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This article is about a task force called Guestroom 20X and this team puts on a "conference" or sorts every year and it displays the newest and most innovative technology for the hospitality field. specializing in hotel guest rooms. This is such a great way to get people together and get people talking about the newest technology. sometimes technology is updated so fast that it is hard to keep up with the curve and the point of this meeting is so that everyone can be educated and also be ahead of the curve. These technologies that are exhibited are anywhere from next generation tv's to non traditional technologies like bathroom fixtures, and also user friendly tech like mobile applications for the rooms. This also includes green technology as well to help heal our environment! I think this is just an amazing idea and that everyone in the hotel business should attend and learn more about what technology has to offer.

Hotels and restaurants that have gone green, try to analyze how to effectively market the facet of their operation or how to market themselves going green. Some factors they would have to acknowledge about going green are how the practices can affect them and also where these supplies come from. Hotels can follow concepts of restaurant that focus on supply chain and local sourcing which might be an effective way of communicating environmental priorities. Front line employees are the best way to start with convincing customers that the establishment is committed  to being green.

It seems they are really customizing the guest experience by offering guests the opportunity to take advantage of their relationship with Live Nation. I like how they get the guests involved in promotions by offering them a cash code, a benefit of being an SPG member.

As the hospitality industry becomes more saturated and competition increases, marketing strategies are vital for hotels and tourism organizations. The TED video and supplemental article that I have posted poses a very important problem that is faced by marketers and decision makers in the eMarketing world - choice overload. Researcher Sheena Lyengar explores four ways to reducing the curse of offering consumers too many choices. The first approach is Cut. As she explains, many people are scared by what this word entails, but what they do not realize is that cutting bottlenecks or repetitive alternatives actually increases revenues. Hotel website designs should only display the most popular items in order to make navigation simple for consumers. They should also offer less special packages aimed at specific target segments. The less options consumers have, the more likely (30% more likely) they are to purchase. The second approach is Concretize. By using visualization content as marketing tool, eMarketers can attract consumers by helping them imagine the end result. They should not just show hotel features and amenities. Consumers like to see concrete pictures and the consequences to them, in this case, beautiful scenes and travel options that they can experience at the hotel. The third options is Categorize. Basically, eMarketers should offer more categories and fewer choices. The category should mean more to the consumer than to the producer (hotel). In addition, they should make it easier for the consumer to navigate, sort, and process the information being presented to them. The final approach is Condition for Complexity. Hotel websites that offer booking and shopping options should follow this ideology. Break down the steps from low complex choices at the beginning of the process to more complex choices at the end to order to avoid losing the consumer's engagement in the selection and purchasing processes. Overall, the message of this video and article is

"Jonas Project Management (PM) helps you steer away from traditional methods of project management like pen, paper and multiple spreadsheets. Our project management system is fully integrated with all aspects of the Jonas core system and is used to manage the workflow of a project from start to finish. Project Management tracks items that must be fulfilled under a contract, including RFIs, transmittals, submittals and change order requests."

Jonas management system is a high efficient system i have been using in my working place. Jonas Software is the leading provider of enterprise management software solutions to the Club, Foodservice, Construction, Leisure Fitness & Sports, Attractions, Metal Service Centers, Moving & Storage, Education, and Radiology/Laboratory Information Systems industries. Within these nine vertical markets, Jonas boasts 28 distinct brands, all of which are respected and longstanding leaders within their own domain. Jonas' vision is to be the branded global leader across the aforementioned nine vertical markets and to be recognized by customers and respective industry stakeholders as the trusted provider of Software For Life and as an ambassador for technology, product innovation, quality, and customer service. Jonas Software is the valued technology partner of over 10,000 customers worldwide in more than 15 countries. Jonas employs hundreds of skilled individuals consisting of a cross-section of industry experts and technology professionals. Jonas is headquartered in Canada and also operates offices throughout North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Caribbean. With the talents of Jonas employees spanning the globe, Jonas is proud to avail cost-effective training and consulting services to our entire client base.

