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Point of sale software, or POS software, is used as part of a wider POS system and is primarily designed to allow users to process payments from customers. However, at the same time, POS software can be used to automate various parts of the sales process, such as updating inventory information and sales data.

For those in the hotel industry, point of sale software can be one of the most important investments, because it can provide staff with a range of tools that can be of benefit to them, and to the business.

One of the biggest benefits of using point of sale software within the hotel and hospitality industry is the ability to process payments easily. This includes processing payments of a variety of types, including cash payments, debit card payments, credit card payments, mobile wallet payments, and more.

Holiday Inn Resorts has been using their in-house maintained WiFi for over six months. It is up and running 95% of the time and this has resulted in higher guest satisfaction, but most importantly, has helped revenues climb.

But several of Facebook's big advertising clients who have used the ads in Q4 indicated that the ads can be used to develop e-commerce on Facebook, turning the social network into a mobile shopping and sales device.

The ad units simply allow users to download the clients' app from Google Play or the App Store

Hotel Tonight, an app that drives last-minute hotel bookings, saw a 10 times higher click-to-install rate from the ads over regular Facebook ads.

that current POS were not well integrated into other IT systems (28%); that the POS is not ready to grow with their company (26%); and that it is difficult to add additional modules or functionalities to the current POS (30%).

negative perceptions of wireless POS have given way to a more positive outlook

E-wallet payment was the most widely recognized new payment option with 36% of respondents indicating they wanted it with their next POS.

Orbitz Worldwide Inc. OWW 0.00% has found that people who use Apple Inc.'s AAPL +1.91% Mac computers spend as much as 30% more a night on hotels, so the online travel agency is starting to show them different, and sometimes costlier, travel options than Windows visitors see.

in this case, the fact that customers are visiting Orbitz.com from a Mac—to start predicting their tastes and spending habits.

Orbitz found Mac users on average spend $20 to $30 more a night on hotels than their PC counterparts

HeBS digital Blog Archive for the ‘Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)’ Category The OTA Billboard Effect or the Lazy Man’s Approach to Hotel DistributionMonday, August 1st, 2011 The following article is Max Starkov’s latest contribution to the “Successful eMarketing” blog on HOTELS magazine’s website The existence of the so-called billboard effect is not a new marketing phenomenon. It has existed long before the online channel became a reality. As confirmed by many studies, any marketing exposure by a hotel produces a billboard effect:  when you launch a banner advertising campaign; when you purchase a full-page ad in the New York Times travel section; when you launch a paid search campaign on Google, etc. The OTA Billboard Effect Lately Expedia reps have been aggressively using a new Cornell Hospitality Report, namely “Search, OTAs and Online Booking: An Expanded Analysis of the Billboard Effect” to convince hoteliers that they should use Expedia in order to generate more bookings from the hotel’s own website due to the so-called “Billboard Effect.” The Cornell Report, based on data from Expedia and InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) from 2008-2010, is a continuation of a previous report on the subject, heavily supported by Expedia. The report’s analysis determined that when an IHG property was listed on the first results page of Expedia, this created an increase of between 7.5% and 14.1% in bookings for the same property on IHG’s own brand website. In other words, this is a confirmation for Expedia’s billboard effect, which hoteliers should take into consideration when griping against the 25% plus merchant OTA commission. When these “billboard effect bookings” are taken into consideration, Expedia’s commission “would effectively be reduced to single digits,” states the Cornell Report. Hoteliers, rejoice! We have found the perfect recipe for success: we do nothing as far as marketing the property website is concerned. Instead, we plaster Expedia with our sales promotions and wait for the travel consumers to come to our own website and book. As discussed, the billboard effect is not strictly an OTA territory. In my view, the Cornell Hospitality Report is a one-sided research project, very proactively supported by Expedia, similar to the first report on the billboard effect published in 2009. Cornell, the finest hospitality institution in the U.S., should know better than to come up with this half-baked “scientific” research, which does not account for the complexities of hotel distribution as well as the “digital information cloud” we all live in and the resulting marketing and distribution channel convergence which directly affects the purchasing habits of today’s hyper-interactive travel consumers. This report makes conclusions that do not take into account, among many other things, the following: Complex Travel Planning Patterns in Hospitality Many surveys show that people are shopping around on a number of hotel and travel websites before narrowing down their search. Typically in hospitality, these sites include a hotel search on a search engine e.g. Google (65% market share), an OTA website, TripAdvisor, the hotel’s own website, etc. Therefore jumping from an OTA website to a hotel branded website and vice versa is at least partially due to particular travel research patterns unique to the users and not due to the so-called billboard effect: Step 1: “I always search on Google first where I identify a property I like” Step 2: “I go to Expedia and see what the rate for this property is” Step 3: “I visit TripAdvisor to read my peer reviews for this hotel” Step 4: “I visit the hotel website and book if I like the location, rate and what I have read and seen about this hotel”

Green technologies and products can

be found everywhere.

