text according to its content. It is the fundamental problem in the field of Natural Language Processing(NLP). More general applications of text classifications are in email spam detection, sentiment analysis and topic labelling etc. 14. Affective Computing, Mindless AI and a World for the Taking Affective computing is a term that refers to the synergy between AI and psychology in order to understand and affect emotions. Another term for it could be emot 15. All You Need to Know about Sentiment Analysis in Power BI Since most of the world is online, everything by consumers nowadays is being shared online, whether a bad experience or a good one. 16. 5 Questions to Ask Before Choosing An Online Brand Reputation Management Tool If Sherlock Holmes were to do an investigation in the digital world, then an ORM - Online Reputation Management tool would be his best buddy. In the words of the inscrutable Holmes, it’s best to never trust impressions but concentrate on the details. 17. 4 Social Media Data Mining Techniques to Help Grow Your Online Business Social media data mining has become a must-have strategy for understanding current trends, culture, and online business. This is because the world of social media is a thriving, ever-growing ocean of data, where hundreds of millions of tweets, instagram posts, and blog articles are published every day. 18. Unconventional Sentiment Analysis: BERT vs. Catboost Unconventional sentiment analysis with CatBoost. The result is comparable to BERT SOTA. 19. Fintech: The Main Attractions of This Bustling Industry Financial technology, or Fintech for short is a relatively avoided topic among tech enthusiasts, developers, programmers and etc. The reason is very simple actually. Developers don’t necessarily refer to their software as Fintech even though it’s quite literally associated with the financial industry. 20. Hacking Emotions: Interpreting Current Events through News Sentiment How can organizations best measure news sentiment to gain insights about customer and investor behavior? 21. How to Use Streamlit and Python to Build a Data Science App Web apps are still useful tools for data scientists to present their data science projects to the users. Since we may not have web development skills, we can use open-source python libraries like Streamlit to easily develop web apps in a short time. 22. Natural Language Processing: Explaining BERT to Business People <TLDR> BERT is certainly a significant step forward in the context of NLP. Business activities such as topic detection and sentiment analysis will be much easier to create and execute, and the results much more accurate. But how did you get to BERT, and how exactly does the model work? Why is it so powerful? Last but not least, what benefits it can bring to the business, and our decision to integrate it into the sandsiv+ Customer Experience platform.</TLDR> 23. How to Perform Sentiment Analysis with Amazon Comprehend How to analyze the sentiments from a text using AWS services like Amazon Comprehend, AWS IAM, AWS Lambda, and Amazon S3. 24. How To Build An n8n Workflow To Manage Different Databases and Scheduling Workflows Learn how to build an n8n workflow that processes text, stores data in two databases, and sends messages to Slack. 25. We Built a Crypto Trading Algo Based on AI Sentiment Analysis Introducing an AI-powered Algo trading platform on the blockchain. 26. 5 Must-Read Research Papers on Sentiment Analysis for Data Scientists From virtual assistants to content moderation, sentiment analysis has a wide range of use cases. AI models that can recognize emotion and opinion have a myriad of applications in numerous industries. Therefore, there is a large growing interest in the creation of emotionally intelligent machines. 27. How AI Has Enhanced Sentiment Analysis Using Product Review Data Customer feedback is great. But have you been able to turn that feedback into meaningful customer insights? A few years back, brands depended on surveys to gauge customers’ feelings about how their products were performing. 28. Intro to AI Analytics and Top 5 Use Cases for Businesses Analytics works by extracting meaningful patterns in data and interpreting and communicating them. 29. 5 Real Ways to Start Implementing AI in your Ecommerce Stores The implementation of AI in ecommerce should come as no surprise. Online businesses have always been quick to adopt new technologies, and this is how the industry thrives; enhancing the customer experience, discovering new markets, and driving further sales. And with the continued development of AI technology like chatbots, visual search, and personalized recommendations, the world of ecommerce is transforming again. 30. Naive Sentiment Analysis Using R Cleuton Sampaio, October 2019 31. Your Guide to Natural Language Processing (NLP) Everything we express (either verbally or in written) carries huge amounts of information. The topic we choose, our tone, our selection of words, everything adds some type of information that can be interpreted and value extracted from it. In theory, we can understand and even predict human behaviour using that information. 32. 50k+ News Story Study Finds Trump Gets 5x the Coverage, but Not Much Love Negative sentiment around Trump lifted slightly when he was diagnosed — and dropped when he returned to the White House. 33. How Far Are We From a Real World Jarvis? A Brief History of NLP Applications in the 21st Century 34. Twitter Sentiment Analysis for the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections Introduction 35. A Guide to Sentiment Analysis APIs for SaaS Product Managers A sentiment analysis API can be instrumental in helping you ace business strategy for growth. Check out the guide to sentiment analysis APIs for SaaS Managers 36. Text Processing and Sentiment Analysis of Twitter Data A complete guide to text processing using Twitter data and R. 37. AI-driven Sentiment Analysis: Hacking Emotions to Boost Customer Service “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” 38. What Soggy Breadsticks Taught Us About Service and Social Listening Breadsticks, of all things, were the reason for a huge backlash at the famous Olive Garden chain of restaurants both from customers and employees. 39. Text Classification Simplified with Facebook’s FastText A step by step tutorial to analyse sentiment of Amazon product reviews with the FastText API 40. Sentiment Classification for 2019 Lok Sabha Elections Using Text Based Classifiers Introduction 41. Blockchain-Verified Sentiment The explosion of content on the world wide web, social media and chat networks greatly increased the interest in sentiment analysis from a growing number and variety of interested parties. 42. Sentiment Analysis with Python and AssemblyAI’s Speech Recognition API If you’ve never heard of Sentiment Analysis, I hadn’t either before I stumbled on it in the documentation. That’s why I thought it would be interesting to try. 43. How Machines Learn Emotions: Sentiment Analysis of Amazon Product Reviews How do you train machines to identify emotions? This is a tutorial for sentiment analysis of Amazon product reviews using machine learning algorithms. Thank you for checking out the 43 most read stories about Sentiment Analysis on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

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