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This articles talks about the nature of the hotel industry, which is inherently wasteful. when we see from energy and water use to waste generation, the guests in the hotel consume more resources than they do at home. Unless and until the hotels don't take steps to reduce waste and over-consumption of resources, this industry will have a large environmental impact on the world. the hotels which have green lodging standards reduce the impact of their operations and the bad part is that majority of the hotels have not even adopted these standards. the reasons could be either the management doesn't know the impact on the environment, or they believe the process is costly and time consuming, or the person who holds the responsibility is not doing his/her job right. Just like the law of science says "every action has equal and opposite reaction". similarly we can say, that managers and their managing practices can make a big difference in climate changes of the environment. Most of the hotel rooms say to recycle our towels, is it to recycle or to save their costs ? There could also be a possibility of having a wrong manager at the wrong position, who is not willing to widen his/her scope and learn about green initiatives, because in the end, these investments will generate benefits, financial, social and environmental.

The article discusses the Green Mode and how human activities causing excessive fossil fuel emissions are forcing us to change the way we live and become more eco-friendly. This trend can be seen in the hospitality industry as more buildings are utilizing a green approach. These buildings offer sustainable features such as efficient use of water, energy efficiency, use of recycled materials and improved indoor conditions for better health and comfort. Companies using the green approach create value for occupants and increase property values by offering easier maintenance and lower operating costs. In India, The Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) have produced over 687 projects that have been registered under IGCB green building guidelines. These projects include hotels, hospitals and different factory buildings. Major companies adopting the green mode include Intercontinental Hotel Group, Starwood Hotels, Hyatt and Hilton. The hospitality Industry is beginning to take advantage of the benefits of going green. With energy costs escalating, reduced maintenance and energy saving is becoming increasingly more necessary. 

As the title of the article indicates, Hotels in India have decided to get into green mode. This initiative stemmed from suggestions from the increasing number of "nature loving" guests lodging in their establishments. Consequently, the Indian hospitality industry has realized that adopting an eco-friendly lifestyle would prove to be cost-effective as well as beneficial to the preservation of the environment.

This article shows that majority of hoteliers know the importance of technology in this industry, however, they just put off adopting new advancements because of the lack of funds and a fear of changing. When the hotel adopts a high technology, majority of working system should be changed which cause a fear to hoteliers. However, most surveys reveal that investment on technology surely enhance the customers experience that directly related to generate revenue.

The Hotel Industry and its vendors are acknowledging and taking a keen revenue advantage, because their customers are supporting a green environment focus. This green economic revolution has impacted the $90 billion dollar Hotel industry. The article describes a hotel in Austin Texas profoundly in regards to their property having the "largest solar system in the continental U.S.". The hotel goes as far as creating their motto, which gear guest towards a green environment focus; their motto states "Environmental consciousness in action." The hotel grows its own food and vegetables, in which they serve the guest with, and they also give some of their produce to local food banks. The hotel guest often brag about how well they slept in the night, this might be caused by the toxic free chemical environment they are in. The lodging have refrained from using chemical pesticides 20 years ago, which may have added to the result of guest sleeping well; stated the general manager. The Ritz-Carlton program "Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ambassadors of the Environment program" was originally for the children that were staying on the Kapalua in Hawaii. The children enjoyed it so much, and their parents became very inquisitive; that the program emerged into the entire property focus. This program gives guest the opportunity to have involvement with the native forest; native nature walk and the hotel also harvest a native garden. This is almost the same idea as the hotel located in Austin Texas. There are many valid reasons for the reason why the Hotel Industry should be green conscious. The Green Hotels Association states that "Companies with proactive environmental strategies will make 4 percent higher investment, 9 higher sales growth and 17 percent higher operating income growth than companies with poor environmental practices.". If I was a general manager, this would be one of my main concerns and focus. Going green is cost effective, but the ending

nowadays, more and more hotels attending to join the green army. one of the most important reason is this kind of hotel will have a better market. because of the education level of the guests, their invironmental awareness become stongly. so the guests want to do more to make a contribution the the environment protection. on the other hand, the customers all knows that even the price of the green hotel is higher, but it is more health and safe. it will make them feel better and have a good experience in the hotel. as we know, a good experience is the final goal of hotel. so, the green hotel must have a bright future.