Some large cities are actually offering systems with bikes that can be rented for free with a lot of success

Fresh off its acquisitions of Buuteeq, Hotel Ninjas, and OpenTable this year, the Priceline Group is in the process of integrating Hotel Ninjas’ property management system with hotel digital marketing company Buuteeq, according to a report,  Google’s Travel Plans in a Post-Atomic Era [embedded below], written by Ken Sena of Evercore. googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display("div-gpt-ad-1390432568424-0"); }); With the integration of the two cloud-based systems for hotels, the Priceline Group “has the ability to handle property management, channel and rate management, and CRM, all of key consideration to hotelier,” the Evercore report states. “In return, Priceline receives subscription revenues on some of the services provided in addition to keeping these hoteliers’ semi-tethered to its Priceline traffic channel from the standpoint of ease an efficiency, given Priceline’s leading scale as an OTA.”

Tourism projections show visitation is expected to climb to 127 million tourists in 2020, according to Visit Florida, the state's official tourism marketing organization.lRelated BusinessSwanky Villas at Crane's BeachHouse to debut on Nov. 1See all related8 To accommodate that growth, Florida will need 315,000 new hospitality jobs, forecast data show.

new training and certification program for hospitality employees

Visit Florida also is rolling out several other programs to keep the destination top-of-mind with domestic and international travelers.

Paying with a Stratos may not be as seamless as holding your iPhone near the register and using Apple Pay. Apple's mobile payments service lets iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus owners use their smartphones and their fingerprints to charge purchases to their credit cards just by holding their iPhone near a terminal. And while technologists rejoice at Apple Pay's security, only 6 percent of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus owners used Apple Pay as of March, according to market researcher InfoScout.

ow so-called smart cards like Stratos, Coin, Plastc and Swyp have come on the scene. When coupled with a smartphone app, these devices -- which cost around $100 -- let users store and toggle among different payment cards on the fly. Cards are scanned in using a small card reader and managed with a smartphone app.

It would be awesome if every single merchant took Apple Pay," he said. But that's not the reality. "It's kind of crazy that we're in 2015 and we're still paying with cash and plastic, and we have a computer in our pocket." Until the computers in our pocket become the main way to pay, he has a Coin card.

According to a recent report published by the Green Hotels Association, "Companies with proactive environmental strategies have a 4 percent higher return on investment, 9 percent higher sales growth and 17 percent higher operating income growth than companies with poor environmental track records."

According to a recent report published by the Green Hotels Association, "Companies with proactive environmental strategies have a 4 percent higher return on investment, 9 percent higher sales growth and 17 percent higher operating income growth than companies with poor environmental track records.

According to a recent report published by the Green Hotels Association, "Companies with proactive environmental strategies have a 4 percent higher return on investment, 9 percent higher sales growth and 17 percent higher operating income growth than companies with poor environmental track records.

an aggressive set of environmental goals for the year 2020, all designed to strengthen Hyatt's collective ability to collaborate, inspire and further its commitment to environmental stewardship. Hyatt, which is already an industry leader for tracking comprehensive global energy and water data since 2006, is significantly expanding the scope of its existing sustainability initiatives and will continue to focus strongly on measuring and reporting progress.

The conservation efforts undertaken by Hyatt hotels around the world since formalizing our approach several years ago have had a real impact, resulting in major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and water and energy usage by property across our portfolio," said Brigitta Witt, Vice President of Corporate Responsibility for Hyatt. "With five years and significant momentum under our belt, we saw the opportunity to further our commitment to environmental stewardship in a manner that fundamentally touches every aspect of our business, from the way our hotels are built and operated, to the way we collaborate with our global supply chain, to the way we influence change through the passion and commitment of our colleagues around the world."

The IT or technology team is not always on the front line of attention when it comes to Guest Service skills.

Their roles and guest demand for technology services has increased and is going up and yet, guest service may not be a priority in this department

Ms. Nedry Guest Service / Customer Experience Mgmt The "IT” Factor in Service...How Does the Information Technology Team Fit into Today’s Guest Experience?

In order to determine if revenue should be recognized on a “gross” or “net” basis, one needs to understand what flexibility the OTA has to discount the room rate, charge additional fees to a guest, or combine the room night in a package with other goods or services (e.g. flight, rental car) under the Merchant Model.

One of the changes to the accounting standards is on revenue recognition, specifically how revenues from Online Travel Agents (“OTA”) should be recognized. Currently, there are two models for the treatment of OTA revenues in the hotel industry:

Retail ModelGuest makes the reservation via the OTA but pays the hotel upon stay. Hotel remits commission to the OTA. Currently, the hotel recognizes revenue at the gross amount of cash collected (i.e. the total room rate), offset by a commission expense to the OTA. Revenue recognized through this model is typically recorded on a “gross” basis.

Technological advancement should be aligned with guest expectations to stand out from your competitors.

Technological advancement should be aligned with guest expectations to stand out from your competitors.

Swipe cards have been replaced with smartphones and apps to ease check-ins and reduce loss of key.

InteroperabilityData ManagementSecurity & PrivacyResponsiveness

Technology in the hotel industry has done great wonders to help businesses achieve a competitive edge while delivering premium experiences to all their guests.