Even if the word ‘glamping’ is relatively new, the concept behind is not. In the 16th century, the Scottish Earl of Atholl prepared a lavish experience in the Highlands for the visit of King James V and his mother. Here, the Duke prepared luxurious tents and filled them with similar goods served at his own home palace.
Nowadays, glamping has become a popular trend that arouses the interest of more and more people. The word itself is a hybrid version of the words ‘glamorous’ and ‘camping’. It is an upgraded style of camping, with amenities and resort-style facilities that are not associated with traditional camping. Glamping locations tend to be isolated and closer to nature. It is designed for those who love the idea of camping, but are not so comfortable with the process behind it (setup labour; food stocking; sleeping conditions).
As technology changes our daily lives and interactions, glamping businesses are doing their best to keep up and adopt it in different ways. For example, eco giants such as Tesla with their tiny house off-grid technology. It is a compact home on wheels that is fully powered through 6 solar panels located on the top of the roof. This means that the mobile home can be towed in the middle of nowhere, while charging its batteries from the sun. Glamping businesses seek to adopt eco-friendly technologies designed to protect the environment and its travelers.
Glamping Experiences
As expected, travelers want to be entertained during their glamping getaway. In this environment, businesses offer a variety of activities that form a connection with nature, without having to harm it. Some examples include:
Canoeing
Fly-fishing
Guided Tours
Horseback Riding
Hiking
Rafting
Mountain Biking
Spa & Yoga
Wine Tasting
Based on individual preferences, these experiences might be purchased in advance (prior to arrival) or at the location.
Glamping with Oveit
We think that our solution can be among those eco-friendly technologies adopted by glamping businesses. To give you a better understanding of how it can be used in this environment, let’s go back to those experiences mentioned above. Our smart NFC enabled wristbands act as digital wallets, meaning that guests can fully customize their experiences as desired.
Who wants to carry a wallet or card while rafting?
I hope none of you are willing to worry about important belongings while having a great time. With our solution, travelers claim those experiences with a simple tap of the wrist.
When thinking of the middle of nowhere, I bet that some of you relate it to internet limitations. While this is partly true, the good news is that our solution does not depend on a stable internet connection. Our hybrid model allows travelers to claim experiences, complete transactions and access restricted areas offline. Operating offline has no impact on the user experience or processing speed.
Want to know more about your guests and their purchase behavior within your glamping resort?
Our solution is much appreciated because it has an important role in the decision-making process. The available reports enable you to market products/services with high demand, stock up accordingly, send out newsletters to your most loyal guests and allocate staff strategically. The faster transaction speed will also have a positive impact on your revenue.
Well-known establishments, part of the famous Ibiza island are stepping up their game in terms of adopting unique technologies to enhance guest experiences. The so-called ‘smart very important bracelets’ (VIB), successfully passed the trial period and convinced decision makers that it’s the way to go. Even if these smart wristbands were introduced a while ago on the island, the Hard Rock Hotel and Ushuaia Ibiza Beach Hotel take a different approach by using it in their hospitality and event environments.
These properties are known as the places to stay, party, dine and relax during the summer season in Ibiza. The Ushuaia Beach Hotel, also called ‘The Unexpected Hotel’ because of its unparalleled entertainment offering, events production and technology initiatives, presents the ideal opportunity for such exclusive solutions to be implemented. It all started with the introduction of a biometric technology that enabled guests to complete purchases with their fingerprints. In 2014, these two famous establishments, part of the same hotel group, decided to replace the biometric PayTouch system with the so-called ‘wearable technology’ or VIB. This wearable technology takes it a step further, replacing the need of carrying a room key, a wallet or a mobile phone on site.
How is this technology impacting the user experience and purchase behavior within the famous Ibiza establishments?
Room Access
The radio frequency chip incorporated inside the smart wristband is replacing the traditional room key. It is nearly impossible to lose it or forget it, since guests wear it all the time. To unlock the room, guests simply place the bracelet against specially enabled readers. The technology is already there. Most five-star hotels and resorts have these special readers already incorporated right under the doorknob.
Access to different areas (VIP)
Ibiza is the type of destination where influential people, such as celebrities, famous actors and artists choose to spend their days off. Celebrities seek personalized experiences and value their moments of privacy, especially during their time off. The smart wristbands are designed to store access credentials for individual guests. Access to restricted areas such as the VIP lounge, spa or pool is simply verified with a tap of the wrist in a matter of seconds. There is no need to assign hotel staff in those areas, since the process is fully automated.
Payment Tool
The famous establishments use smart wristbands as a payment tool, replacing cash or credit/debit cards. Fancy a drink at the pool or in a club? The bracelets are waterproof, and guests can shop their favorite cocktails even while taking a break from swimming. How does it work? Upon arrival, the hotel sends out a newsletter to individual guests and instructs them on how to sync their PayPal account with the bracelet. From then on, the smart wristband works in a prepaid fashion, automatically topping up every time the balance goes below 10 EUR.
Tracking (footfall)
To find out behavior and preferences regarding hotel services, the adopted technology by Ibiza establishments proves to be very efficient. The smart wristbands can track individual guests around the hotel premises, enabling decision makers to allocate staff accordingly during peak hours.