The green economic revolution is impacting the $90 billion U.S. hotel industry. There is an opportunity to increase revenue and market share by "going green". Habitat Suites in Austin, Texas is a leader in this area. The hotel's motto is "Environmental consciousness in action." Habitat Suites has an environment that is free of chemicals, has the largest hotel solar system, and uses their own organic fruit and vegetable garden for food in the hotel. Due to this environmental consciousness, the customers are reacting positively. Commenting on how great they slept, due to the ecologically fresh rooms. Many hotel chains are jumping on the green revolution bandwagon. At the Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua in Hawaii, they started an environment program that was originally designed to provide fun for kids. But after positive feedback from the children, this has grown from just learning about local marine life to educational nature walks. These walks go through Maui's native forests and a garden that grows native foods and has community engagement in order to preserve their island's culture and environment. The food that is grown in the native garden is used in the hotel to provide guests with a healthy dining experience. Because of this, it has increased guests' reason to eat at the hotel and is 15 percent of the hotel guests' revenue stream. This environmentally friendly program increases the possibility of repeat business and attract new travelers who search for these types of experiences. A report published by the Green Hotels Association states, "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." Even non-hotel-industry entrepreneurs are realizing business opportunities in the green vacation industry. Patricia Griffin, president of the Green Hotel Association, started the associatio

This article focuses on technology investments related to restaurants. It talks about decisions made and experiences shared by restaurant operators and executives that gathered together at the Hospitality Technology's 2016 Restaurant Executive Summit. They discussed the top technology investments for the following year, 2017. Analytics, loyalty programs, and mobile payment were the key focus area. I believe that all restaurant operators should adopt and implement the latest technologies or will fail behind the competition.

This article touched on many of the points discussed this week as it relates to POS systems for restaurants, and whether or not they are beneficial. As the article explains, it is important to evaluate the type of restaurant and whether or not it would make the customer experience more complicated rather than simplify it. The article also includes a poll on the types of restaurants that consider this type of technology lagging vs. leading. A limited, fast service restaurant is going to find that these types of technologies improve their service vs. a tableservice restaurant that feels technology of this sort negatively impacts their service. Essentially, you must choose the right systems and processes in accordance with your type of restaurant/establishment.

In today's fiercely competitive market adopting technology to grow your hotel business is essential, to avoid facing operational bottlenecks like Hotel A, unlike Hotel B who uses the latest technology to do smart hoteliering. This means getting a cloud based Hotel PMS which can easily integrate with a POS system that is also on the cloud. This translates into having all your hotel-related data under one umbrella in one single system, on one dashboard, giving you automation, accuracy, time and most importantly convenience. So during the stay, guests can order food from the restaurant, use the spa, the gym, the travel desk or the gift shop and pay for everything during checkout without being over or undercharged so both the hotel and guests remain happy and guests have a pleasant guest experience. In my opinion Hotel A needs to upgrade their technology to integrate the cloud PMS with the POS system also on the cloud and add other facilities to supplement revenue for the hotel when room occupancy might be down.

This article brings us main issues about PMS. When it comes to the operation efficiency, time is nevertheless valuable. Then on the top of the head, calling for new technology which can operates smoothly would be very important. The author brought out the detailed reasons why we need PMS tools. Firstly, high turnover needs PMS tools that make onboarding easy. Secondly, to support the team with ultimate ease-of-use would not only make hoteliers enable fast implementation, support ongoing adoption, but also allow staff enhance customer services to a large extent. At last, the author conclude few essential factors to choose PMS system: instinctual and easy to learn; speed; quick implementation and setup; mobile and cloud access; easy integrations; reliability without disruptions.

Great article! Training (and re-training) is such a large investment of labor. It is particular difficult for properties located in destinations that tend to have seasonal staff. Every year at least once a year, we have to go through a time-intensive on boarding process that is a big investment for a smaller property. It also keeps us from making some staffing choices because of the difficulty in getting a replacement shift ready. Thanks for sharing!

With the success of having mobile locks for our homes and even our cars, it's no wonder hotels are adopting the technology as well. Technology advances quickly, and like any business hotels must do the same, they're constantly refurbishing rooms and implementing new things to better serve their guests and a mobile lock would be no different. Having keys on a guest's phone would improve efficiency for hotel management because they wouldn't need to replace a lost key, and guests would no longer need to wait in a line to check in, just head up to their room as soon as they get there. This allows hotel staff to use that extra time to ensure guests get even better customer service. Mobile keys do possess a few problems in that, unless a guest is loyal to a particular hotel chain or unless they travel a lot, they might be unwilling to download an app just to be able to get into their room. This can be circumvented by designing an app that can do more than just open their room door such as making/changing reservations, making spa appointments, allowing gym/pool access, and being able to call for a bellboy, and getting help from the concierge. While not quite there yet, mobile door locks will let hotels know more about their guests and how to "better manage assets and the workforce with predictive analytics" that could be used to make guests experiences better and more likely to turn them into repeat guests.