Hilton prides itself with strong brand identity, but also seeks out innovation and is constantly adapting for new technologies. Hilton has developed a website, the Hilton Design Studio, which allows owners, developers, and design firms to create their unique design utilizing Hilton styles of FF&E and artwork. This website allows users to fully integrate their creativity within Hilton's guidelines, but minimizes costs through the rendering of virtual representations in minimal time. Hilton is allowing flexibility of design while maintaining brand standards. "Part of the design philosophy is creating the Hilton Design Studio as an education tool for owners and developers to know the Hilton look and feel". The article also discusses the new Hilton Valet, a multifunctional armoire with refrigerator with three types of amenity components for owner to choose aimed at "creating a smart, clean design". Also featured is Hilton's Connectivity Station, which is offered in three model choices to provide additional technology convenience to guests.

This article explains the types of business communication functions.  The author of the article states how important proper communication is to tourism cliental.

According to Meru Networks Inc, US wireless network provider, a wireless network market in the Asia Pacific region, especially Chinese, will be doubled in the next few years. The rapidly growing hospitality industry in China is part of the reason why the wireless network market has a need to grow. There are 651 five-star luxury hotels in the country as of now and 500 luxury hotels are waiting to be opened in the near future.  What we need to focus on are the customers who go to these luxury hotels. Nowadays, Wi-Fi is not just one of services that the guest enjoys. It is a part of life and a necessity. Providing high quality Wi-Fi service is a big portion of showing the quality of hotel. Therefore hotels strive to have a system that could offer the most reliable product with the lowest price. 

"Electronic commerce or ecommerce is a term for any type of business, or commercial transaction, that involves the transfer of information across the internet." This type of commerce includes various types of businesses exchanging goods and services. It is now one of the most important aspect of the internet available to consumers. "Ecommerce allows consumers to electronically exchange goods and services with no barriers of time or distance." As ecommerce expands and continue to grow more and more businesses will adapt to this kind of commerce to reach a wider global market. Consumers or other businesses too will be able to access the goods and services that they would not be able to use in the conventional means of commerce. With proper implementation and monitoring ecommerce would be a faster, cheaper and not to mention more convenient kind of trading goods and services. This will eventually have a greater competitive advantage over more traditional type of commerce

In this article we find out how the British Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is challenging the authenticity of Tripadvisor as a result of a complaint by online reputation specialist, KwikChex Ltd. The ASA is complaining that Tripadvisor is allowing hotels to submit their own reviews to boost their reputations, compromising the legitimacy of the website's "honest travel reviews." The ASA and KwikChex believe that consumers are not aware of the difference between honest and hoax hotel reviews on the site. The website is fighting back saying that the large number of users that visit the site help balance out the small amount of fake posts. In addition, they state that they have fraud detection systems in place to weed out illegitimate reviews. But most importantly, they argue that those reviews that do manage to creep in do not carry much weight because users read an average of 12 reviews before making final decisions. Tripadvisor is one of the most popular websites among consumers making purchasing decisions because it is founded on real, consumer hotel reviews. Consumers today, specially the millennial generation, rely on peer reviews for important purchases such as travel and hotel stays. As consumers it is vital for us to remain educated and alert, specially when we cannot prove the legitimacy of the contents' authors.

In this weeks reading, the article, "Why Investing in Hospitality Technology is Investing in Good Business", mentions how due to the economic downturn hotels have turn to cutting technology and staff levels as a method to minimize costs, yet this is a recipe for disaster, if not conducted adequately. Technology is continuously evolving, it is important to make decisions regards IT investment that will be useful in the coming 3-5 years. Technological infrastructures should operate to facilitate a process or procedure for the overall benefit of the hotel, rather than take a day-by-day approach. In an ever-demanding industry, it is critical for hoteliers to be adequately prepared with automated systems, reducing if not eliminating important manually conducted tasks which are damaging the operations of the hotel due to the lack of real time information which will help revenue maximization. In moments of recessions, companies minimize their cost reducing what is foreseen as unnecessary such as IT investment, yet is important to maintain a level of preparation and not losing the opportunities presented by the market.