Discounts at on-site facilities
The tracking feature is also used to offer personalized promotions and discounts. Since decision makers have access to purchase behavior and preferences, identifying the loyal guests is fairly easy. For example, if an individual is using the spa facilities quite often, a special discount or even a free massage session might be offered in exchange.
Here at Oveit, our dedicated team believes that its ‘Economy as a Service’ approach could revolutionize the hotel and hospitality segments. The hospitality environment is among those that can take advantage of our extended features, designed to shape a different kind of relationship with its guests.
During a festival, sponsors contribute to the attendee experience and entertainment. It’s very unlikely to attend a large festival without noticing heavy signs of branding across the grounds. Ranging from exclusive vendor booths to branded stage names and traditional banners, sponsors have become an integral part of a festival’s success.
Sponsors aim to build genuine connections with participants through innovation. According to a recent study, millennial attendees perceive brands that sponsor festivals as more authentic and trustworthy. As we live in a world where data is the new gold, being able to follow up and form a lasting relationship with your prospective clients is essential. As expected, festival-goers don’t like to lose their precious time with providing personal details, especially in this environment.
What if sponsors could collect valuable data from attendees with a simple tap of the hand?
Great news! Oveit Interact is the game changer in this case.
Sponsors using Oveit Interact
To collect data as a festival sponsor with our solution, the process is straight forward and user friendly. There is no need to ask individual attendees for personal information and manually input it. Instead, the NFC chip placed inside the branded wristband does the magic. Sponsors can create unique accounts and personalize the interaction screen as they wish. After each interaction, participants give their consent and agree to share their information with sponsors (GDPR compliant).
At the end of the festival, you can simply export the collected information from your account by pressing a button. If there are no add-ons attached to a particular ticket category, the interaction can only take place once. In other words, if someone tries to connect with a sponsor for the second time, the App will notify that an interaction has already occurred.
Austrian Airlines using Oveit Interact to connect with participants
Attendees using Oveit Interact
Recently, I attended a festival with a variety of brand activations (sponsors) on site. All of those activations were completely unique and truly inspiring. I found it annoying to participate in their campaigns, because I had to repeat myself every time to provide relevant details, such as my e-mail address or phone number . But guess what … I still did it because their freebies were quite amazing and worth claiming.
With Oveit Interact, providing those details in an environment where music is banging in your ears is not necessary. You can simply enjoy those cool freebies with a tap of your wrist.
Oveit Interact interface (it can be fully customized to represent your brand)
Main takeaways
As previously mentioned, data is the new gold. Oveit Interact enables festival sponsors to step up their game and collect valuable information in a matter of seconds. As for keeping in touch with the ones who passed by your booth, you can customize the follow-up email and the App takes care of sending it out after each interaction.
As for the attendees, it is important to mention that sponsors don’t have access to sensitive information. The information collected comes strictly from the registration form, included in the ticket purchase process. With that being said, don’t hesitate to contact us for additional information!
More and more people are being reported as infected with the COVID-19 virus which causes the Coronavirus Disease. As many communities all across the world are being challenged by this epidemic we, as citizens of the world need to stay united and ask ourselves: what can we do to help?
This is the exact question we’ve asked ourselves. Can our work fight against this epidemic? Can we use tech against Coronavirus?
The answer is yes, we can. We are already a company dedicated to supporting local communities. Now we pledge our technology and support to any community affected about the Coronavirus outbreak. No strings or costs attached.
1. Use cashless and contactless payments to avoid spread of the Coronavirus disease through cash
The most common way for coronaviruses to spread is through person to person transmission. You can check details here . Don’t forget when getting your news – always trust verified sources, especially on health issues.
However, Covid-19 can survive on different types of inanimate objects for up to 9 days, as estimated by a March 2020 study published in the journal of Hospital Infection. This, in turn, allows inanimate surfaces such as money to become sources of infection.
Our contactless technology has been developed for usage in closed loop environments such as events, venues and hospitality resorts. This means places and areas where many, many people congregate.
How can you use this tech against Coronavirus? You can use Oveit Pay to allow cashless and contactless payments in areas that are not yet accustomed to these new means of payments, thus reducing potential dangerous interactions.
Contactless payments tech for everyone
If you want to reduce the exchange of currency in your community, thus reducing infection chances, we are here to help. Do reach out. We are ready to help without any cost.
2. Access control to quarantined areas
Oveit was designed to manage access to very large events or venues. Therefore it is built for speed, reliability and flexibility.
How can you use this tech against Coronavirus? Quickly set up an access management system to quarantined communities.
The system can operate either using NFC cards (the same technology used in contactless payment cards) or biometric facial features, if you need a higher level of security and less contact.
While we are not experts in the field we assume that just as with all large gatherings, you will need different access rights and roles. This can be easily set up for let’s say medical professionals, logistics personnel or general public.
