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This article discusses Lufthansa airlines and Ukraine International Airlines who both now impose a surcharge on GDS bookings. The GDSs Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport disagree with this strategy and say that they offer the most choice of services and think that steering clients away from using GDSs to book travel is not a smart idea. In 2015, Lufthansa and its other airlines (which also includes Austrian, Brussels, Eurowings and Swiss airlines) implemented a 16-euro fee on all GDS bookings. Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) is a much smaller airline than Lufthansa, however, some analysts believe that this decision could prompt other airlines to do so as well. About one month ago, UIA imposed a $9 surcharge on GDS bookings. Some analysts believe that the new imposed fee will drive some customers, especially the price-sensitive leisure travelers, towards other airline carriers. In addition to implementing a surcharge on GDS bookings, UIA is also adding fees to any bookings made on third-party booking sites. The airline is trying to incentivize its travelers to book directly through their website and not go through any other channel. Lufthansa has had success with their strategy. The CEO stated the fee had a net-zero impact on their business, but there was a rise increase in sales through their direct channel.

This article discusses the increasing demand for e-commerce and third party delivery in the food and beverage industry, as well as the costs associated with it. Restaurants are currently facing a growth problem in the United States as foot traffic has declined due to a "millennial generation shift" that sees diners doing more in their homes, while third party companies like Grubhub have seen it's stock rise 141 percent from a year ago. For many restaurants, it is a matter of opportunity cost. As explained in this article by Warren Solocheck, a restaurant industry analyst at NPD, "We're going to see more and more quick-service chains begin to try out delivery," he said. "The margins associated with third-party delivery may be slimmed down. But, the question for restaurants is, 'If I don't do it and I'm not delivering my food, am I in the game anymore? Am I in people's consideration? It boils down to being an opportunity cost. The hope is that at some point people will like the food enough to come in and sit down." I found this article very interesting as a General Manager. We recently decided as a brand to begin offering delivery through third party services as we noticed a decline in covers leading to a decline in revenue. This new revenue stream, although at a higher cost, still brings in revenue that we would be missing out on either way. We also offer free appetizer cards for a consumer's next in house visit to help attract new guests.

The article "10 Industry Experts' Picks For The Hottest Tech Trends of 2023" discusses the technologies which are predicted to trend for both businesses and consumers over the course of 2023. The trends include a shift in technology that drives efficiency; reliance on no-code tools such as Wordpress and Shopify; next generation AI that can perform task such as natural language processing; image recognition and decision making; technology that is able to create value to business and consumer through transparency; advanced car technology such as contactless payment version for cars; personalized content; advancements in digital healthcare; ai-generative tools; analyst who bring both science and business skills; and lastly advancements in the Metaverse.

Recently, CCTV/Video Surveillance has had several technologically developments. Security concerns in public places are driving a demand for CCTC/Video surveillance. New software will help CCTV/Video Surveillance monitor and analyze information. The US is the largest regional market for this technology.CCTV Recorders are the fastest growing product segment. I think its a great idea to build upon and make existing technology better especially since it is used across the world.

This article is explaining how Henry Harteveldt, an airline and travel industry analyst, believes that GDSs will evolve into value creation hubs, or VCHs, over the next five years. He believes GDSs have served airlines the best among many transactionally based industried; however, many areas of airline marketing, sales, distribution and e-commerce are looking for more. He specifically states that airlines are looking for "more flexible, robust commerce platforms built on contemporary software and architecture", as well as "commerce platforms that can support extensive fare and product transparency, dynamic pricing, rich basic and ancillary product merchandising and retailing and the ability to reliably and securely process the massive volume of shopping sessions." VCHs will be used to support the high-volume, high frequency shopping, similar to GDSs, and the system will the new technology that powers airline CRS/PSS host systems, reducing the need for costly conversion disruption.

In order to choose the best business cash management system, it can be helpful to consider the nature and needs of your business, as well as factors such as the need to incorporate analysts or consultants, and the ease of use for individuals who may be responsible for updating or reading the system. Companies will implement these procedures to ensure they accurately report inventory items and do not account for costs prior to being incurred by the production department. Companies use cost management systems to provide information for making decisions. The information provided typically relates to individual products produced and the production capacity associated with the company.

