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This article basically talks about the importance of social media in the hospitality industry and gives us other thoughts beyond just applying a social media monitoring tool.  Managing the social media is no longer an option, but a necessity, particularly for those of us working in the hospitality industry. By using a social media monitoring tool, you may be able to know in real or near-real time each time your property or properties are mentioned online on every major social media network. On the other hand, you need to compile competitor data and compare it to your own so that you can analyze your brand in relation to competing brands. More and more social media consulting companies will crop up and your competitors may also have the tools you have. For a long-term success, make sure that the people who are speaking for you have the tools they need to resolve issues as well as represent your organization properly and find out a way that can make a difference with your competitors.

This article discusses why Netflix is the perfect example of a disruptive innovation and why Uber is not a disruptive company. "Not every company that is innovative is disruptive." Before Netflix exploded, it was overlooked by its competitors, which is part of the reason why it was able to rise so quickly.

Google, a well-known online search engine has a recent history of taking services that people pay money for and making it available for free to its users. One service in particular that has been recently launched is Google Flights, allowing users to select a travel plan and then go directly airlines' reservation system. The problem here is it has left online travel agency OTA's industries such as Expedia and Priceline.com out of the picture. Such OTA industries earn revenue by either taking a commission from hotel or charging a markup to consumers. This should be a great concern to this industry . Although there are some hurdles for Google-Google users search results are limited for flights as of its competitors; Google's competitors still have established customer relations and brand. Google can overcome these hurdles in a matter of time and OTA's should keep a close eye or find solutions to adapt.

Great article! I recently read that Google is taking over the travel market when searching for events using the Google search engine. Pay per click, allows companies to tie into hyperlinks when web surfers an event in the area of their business. Highlighting hotels, car rentals and restaurant conveniently located within the search engine user area.

The most popular hotel review website, TripAdvisor, finally introduced the new dashboard for the hotel managers. With this management dashboard, hotel managers can know their online booking competitors, and also their customer profiles. Before, the TripAdvisor is just for the customer, it offers a board for customer comments and ratings score for each hotel, and there are millions of people searching hotels through this website. On the other hand, this is a great value data resource for the hotel. If hotels can get and analyze that information, it can help the hotel management team make their decisions, and that is what the TripAdvisor does today. It not only offers competitors' page views but also some analyzed customer profile pages, I think this new function will be widely used and become much more popular soon.

What a great tool for hotel owners and managers to measure how well their doing in the market and what customers think about the business and compare the ratings among competitors. Not to mention it is free for companies that are registered with TripAdvisor!

This article goes into being patient when it comes to launching a new or similar product. Many companies try to be a trendsetter but sometimes taking the backseat is much beneficial. Startup and trial and error runs are ultimately decreased. Reviewing the feedback of others on social media outlets can help make sure you don't stumble over the same issues.

This article explains why a wait & see approach is sometimes the best approach for some companies before launching a product in a very competitive market which already has a company providing the same product to consumers. Many companies have waited to see what issues consumers are complaining about when their competitors have launched a product to later launch a better product better than that if the competitors. Such companies are Pandora versus Apple Music, Lyft versus Uber, Apple Cash versus Venmo, QuickPay, and Square Cash.

The most famous restaurant reservation software -- Opentable, now has a competitor. Rezbook is the cornerstone of Urbanspoon's online reservation system, from which all the parts come together.The already spectacular iPad, with its wireless internet capability, is the main platform that a restaurant manages reservations from Urbanspoon with. While the software techonology in hotel industry developping very fast , in restaurant industry, the upgrade seems to be quite slow. Opentable covers1/3 restaurant reservation business in United States, but 15000 restaurants believed that they have no more choice. Even though OpenTable pulls the strings in online reservation,Urbanspoon, a relative light weight in online reservation, has created a system both refreshing innovative and beautifully simple. Rezbook maintains efficiency and ease of use while maintaining all the requisite features. It's a step forward. To make an analogy: Urbanspoon especially RezBook, the anchor of their reservation system, takes Apple's ethos of simplicity, functionality and style that have catapulted iPhone, iPad, and iMac to being the industry standard. Not coincidentally, Rezbook works off the iPad. This new system smells the trend of Apple products being used everywhere. The perfect combination will sure attract more attention. At the same time, Rezbook's join will sure help to improve the development of restaurant software.

This article discusses the effects of technology on the hospitality industry. It discusses that the bottom line of using technology is to create a better level of service quality and customer satisfaction. These are including the software that the employees use to check in the guests as well. how social networking helps market to those on the web and there is minimal costs associated with this. It also talks about the next important steps that hospitality industry needs to take from other industries like stately formulation for restaurants. In conclusion this article states that technology plays a key strategic role in the growth and progression of the industry and i completely agree. with out it no company will be able to keep up with their competitors.

Technology plays an important role nowadays in different areas. Without the updated technologies, its hard for the organization to compete with its competitors. In my opinion, organization should do the environmental scanning on what competitors have in order to keep up with them.