Hotel owners and managers are putting eyes on technology in the hospitality industry slow recovery period. All pundits agree this method can bring some recovery. The international hotel organizations have made many plans of improving investment in technology and staff. Progressive hospitality organizations have updated and invested in new technology and training, change the industry requirements and market. Before investment, the most important is to look at what operational efficiencies the technology can bring and how the technology will benefit the hotels. There are many technologies are good choices for investment, such as Revenue Management Systems. This technology is efficient and can help hotels track historic data, forecast future demand and so on. We also need to technology is changing all the time. So this is a big challenge of managers to make decisions for a long development. We also need to realize that the hospitality industry is changing, strategies will not always be applicable to new, unique situations. It is important for hotels to increase advantages in the competition.

Those hotel groups that fail to recognize the speed of change in technology and what this can bring to the business will find themselves significantly under prepared when the market starts to strengthen. While "its never too late" to act - there is a significant opportunity cost in doing nothing or worse still, cutting technology out of the day to day operations. For a hotel to effectively operate and ensure it is maximizing its incoming revenue, the right technologies needs to be in place. Through investing in the right technology at the right time, savvy hoteliers will be ensuring that their facility(s) are able to effectively maximize their ongoing revenue capability now and into the future.

As the world develops, more and more restaurants use e-menu to order food. Ipad, the fashion of technology also attract restaurants eyes. Some owners invest into Ipad menu in order to attract more customers and make more gross profit. Also, many owners are worry about security risks, maintenance, education, and so on. Here are some advantages of ipad menu such as paperless, electronic receipts, tips, categorized menu, suggestions, reports, inventory, speedy orders and picking a plate. Because of eliminating print, there are no more receipts or written signatures. It is the reason of paperless. And customers can quickly calculate their waitress tips on the ipad. Also, the guests can use the ipad to design their own meal. If guests have some questions about the wine according to the food preference, Ipad menu will answer it. Another reason is the ipad menu should increase the speedy orders. The orders will transfer to kitchen in seconds and save the time for waiting the waitress to order the food. At the same time, if the restaurant is busy, guests will play some games on Ipad to wait for their food, which instead of complains. At last, because of saving time and labor cost, the restaurant should be save cost and easy to collect data of the restaurant. There are still some disadvantages. For example, every customer wants an individual iPad as their own menu, so restaurants must purchase numerous iPads with one per seat. Because of this reason, the restaurant should be care for the thefts. And the managers need to train every waitress to use the ipad menu. The expense should increase in training.Also, some guests do not know how to use ipad menu and the technology is not suit for them. At last, you need to pay more in maintenance.

This article talks about the many different roles of being a hotel accountant. As the article stated, every hotel has its own financial department that has their own criteria. It is impossible to get a specific detail on how or what is it that you will be doing at your job. Each hotel and hotel chain chooses to employ their finance team's talents, since many hotels utilize their financial employees in different ways and hotels of various sizes have differing department structures. According to the article, the three major broad categories that you may fall into working as a financial accountant for a hotel are; accounts receivables, guest service, audits training, and month end reports. Work done in accounts receivables is basically retrieving debts that are owed to the hotel by different companies who hold a credit to the hotel. Guest services includes dealing any financial guest service issues. Last but not least, auditors include counting inventory, reviewing financial paperwork and investigating discrepancies found in the expense ledger.

I don't understand the title of this post. Specifically "BUsing." Please clarify.

I am also confused with the title, but I really interested in this article. It is true that it is impossible to give a detailed description of how each hotel or hotel chain chooses to employ their finance team's talents. Nowadays, many hotels utilize their financial employees in different kinds of ways.

