Imagine you’re sitting at a pool bar at a hotel and you take a selfie with mojito in hand and place it on Instagram, saying, 'What a grand way to celebrate my birthday'; 

You then return to your room and find a dark chocolate walnut cake with a card from the hotel general manager, saying, 'Happy Birthday.'

Happy surprise, right? Well, if Australia-based start-up, Local Measure, has its way, hoteliers around the world will be able to produce instant surprising and delightful moments for guests during their stay.

Their solution allows them to “surface local conversations happening at a location”, said Gary Spero, who’s responsible for rolling out their one-year-old product in Asia. 

Gary Spero: Social conversation in Asia “off the charts”

It works across multiple industries but the company has since found that the sweet spot is in hospitality.

The founders of Local Measure actually started their business three years ago with a mobile consumer app called Roamz. The idea was “to make sense of social media noise and to show what people nearby were saying”.

In the process, they found that “people were more interested in what the customers were saying about them”.

Given the Roamz model was hard to monetise, they changed course a year ago to the current B2B model.

Full story