In this article talk about hospitality industry has to upgrade to make more benefit for making more profit than now. There is more telecommunication technical solution that is able to hospitality telecommunication problem entities. Notrhwind, the inventor of the PMS software system in hospitality industry since 1987. Northwind offers PMS (Property Management System) in hotel software. Maestro PMS is a storage and backup system based on the cloud computing system and replace from their old data to in hotel server. Tim Belcher assitant general manger of Legacy Hotel and Conferences, one of the telecommunication companies, said that the problem of the telecommunication system could replace duties of their IT staff since maintain and resolve problems with storage provider. Business that are looking to improve their own telecommunication system, the company should contact a professional technology consulting agency before set up the implementation planning process.

More and more companies in hospitality industry are focusing on telecommunication, for telecommunication system could help them better manage the company and enhance customer service. Before choosing the right system, companies have to consult a professional company and conduct lots of development and research work. Then they can find a right one for the company. A right telecommunication solution, like PMS in the article, could help reduce cost and time, as well as providing great customer service.

This article is indicating that hospitality industry can benefit from upgraded telecommunication technology and hospitality serviced need to have particularly efficient telecommunication process if they want achieve success among their competitors.  A new system is introduced in this article: Maestro PMS. It is a cloud-based hosted storage and backup system that business can integrate their old physical, in-house servers. And the system backups and upgrades in secure network operation hosting facility, which could let operators focus their attention on guest service and revenue generating activities. This article also suggest that if company looking to improve their own telecom systems, it is better to contact a professional technology consulting agency before beginning implementation planning process.

Nowadays, as travelers turn to the internet and mobile devices to research and book their travel online increasingly, the online marketing in hospitality has become a important sign for success. At the same time, the hospitality industry tries best to enhance their online booking service, hoping to turn general online travelers into loyal repeat customers that book directly on hotel websites. However, there are still are challenges as the industry has many complex factors. And this article gives solutions and results by introduce Adobe products.

In this article it talks about e business strategies. One of them being mobile device because research and booking travel have been so critical for people on the go. The HeBS is a big digital marketing firm for the hospitality industry. There are profitable online strategies to come by in the hospitality industry. These opportunities do not come easy many time it very complex but also very successful if it done right .Hotel budget have come to a plateau. Hotel need to step up the plate because online travel agencies have taken over the industry. In addition social media and smart phone have added new dimension for market that require new skills with their ideas. HeBS face a challenge by multichannel marketing success, improving return on ad spend, and making more online marketing to be able to come back by doing this they would have the solution and the result. The solution being, keeping clients of the curve of the competition by building direct online revenue. The result for that is providing insights. The market and the driving force for the differentiate competitors. The benefits will build a leading- edge for the hospitality industry

Google+ launched the business pages platform, which is similar as the platform of Facebook. The advantages of Google business pages is not obviously, but one thing very clearly is that if a hotel joins in Google+ platfrom, it could be more easier to search on Google and show on the top than pages or accounts on their competitors' sites.

The author stated that "now is the time to upgrade your POS system" for many reasons: 1. This will bring you a competitive advantage, when you are more connected compared to others. Because more than 40 percent of sale has been generating through web and mobile ordering, with these ordering will not only cut the cost but also improve customers' satisfactions.  2. Because of PCI compliancy standards, the POS update is not a need but a requirements for most businesses. With the new POS system, all the information regarding customers' identification, credit card, etc. or owner's data base will be well protected to reduce a risk of data breach. Important issue is that, many manager recommended to upgrade your hardware instead of software, since many error will be continued without changing new hardware. 3. The initial cost of upgrading POS is definitely an investment, but to gain advantage over your competitors and cutting the cost in the long run are worth it. 4. Some key features to look at when considering an POS upgrade : Fit to the business, connections, and business insight.

Jan 22, 2010 TravelCLICK has unveiled Hotelligence 360, a suite of interactive business intelligence applications that enable hotels to identify new growth opportunities and improve financial performance. The program provides hoteliers with frequently updated booking data backed by 100 percent of the global distribution system (GDS) channel, allowing hotels to compare revenue performances with their competitors, source new customers, and maximize profit.

Hotelligence 360 reporting is a great example of HRIS in the hospitality industry. The reports generated pull market information for the competitve you set for your area (usually approximately 5 competitor properties plus yours, additional ones can be added for additional fees). To gain access to the reporting, some of your marketing budget would need to be spent on it, but this helps gain some critical information for your market area and competitors in terms of agencies utilizing GDS systems to book hotel rooms. It displays data such as top 150 agencies, ADR, lead time, market share, average LOS, and more. It shows which of the 4 GDS tools are being used for the agency (Galileo, Sabre, Apollo, Amadeus) and where the business is coming from. There are great details in trying to capture business from the area. I find it to be most beneficial to a new hotelier trying to secure new business and deter them from the competition, it gains knowledge of good startingplaces for cold calls and attempting the relationship building to capture their market. In decifering these reports, you can get a good feel for what the agencies are valueing in ther selection, be it location, amenities, or price prior to speaking with them. It helps to gain an advantage when securing the proper contact and having the conversation in capturing their business. There are plenty more advantages to reading these reports, this was just my version of the most important tools provided.