AirTight that is the provider of wireless intrusion prevention (WIPS) rated very positively in 2012 Marketscope for its prevention systems. In today's developed Internet based society, wireless networks are getting significant and using universally with the people's demand for convenience. Wireless networks are, of course, more convenience networks than wired networks, but they are obviously less secure. Because of this fact, the wireless networks users need to consider the security vulnerabilities, and take a proactive approach to detecting the vulnerabilities and responding security incidents quickly. This is AirTight who provides the tools called WLAN IPS for the users in order to help them solve these growing concerns. To be specific, AirTight systems provide both on-premise and cloud WIPS and secure WIFI access to detect and classify all wireless device on the network automatically. By doing so, they can forbid unauthorized devices from accessing the network. I feel that sometimes, the companies or people try to overlook the significant risks because of the conveniences. The wireless networks security might be also one of these kinds of risks. Therefore, I think the systems offered by AirTight are helpful for the companies or people to keep their sensitive information safely.

In Amazon's last quarter, net income dropped by 57 percent from a year ago. Sales for the three months before December 31 came out to $17.4 billion, lower than Wall Street expected over the traditionally busy holidy season. It is predicted that for the next quarter outlook, there could be anywhere from a gain of $100 million to a loss of $200 million. While Amazon continues to profit in sales of its best selling Kindle devices, there were a variety of factors that contirbuted to its losses. The flooding in Thailand slowed down production for many tech companies. Third-party sellers (which give a 13% commission to Amazon as oppsoed to 100% commission when Amazon sells themselves) were used more than usual. Promotions such as the Amazon Prime program which allows the customer to pay a fixed rate and get umlimited two-day shipping hurt the retailer hard over the busy holiday season with shipping costs. Other reasons were lower demand for skimwords

The advances restaurants are making with technology are astounding. Because of the rise in minimum wage and health care recently, companies are forced to figure out a way to cut labor costs. With the addition of iPads and tablets, restaurants are now able to use technology to help with reducing the amount of labor needed. Some chain restaurants are providing guests with table-side tablets to order and pay for their meal, which will allow servers the opportunity to take on more tables and allow the customer to assist in the serving process. Managers will be able to evaluate their team based on speed and time it takes to turn the tables over, which could allow for either more customers served or allow managers to make the decision to reduce the amount of servers needed at their establishments. As this technology continues to become more available and user friendly, more establishments will be transitioning to computers/tablets instead of having face-to-face service.

The use of tablets being used in casual dining chains is a great idea that will not only make things more convenient for the customer but will also drastically cut labor costs for restaurants. From a management perspective these tablets seem to be a great idea. Some may argue that part of the dining experience is being able to interact with ones server. However, how many times have you waited at your table hoping to pay the bill? Now guests are able to pay their bill when they are ready and the tablet even prompts the guest on how much to leave as a tip, which may help eliminate or at least cut down on the number of bad tippers. The only negative may be that since there is less interaction with guests and guests have the ability to pay the bill whenever they are ready to leave, could this increase the number of guests who walk out on the check? Nevertheless, many companies are starting to use this technology.

The use of tablets can also cut down on error in the ordering process. Even if the wait staff remains, they can easily repeat everything ordered to the customer and there will be no mistakes for poor penmanship. Payment can be done at the table, also cutting down on potential identity theft using skimmers etc., under the bar or at the wait station.

This article is a big time eye opener how robots are already in place taking away plenty of jobs in every department. I highlighted some of the jobs they are currently doing and how much labor cost money the hotels are saving. Yes we love the new technology but it can also be a little intimidating once they start eliminating jobs. It really points out what we may not find obvious on how majority of the hospitality companies are already in use with artificial intelligence technologies. I believe in 10 years the world will be a complete different place and robots will take over for the most part!

In the wake of the Marriott International cyberattack, the article presents the issues with the current issues in the methodology of cybersecurity; first explaining the data of how popular they are in the hospitality industry, and what it means for the industry, before going into the process of how a cyberattack happens and the measures taken to prevent it. Traditional cybersecurity is one of an "incident response" which can only be implemented once a cyberattack occurs and can only prevent it temporarily as a hacker can do similar tasks with different IP addresses and new malware. In order to circumvent this failure of cybersecurity, the article offers a new method in which TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures), are used to identify certain components of a hacker and identify how they would carry out an attack, before acting on it before the attack would "reach the network".