3. Use tech to manage patient history and tracking in improvised treatment spaces
Given its mild symptoms, longer incubation and high infectivity rate, Coronavirus infections tend to spread very fast. This leaves public health facilities stretched and new treatment areas have to be added fast. With high stress and lacking sleep medical professionals need technological help to maintain patient data and trace-ability.
Our system is based on an infrastructure of managing visitors access, interactions history and journey. It is also built to run anywhere, in the cloud, with mobile interfaces.
Medical NFC wristband for patient tracking and history
How can you use this tech against Coronavirus? Deploy the patient tracking and history system anywhere, without complicated hardware and software setup.
All that’s needed is NFC wristbands which can be shipped fast, mobile devices which are probably already available to anyone and an internet connection.
We can also help you connect the collected data to external, more specialized health management systems.
4. Tech against Coronavirus: rationing for goods, services, medical supplies and fuel
We’ve developed a system where any person that joins a specific group (whether it is an event, venue or community) can get access to specific items. We call these things add-ons.
The add-ons can be fixed (let’s say everyone gets a certain quantity of food) or it can be changed according to needs.
Let’s say everyone is entitled to the same amount of goods such as food or water but some specific cases need a bit more medical supplies.
US gas stamps for the 1973 oil crisis. They were printed but never used.
In times of crisis or disaster relief, the community used to issue specific tokens, such as the 1973 oil crisis stamps (see right).
How can you use this tech against Coronavirus effects? Access to the rationing can be done as previously mentioned via cards, wristbands or biometric usage. It can also be built into citizen apps where they can track usage, remaining ratios and more.
Historically the issuing of such tokens used to be cumbersome as it entitled certain logistics that were hard to manage, such as printing, shipping, distribution, managing identities and more. Now everything is digital and can be used in an instant.
5. Edge economies for communities that don’t have access to internet
All of the above are fine and all but sometimes crisis bring down core infrastructure such as electricity or internet.
Our technology is used in places that are usually unreliable, have a high technological stress and where deployment has to be done fast and securely and people are sometimes under the influence of unknown substances. Namely: festivals and large venues.
We’ve developed a system where areas that are either not connected to the internet or have unstable internet connections can have a local economy based on local hardware. They will hold a distributed ledger of value, transactions and allow monetary and value exchange until core infrastructure is restored.
We packed this into a hardware-software product we call the Edge Box and it looks like this:
The Oveit Box helps communities that are disconnected from the internet and need a local way of managing value transactions. We think they’re especially useful in crisis situations and during festivals.
How can you use this tech to fight against Coronavirus caused outages? Using the Edge Box we can help you set up edge payments in your community that can operate as independent value exchange media for your citizens, local businesses and allow life to continue until life returns to normal.
Why is it called edge? Because it operates at the edge of the cloud.
6. Build a local economy that can operate even if disconnected from the outside world
In times of need communities tend to create economies naturally but they are usually unsustainable because of the usual underground distribution and analogue means of trading.
We think that in such extreme cases the community can still operate like a closed economy where specific actors in the economy can exchange with one another. Basically businesses can be onboarded and citizens can access their goods via virtual payment tokens that can be purchased either with traditional currency or with government issued credits.
Basically this shrinks the overall concepts of the open economy (the one we are all accustomed to) and offers it to a local community.
How can you use this tech against Coronavirus caused economic distress? This will allow the natural flow of goods, money and services that exist in that economy to operate in a quasi-normal way, all while being digitally connected to the financial system (bank, card payments and such)
7. Setup time banks
As Investopedia notes “Time banking is a system of bartering various services for one another using labor-time as a unit of account […]. Labor-time units can be credited to a person’s account in the time bank and redeemed for services from other members of the time bank. Time banking can be considered a form of community currency.”
This idea has been around for quite some time but it hasn’t really gained much traction outside of small communities. The reason? Scalability and safety issues when managing these types of ledgers.
How can you use this tech against Coronavirus caused economic problems? In closed environments such as a quarantined community, this can work as a very good exchange medium. Imagine the bakery providing bread and its value being accounted by the time being spent to manufacture the bread. The currency, time, can be exchanged afterwards into goods from other local sources.
Here’s a brief video describing the concept:
In quarantined communities exposed to Covid-19 work becomes a problem. Large gatherings are stopped and the trading of basic goods can move in the underground economy, cause supply issues and increase criminal activity.
8. Enable crypto payments to ensure economic continuity
This doesn’t necessarily affect the communities infected with Covid-19 but in times of crisis the financial system can be overwhelmed. For example in the case of the Yes Bank bankruptcy in India the cash withdrawals have been blocked.
In troubled financial systems such as Venezuela’s ecosystem, even very large institutions such as the Central bank and largest gas company are contemplating switching to Bitcoin as means of payments. The failure of financial policies has left the country unable to manage financial flow and has lead to civil unrest.
In extreme cases pandemics can bring the economy to its knees. In such cases the social structures are overburdened by existing efforts in disease containment. The disease is treated as an war effort and everything outside of it becomes second. Cryptocurrencies can work as stable coins in times of high economic stress and alleviate stress on governmental structures.
And again – this pledge means using our solution is free for any community affected by the COVID-19 virus and any help requested is confidential and on a need to know basis.
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