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The Amadeus computer system crashed on Monday, Jan 30, 2012 leaving thousands of airline passengers without the opportunity to check-in online, reserve their seats, or buy airplane tickets. For more than 3 hours, customers were very upset and unsatisfied for the delay that this situation caused by having the airline crew members manually put their information instead of usually scanning the ticket or passport.

Luckily this didn't happen during a busy time as the article stated. I can only imagine the bedlam had this happened during say the holiday season such as Christmas or a day following a major event like the Olympics or something similar. What I'd be interested t see is if all staff can react to and handle this as well as the staff of the airlines involved. I guess its a good example of having a back up plan in the instance of network issues such as this. Can't say our staff at work would be able to function as well in the instance of similar downtime.

In regards to event planning in the hospitality industry, we see that there are a couple of trends in 2018. Firstly, guests are looking more for personalized stay. As in, guests are looking more for services that appeal to them such as baby sitting services or children entertainment so they can bring their small child along. Secondly, tourists are increasingly looking for experiential tourism, activities that make them feel part of that place. Thirdly, there are a trend in guests bringing their pets along while travelling. Pet friendly services may be quite fruitful as pet owners will certainly be wiling to spend more money to keep their pets with them on holiday. Lastly, guests now expect technology while travelling. For example technological systems that can control all room functions with a remote control. In addition some hotels now even provide livestreaming to get in direct contact with their customers.

I chose this article as I am an avid user of Trip Advisor! After watching the E-Commerce lecture, I actually started researching more on facial recognition used in the hospitality industry, both in marketing and to keep guests safe. Using facial recognition for safety actually came up quite a bit; specifically as Professor Cilli mentioned on cruise ships to help track and potentially stop a predator or threatening guest. This article is on Trip Advisor's new badge system, that intends to flag hotels if reports or media comes out including sexual assault, crime, and other potential threats to travelers. The idea started from a case filed against Trip Advisor for taking down comments claiming a security guard at a Mexican resort had sexually assaulted a guest who had stayed there. Trip Adivisor claims that at the time, the comment was removed due to explicit material. Not only has Trip Advisor promised to keep comments like this published on their pages, but if taken down they will tell users what exactly flagged their system to take it down. Users will easily be able to adjust their wording and repost. While the exact wording of the badge does not specifically detail why the hotel was flagged (see wording annotated above), as a traveler it would definitely make me think twice. From a management standpoint, getting flagged like this on one of the most used travel websites could completely halt business and create financial strain for months. The badge will last for at least three months and in that time could be seen by thousands of visitors. I hope this small step for Trip Advisors forces hotels to take big step in terms of safety and security with who they are hiring and tracking who is on property.

Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies are slowly making their way into every industry, but the hospitality industry is of extreme interest to these due to the size and worth of the market.

This article offers insight into extreme tracking and using patterns and data to customize the guest service experiences. It also provides data on ho to best keep a guest engaged whether it be through virtual or even physical means that can be activated by a certain data set collection. A good example of this is how Disney can monitor wait times at the park and then dispatch live entertainers to the area as a means of distraction and simultaneous product placement and marketing.

This is an article that goes through the history of bookings from the early 1900s through to today. It walks through the players in the industry, the changes in technology and the factors impacting the changes. It discusses the rise of the Computer Reservation Systems and subsequently GDSs, ultimately bringing readers to todays OTAs.

This week I want to share two articles. I realized that on the discussion we all or almost all of us used the same examples as sustainable methods or strategies. There a million of ways to become sustainable in this industry. Check this examples or ideas for a more sustainable restaurant.

This article discusses the various ways that AI is being integrated into the hospitality industry and the positive effects it has had in the industry.

This article references the specifics of the M3 platform, which is a more efficient accounting software for hoteliers. After several test runs, M3 has proven to help several properties streamline their accounting process, track data in real time and cut costs where possible.

M3 is a useful hotel accounting software that can be used on mobile devices, according to the illustrations. As mentioned in this article, accounting software can do things that generic providers can't, like delivering actionable business intelligence. For M3, it also gains the property managers more benchmarking insight and turned a management company's IT department into a profit center that offers service. Furthermore, by replacing the IT department with two employees and a cloud-based accounting system, it saved a large sum for a management company.

The author presents the argument that optimum performance of a hotel's wi-fi network is critical to a hote and that the demands of IoT, large conferences and the need to update infrastructure require constant oversight. It is argued that outsourcing the hotel wi-fi network to a managed WiFi provider has many advantages over placing the burden and responsibility on the hotel IT team. In my opinion, the article makes a strong case for engaging a managed WiFi provider. What would have been a useful addition to the article is how hotel's should go about managing and overseeing the provider that they engage.

"Maybe it's easy to ignore the huge percentage of vintage gadgets that wind up torched in dicey scrap heaps in developing countries". This article was written on Feb-27-2020. The problem we saw on the old video is still very much a problem now, only bigger.

This article was super informative in the realm of E-waste. It covered every aspect of the issue and most definitely is relevant in today's world.

This article gives the general basis of why it is important to have a security department for your front office. The front office is the communication center for the hotel. Therefore it is an area that breeds a healthy amount of human interaction for which you must have a secure, safe plan in the event of an emergency. In my opinion, I agree that front office associates deal with a lot of people on their job and having the appropriate knowledge for the appropriate situation is important.