Treebo Files Four Patents For its Quality Control Technology, 'Prowl'

TREEBO HOTELS revealed that it has filed four patents in India and US to seek IP protection for its proprietary Quality Management System, called ‘Prowl’. The methods and systems used in Prowl, which the company has filed the patents for, allow Treebo to measure, monitor, and control quality across its vast and distributed network of almost 400 franchisee hotels, across more than 70 cities. This technology is at the heart of Treebo’s ability to deliver a superior experience to its customers despite not directly running the day-to-day operations of these hotels itself.

“Quality of stay at hotels has always been somewhat intangible, something that is not tightly defined, let alone measured. All quality metrics have traditionally been post-facto, outcome metrics like CSAT and NPS, which are not very actionable. With Prowl, for the first time ever, we have made quality granular, measurable, and actionable. We break down a guest’s experience at a hotel into thousands of touch-points. Everything - including cooling level of the air-conditioner, seepage on the walls, water pressure in the faucet, etc. - that impacts the guest’s experience is a touch-point. Then with our unique algorithms we convert these touch-points into data-points for analysis and control, thereby effectively ‘quantifying quality’,” said Kadam Jeet Jain, co-founder, Treebo Hotels.

The four patents filed by Treebo pertain to collection of quality inputs from multiple channels, method of conducting quality audits, use of IoT technology in controlling quality, and design of a quality assurance setup based on machine learning. At the front end, Prowl is offered in form of a mobile app, which is based on these techniques, and is used by Treebo’s quality managers on the ground, as well as, by its crowdsourced community of mystery auditors, called Friends of Treebo. Prowl allows gathering accurate feedback on the property, taking quick action to fix issues, generating relevant metrics and reports, and automatic and preemptive blocking of inventory in case high-severity issues persist in a particular room.

“Maintaining quality in a large, fragmented network that comprises small individual units that are operated by third-parties can be a daunting task. This is the challenge that Prowl helps solve. This thinking can be powerful not only in the hospitality industry, but also in other spaces that have similar characteristics, for example, restaurants, salons, spas, schools, etc. We are excited about the possibilities here,” Jain added.

This is not the first time that Treebo has demonstrated its superior technology prowess, especially in delivering an unmatched guest experience. In the past, the company has been featured at Google’s annual developer conference in the US for its cutting edge mobile web technology. More recently, the company announced a technology called InstaConnect which allows guests staying at Treebo to connect to the Internet without the hassles of getting the password. Earlier, it had launched the industry’s first ever tablet based property management system called Bumblebee. Treebo has been leading the thinking in its space not just on technology, but in terms of business model as well. It was the first company to introduce the full-inventory, franchise-based model in this space back in 2015 and has persisted with the same model for every single one of its properties over the last 3 years.

“These patents are a testimony of Treebo’s commitment towards delivering unmatched, high-quality experience to every traveler by using innovative technology products and solutions. We are not nearly done yet!” Jain concluded.