This article discusses the reason hotels are shifting their focus on energy management. Hotels are adopting green practices that not only saves money but benefits the environment. One method is by controlling energy output. New technology allows the hotel management to have wireless control of the heating and cooling systems. If rooms are unoccupied they can turn off the cooling system to save energy which in-turn reduces cost. The invention of the "Internet of Things" (IoT), management can control, diagnose and operate AC and other systems from their tablets or computers. This advantage gives the hotels the need for less service calls and disruptions to guests. Also, the trend of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) gives the guest the option to control their room settings from their own phone. Lastly, hotels are building towards LEED certifications from the U.S. Green Building council. The certification is internationally known. It saves the company money and aligns to a lot of guests eco-traveling preferences.

This article emphasizes the positive and negative aspects of the hospitality industry adopting to sustainable practices. It recognizes that this industry is in the business of making money, while appoints the importance of doing so conscientiously, respecting the environment. It shows the steps that the organizations should take on its journey to action. I believe that sustainability should be a business imperative and not a lifestyle choice, as the sustained interest among consumers in tourism products and services are continuously increasing. That should be beneficial for the organization, positively affecting the operating revenue.

The article discusses the many ways the IT world is finding new ways to be sustainable in the hospitality industry. Changing the way a hotel runs by introducing e-mails to guest and other companies to reduce the paper flow or allowing guest to do mobile check-ins can reduce a lot of paper waste. Also, having guest use their phones as key cards for their rooms can aid in avoiding wasting and needing to create key cards. By hotels having an energy saving system, they reduce electrical waste by having computers on low power consumption mode. One main thing the article mentioned that I personally see a lot of hotels doing is digital advertising. Instead of relying on paper advertisement, hotels rely heavily on ads on social medias, facebook, google, and third party vendors.

This article discusses the IT green movement that has been in action since the rise of technology and ways on how IT can go green. Some opportunities in the green IT movement include the following: - Using IT responsibly and effectively to reduce water, energy, and paper consumption. This gives IT teams to take advantage of a few technical enhancements within their hotels to provide key cards available on smart phones, email to reduce paper, and digital signage. - Deploying effective technology practices such as Energy Star compliance to shut down computers automatically after periods of inactivity and server virtualization. This would mean for everything to be on one common server, and companies can save money on computer hardware and power consumption. - Tackling e-waste and deploying recycling technologies to reduce environmental waste and impacts. This could be implementing by introducing a safe recycling system for used hardware. - Digital marketing practices. This could be like using digital media to save money or using social media to encourage guests about the green practices that the hotel is implementing. - Marketing strategies to report and promote green practices. This could be having the business properly use marketing strategies to target these environmentally conscious market and find ways to promote green practices to this market segment. These are all very effective ways for IT teams to go green within their hospitality businesses. These green IT projects will need approval from top management and investment in time and resources.

In this article, the author talks about the advantages of cloud computing such as efficiency, cost reduction, data security, scalability, mobility, disaster recovery, control, and competitive edge. It was also pointed out that by 2020, 96% of businesses will be using either a private or a public cloud to store and access date.

Very informative article

This article talks about how Oracle has hired a new CEO who is trying to grow their hotel property management system (PMS). It currently has a 16% share of available hotel rooms globally. However, the article talks about how Oracle is facing competitors who are adopting cloud-based services with subscription models. Oracle is hesitant to do so because company executives believe that it will affect their hardware sales and upfront license fees. Oracle's customers also complain about the lack of integrating ability of their programs with other existing programs. The CEO says it is a priority that they improve on this but denies that there is a prevalent existing problem. The article talks about one of their competitors, Protel, which is actively using the cloud in its programs. Protel has become very popular because its open to integrating the cloud in their systems, along with other start-ups that have been successful as well. The CEO seems determined to defend the company and not admit it's defects. He won't even say he's turning the company around. He simply says that he is continuing to implement the same priorities that Oracle had before. This seems a little ignorant. But it was cool to examine how PMS systems with cloud integration have become increasingly popular in the hospitality industry.