A recent study by the top-ranked School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University has found that certification by the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, also known as LEED certification, actually provides a boost in revenue for hotels. The Council takes various factors into account prior to certifying a hotel, including "water efficiency, energy use, and indoor environmental quality. When compared to 514 non-certified hotels, the 93 hotels afforded LEED certification excelled in their gross income based on the average daily rate (ADR) standard. Over a time of two years, the LEED-certified hotels outperformed their non-certified competitors. In fact, LEED-certified hotels were able to match the levels of occupancy of non-certified hotels in a single year. Since LEED certification in the hospitality industry is fairly new, there is little empirical evidence to further back the conclusions of this particular study. Though LEED certification of hotels has actually declined since 2010, I believe that the more hotel controllers start to understand its benefits, the quicker we will see it adopted as an industry standard. It is worth noting that this study specifically focused on 93 upscale and luxury properties, but compared them to nearly five times as many hotels without certification. I think a more accurate study will divide up hotels based on their pricing category (budget, midscale, upscale, luxury, extended stay, etc.) and compare the benefits of LEED certification with that in mind. Lastly, it is unclear if the study found any higher level of consumer preference for LEED certified hotels. Instead, the benefits seem to come with the standards that LEED certified hotels must meet, in turn resulting in lower expenditures. Perhaps more sophisticated customers at luxury properties are more keen to environmental protection and stewardship, and thus take LEED certification into account. However, I believe that most of

This article ties into this week's topic of sustainability and green initiatives, even though it's from 2017, which was dubbed as year of sustainable tourism by the United Nation. The hospitality industry is guilty of having a large annual footprint. Today's traveler is more eco-conscious then ever and is always looking for hotels and properties who support their mindset. The hospitality industry is hopping on the green train and taking action to set precedent for their competitors. Many big cities along with celebrities are promoting the idea of sustainable and conscious living and hospitality, making it the hottest trend. The hospitality industry id one the fore front of this effort because they are one the impacted businesses due to climate change. Many local economies that depend on tourism and hospitality can crumble if they don't start taking action right now. This trend will hopefully create a domino effect and influence other industries to follow suite.

It is said the the central reservation system is essentially the core of reservations since the internet plays a huge part in making those reservations. It goes from property management systems, to the CRS which is then distributed to GDS's, wholesalers, or other viewing options. This allows the hotel to have profiles that can be viewed online by consumers and agents to get a feel for the services. Additionally, it is said that is allows for great visibility to attract more customers which allows for groups and blocks. It also allows the consumer to check around for competitors to ensure they are finding the best rates and deals. All in all, it connects the entire globe to reach a wider audience to maximize profit.

This article discussed the importance of being ahead of the curve and why the 'wait and see' approach is not beneficial in most cases. If you 'wait and see' you can become irrelevant very quickly as there are many others out there, in many cases other parts of the world, making new inventions and discoveries daily. This article gave a great example where a school system implemented tables and the amount of money they saved was $25k/year. There are many benefits to staying ahead of the curve and as the article states "If you don't do it, someone else will".

A "wait and see" approach has a higher risk than it being avoided. One of the cons is that it can pave the way to a company no longer being relevant. New opportunities for sales and growth may be missed if a company does not begin to evolve quickly.

This article gives tips and tricks for small businesses and how they can grow their ecommerce business. Tips include using social media, knowing your audience, being mindful of wording, and using chatbots, are all tips that smaller business can use to drive customers to their businesses. Online shopping keeps growing and growing so it is important for businesses to know how to stand out against their competitors. Understanding their customers and making adjustments to better serve them, will separate the winners from the losers.

I love how this is showing where the trends are going and business is evolving. It seems crazy to think there is more than the way we currently use the internet, but there is so much room for expansion in this market. Good article and read. Thanks for sharing.

This article was very interesting because it provided us with 5 different strategies to effectively use e-marketing for hotels. The five strategies they come up with are: Optimize your website for search engines, Strengthen your local SEO, Encourage interaction on social media, Educate guests with content marketing, and Dominate your competitors with PPC. All of these are very helpful hints that we might have heard of before, but it is crucial to go more in depth. I found very interesting that all of them are free except for the last one that requires a bit of an investment.

This article summarizes the "wait and see" approach and explains why this approach is no longer effective in the business world today. Technology is far too advanced for competitors to not have the ability to hop onto new ideas as soon as possible. Waiting and seeing will put your business incredibly behind since guests will begin to use those companies who have been using the newer approaches first.