The Caribbean Tourism Organization presented this event to communicate investment opportunities in the Caribbean. The choice of New York as a venue was a very strategic choice as this is an international investors mecca to the West. Forums featured private equity firms, renewable energy firms, and assorted tourism representatives from many of the island nations throughout the Caribbean. "If you are a private equity investor, investment banker, financier, real estate developer, hotel chain executive, lawyers, architect or entrepreneur, looking to grow your money and do business in an emerging market that is on the up and up, then this is a can't miss event," said Felicia Persaud, convener of Invest Caribbean Now and CEO of Hard Beat." Also offered is a Trade Show and Educational Seminar for Travel Agents, and government representatives were available to provide in-depth information for journalists and tourism professionals. This event is the perfect type of forum of destination based tourism agencies to market their locations not only for further investment and development, but to showcase a variety of features and benefits. As an aspiring meeting professional, such a seminar is the perfect example of showing a prospective client that while brochures, marketing advertising, and other forms of media can tell a lot about a place, nothing beats having some of the actual people, food, music, clothing, sounds and smells that can all be recreated at full-scale events to provide the perception of a full sensory experience. This experience will create a desire to go and be a part of that destination unmatched by any other form of marketing.

Why trust the cloud? This is the one question that almost everyone especially business owners ask. However, more and more hotel owners have realized that using a web based hotel management system is more practical and easier to operate than the traditional Property management system. From a financial point of view, it's more cost effective to rely on the web to accomplish the same work than having to invest thousands of dollars in an IT infrastructure management system where maintenance and support need to be in place. Despite the benefits of using this web system, most people face irrational fears about adopting the cloud computing concept in their own business setting. In order to eliminate this fear and fully understand how it can improve anyone's business, she/he must be educated and properly trained about the pros and cons associated with using the web based management system. The cloud is literally everywhere.

This article mainly introduce the AquaRecycle water-recycling system in the laundry of Hilton Americas-Houston Hotel. It mainly tells us the benefit of the system.

This article gives a good short look at the pros and cons of the Aloha POS system. The system is one of the most popular POS systems used in the industry. Aloha is currently used by small independent restaurants, local franchises, and national chains. The system is said to be a blend of many systems. NCR recently purchases Radiant Systems the developer of Aloha. The system includes both hardware and software. Some of the benefits of the system include the large number of training modules. Operationally the system has a "intelligent tracking system including on-screen dashboards that update in real-time to assist in management decisions in both FOH and BOH areas". In addition, the system can "personalized service by identifying repeat customers, remembering their preferences and keeping track of VIP guests". Back office features that are included with the system are labor assignments and work schedules. The systems also can keep track of maintenance, cleaning schedules, and daily duties. On the management side the system is said to provide "complete system control". Some critics of the system say the disadvantages are that the costs are too high and that restaurants pay for every upgrade. The quality of service depends on the quality of the local vender. Hardware may need to be changed with new upgrades is software adding to the high costs than expected by customers. After reading this article my feeling is that for an small independent restaurant the Aloha system might not seem like a good choice after considering the total cost of the system. Smaller, less complex systems seems like the way to go.

This article described the goal of Marriott's environmental initiatives goals and what did they do in all over the world. Marriott plays a leading role in the environmental initiatives in the industry. It can reduce wastes and costs. What's more, it can improve the image of the firm. I think other hotel chains should learn form Marriott and set up their image. This can not only help protect our world and life but also make a great contribution to the development of the company.

If you are looking to expand your horizons on eco-tourism, visiting a Dude Ranch may be a good idea for vacation. According to this article, Dude Ranches are the leader in eco-friendly tourism. Visiting the ranch is a great way to get close to the environment and learn about sustainability first hand. The article suggest that while visiting on vacation the most obvious eco-friendly item will be the food. Dude Ranch communities live off the land around them. They are very aware not to put chemicals into their land; it may "contaminate the water table" as well as their livestock. Separation of waste and recycling is part of the sustainability in a Dude Ranch. They want to reuse their natural resources, food waste is used as fertilizer. If visiting on vacation, you will see sustainability at its finest. Ranches supply the local community as well. Many Ranches try to be "as self-sufficient as possible", only using what they need keep the ranch running. This allows them to supply the community as well as local retailers with free-ranged beef as well as free-ranged eggs. Some ranches even make and sell their own specialty items, bread or wine. A few Dude Ranches have allowed Universities to use their land to expose students to re-life sustainability issues. The ranch shows them what sustainability looks like in practice and how it benefits the environment around them. This allows them to educate students visiting the ranch, and it allows for the eco-tourist to stay to learn more about sustainability and the environment.