These health-monitoring options are also creating new market spaces, such as age-in-place applications that enable real-time monitoring of the elderly and the devices in their homes - a better alternative to moving them to more costly assisted living facilities.

This article tells about the perspectives of Hotspot 2.0, the new standard for public WiFi, in the hotel industry. The WiFi Alliance has been working on designing this new standard which is supposed to be much friendlier to the users while making Wi-Fi usage more akin to cellular. It allows automatic WiFi network detection and eliminates the public Wi-Fi log-ins, providing automatic access to secure Wi-Fi networks using a Passpoint profile stored on a device. For hotel guests, this means they would be able to go from using their mobile devices on their personal mobile networks to the hotel's Wi-Fi without having to re-enter their authentication credentials every time. This feature, in my point of view, would be very useful, especially for the business travelers who value every second of their time. Another major benefit of Hotspot 2.0 is improved security by means of enterprise-grade WPA2 encryption, which makes it safer than open public networks. This also will be appreciated by the travelers who often use hotel's WiFi networks for booking different travel services and insert security sensitive data. However, the cost of implementation of this new standard in the hotels is rather high. Thus, hoteliers do not wish to force its realization until they are sure that there is demand from the customers. The polls show that the guests are still unaware of the benefits of Hotspot 2.0 and don't consider it as a key point while choosing a hotel. Yet some hotels try to be before the competition and become early adopters of this technology. They believe that quality of internet connection, as well as additional options, will be a differentiating point for hotels in the future. However, in my opinion, it would be wise to conduct appropriate research and wait until this technology will be close to becoming the industry standard before making significant investments. There is always a chance that the trend will go another way.

Technology is in the hands of nearly every person this day and age, so why not take advantage of it? When it comes to hospitality people love to see pictures to see both the venue and the experiences people are having. it lets them imagine their own personal experience and creates a ideas to set up their own personal experience. Digital Marketing also allows to build relationships with clients an is a great place to advocate. It also allows for influences. On top of that, it will allow for people to see exactly what functions, features, attributes, etc. is going on without the hassle of having to call and find out. Technology also allows for easy work for the employees. They are able to use smart watched or portable tablets so they can be mobile with assisting clients and guests with their needs and questions. Digital marketing allows for testimonials of the great place it is.

This article introduces 2017 digital marketing trends for the hospitality industry. The first trend is visual content. Instead of the explanation contents, pictures will influence more to catch customers' attention considering the characteristics of the hospitality industry. Second, social media becomes a great intermediate between potential customers and the business. The business in the hospitality industry should be involved in social media to expose their brand and build client relationship. Third, virtual reality becomes popular to demonstrate the various functions and features lively. Also, adopting wearables or using storytelling production can be a new trend as a marketing tool. It can produce ancillary revenue and get customers more engaged in brand concept. Lastly, digital marketing should be monitored and evaluated for sales trends, supplier orders and employee overtime in a real time to improve more marketing strategy.

The topic mainly implies on how well POS system integrate and how useful it is in the industry from small to large business entities. The market growth definitely rely in the point of Sale system as they adopt the flow and the advancements which is mainly beneficial to hospitality industry. As it has been pointed out on the demand for enhancement applicable to the industry's tech savvy customers. It features it's functionality, convenience, as well as the use of different type of devices. It also entails a well detailed information with all the product types, components, application and geography. Although the research gives us a standard basis on its uses and functions but it gives ideas that the system is a demand as technology evolves quickly in business. POS function so well that it helps boost the market, and the hospitality's revenue. It also focuses not only for the easy use, but also assist associates when it comes to accuracy and efficiency to improve customer service. It is also good to know that implementation of the compliance requirements to ensure safety and security will not be disregarded as they enhance further.

This articles discuses how proximity marketing is slated to expand globally.

The article describes how the pandemic accelerated the adoption of technology for many people and how it shifted the needs of people looking for short-term/hotel stays. Companies that thrived during the pandemic were the ones that offered things that began trending as people needed to stay away from others and inside for large periods of time: contact-less experiences and apartment settings rather than traditional hotel rooms. As we move forward from the pandemic and travel begins again, hoteliers will need to re-evaluate their technology and invest in guest experience software tools so their hotels can compete with the new trends in hospitality spaces.