Hospitality UPGRADE Award

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Design the Future
Hospitality start-up speed dating

4 July 2023

Are you a start-up with a brilliant business idea for the hospitality market in the hotel development, hotel operation and guest journey areas? Then register now and take part in the next hospitality speed dating event on 4 July 2023. Expand your hospitality network in only 60 minutes to include ten valuable contacts with top decision-makers from the hotel industry.

Participation is open in particular to innovative solution providers for:

more information and planning certainty for financing, building and maintaining hotel properties and the like, especially when it comes to implementing sustainability and ESG criteria
better networked communication between developers, owners and operators, as well as interfaces for building control systems and PMS to achieve greater energy efficiency and resource conservation
standardising processes such as booking, checking-in and checking-out via digitalisation, but without losing sight of the relevance attaching to the specific brand, tailored experiences and the "human touch"

The "Design the Future" hospitality speed dating event is being held online between 10:00-12:00 a.m. on 4 July. Each date between a start-up and a hotel expert will last five minutes.

Get to know the hotel experts and top decision-makers participating in the hospitality speed dating and register now:

An advisory board of hospitality experts will nominate up to five finalists from among all start-ups participating in the "Design the Future" speed dating to pitch against each other on 6 October at the 196+ forum Munich conference.

The prize will be presented to the winner of the pitch on 6 October on the same day by who will be selected by a jury of hotel experts.

The Hospitality UPGRADE Award appeals to start-ups making a relevant contribution as an innovative solution provider to current and future challenges of the hospitality industry particularly in the areas hotel development, hotel operation and guest journey.

As a finalist you can attend the conference and the gala evening at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof on 6 October for free and benefit from various networking opportunites with experts and decision makers of the hospitality and real estate industry.

2022 the Hospitality UPGRADE Award was awarded to PXNEL!

PXNEL has developed a modular wall covering system making it possible to attach a variety of panel modules with one simple click. The circular model makes it possible to extract around 90 per cent of the old parts and transform them into new panels with a fresh design. Omar Ghandour, co-founder and CEO of PXNEL, is delighted about the award, and explains: “PXNEL is for walls what apps are for smartphones: a unique, simple panel system that enables flexible, individual wall design.”

The advisory board nominated five start-ups in September 2022 out of more than 30 applicants to pitch against each other at 196+ forum Munich.

Advisory board 2022:

Peter Bachmann, Managing Director, Das Sentinel Haus
Stefan Bezold, Vice President Sales DACH, FutureLog Europe
André Pinto Gomes, Senior Investment Manager Investment Management Hospitality, Union Investment Real Estate
Madlen Dietrich, Head of Unit Startup Economy and Digitalisation, Unternehmensverbände Berlin-Brandenburg
Markus Fromm-Wittenberg, Startup Ambassador, GNERATOR powered by GIRA (Gira Giersiepen)
Harro Grimmer, Managing Partner, MPP MEDING PLAN + PROJEKT
Olga Heuser, Founder & Managing Director, DialogShift
Florian Montag, Business Development Manager, Apaleo
Nils Ziehn, VP Product, Limehome

The following jury members attended the pitch in person along with Christian Fiedler: Peter Bachmann (Das Sentinel Haus), Markus Fromm-Wittenberg (GNERATOR powered by GIRA), Harro Grimmer (MPP Meding Plan + Projekt, Olga Heuser (DialogShift), Markus Marth (Schani Hotels), and Konstantinos Matsoukas (PropTech1).
2022 the following four finalists made it onto the hotelforum stage besides PXNEL (in alphabetical order):

Circonomit promotes environmentally-orientated decision-making by collecting standardised real data and integrating them into environmental impact assessments carried out on real estate, and thus also on companies.

Dripdrop is an automated umbrella lending system from Denmark that aims to reduce waste by avoiding, reducing, recycling and reusing umbrellas in hotels.

MiceRate is an automated revenue management system primarily aimed at the events sector, and is intended to be used as the basis for increasing revenue in the long term, and thus to enable a successful sales strategy for hotels with a strong MICE orientation.

Solaga uses algae pictures and walls to help reduce air pollution and increase biological energy production by microalgae, as well as developing the algae façades of the future.