This article discusses one of the largest fears of most hospitality firms, and that is keeping their client's personal information private. Most large companies in this industry have become giant data centers for the personal information of millions of people. Breaches of this type of information place the lives of many people at stake. For example, Marriott International had a security breach of over half a billion of its clients which began in 2014 and was not detected until September of this year. Keeping an individual's information away from malignant forces is just plain business sense and any more attacks of this manner will severely hurt the reputation of the business experiencing it.

Alibaba is a well-known e-commerce company and the largest stockholder of Shiji. It added investment in this dominating PMS software company in China. Shiji is not only expanding its PMS software business in China, but also seeking chances to expand their business to Europe and America. It has the goal of being a well-known company worldwide and has a long way to go according to some business analysts.

As spending on cloud services jumps up almost 21% from last year, everything seems to be positive for this fast growing technology. It is, however, facing some challenges along the way that companies are going to need to take into consideration when spending on these services. Making sure they have a well qualifies and capable team to keep these services secure without burning them out is one of the concerns employees are bringing up in recent conversations. The security and safety of the data held by these services is very important, and needs to be prioritized in the day to day decisions made by all companies that utilize these services. Threats and malicious code taken advantage of by hackers is ever growing, and requires a constant, educated team with empowerment to protect to constantly watch out for these threats. Cloud computing still continues to grow, and is still a great advancement in business, but it also still needs to have it's threats carefully assessed and addressed to make sure it remains secure.

EHL Insights is a Swiss based company that dove into what leaders in the Swiss hospitality industry believe in regard to disruptive innovations for the global industry. The article interviewed a few different leaders and got their take, like Wilhelm Konrad Weber, who believes that technology is affecting the hospitality industry but also poses a threat because hotel leaders are not necessarily ready to adapt/adopt to ever-changing technology. OTAs were mentioned as an example of the industry falling behind as these websites help eliminate loyalty. Weber also mentioned that innovation in the industry is evolutionary rather than disruptive due to the demands and expectations from investors and analysts. One person, Zia Chisti, is a skeptic when it comes to artificial intelligence and works for a company that utilizes AI. He argues that AI is not disruptive as it has existed for awhile and is a slow and steady process. The argument made by Chisti is that guests expect a service with real people rather than machines. Overall, there will be technological advancements but it will be slow and steady. It's just up to hoteliers on how quickly they want to implement it.

This article by Jaikumar Vijayan from CIO.com is very interesting because it provides a challenging question between personal privacy and public security. The government program code-named PRISM is the motive in which the government is using to gather statistical information. In my opinion, extreme privacy without scrutiny is not more valuable than the safety of Americans or other would-be victims. I don't think it is completely accurate that the stated companies such as Google, Skype, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. don't provide the "back door" for government agencies because they have loyalty to both consumers and the government. Completely free reign and unfettered access to government agencies is a stretch, but to say security agencies have absolutely no right to look for evidence or track suspicious activity for relevant threats and possible attacks is completely unfounded and uneducated. It would be a much larger folly for governments to not track terrorist activities and let their networks run free then to not study behaviors and contacts. Otherwise, people of bad intentions would communicate easily and freely without consequences and proper agencies have no leg-up on potentially dangerous situations. The American people have their right to privacy, but the founding fathers never could have imagined a world where it is so easy to exchange information, tactics or events so quickly. Even contemporary technical analysts and engineers couldn't fathom the technology we have now just 30 years before the internet became publicly accessible. And if they did it is safe to assume they're security measures would have been the priority of American lives than somebody scared of having their facebook messages or Google e-mail snooped on. After all, if you're not a terrorist, and surely you aren't if you're reading this, what is there to hide?

The multi-billion-dollar ecommerce industry is a part of our everyday lives, but many don't realize the numbers and history behind it, so we collected 16 things you probably don't know about ecommerce. 1. By connecting a modified domestic television with a phone line, Michael Aldrich invented online shopping in 1979. 2. Although Amazon launched in 1995, the first yearly profit wasn't until 2003, and as of June 2012, the average order value was $47.31. 3. Because of forced account registration, online users abandon their shopping carts 26% of the time. 4. Netflix wasn't the first online DVD subscription service - Blockbuster announced Blockbuster.com in 2004, but it's unclear whether services such as Netflix and Redbox led to its ultimate bankruptcy. 5. During the third quarter of 2012, $4,423 was transacted per second via PayPal. 6. Zappos' referrals from social media per order yield $0.75 from Pinterest, $2.08 from Facebook and $33.66 from Twitter. 7. Approximately 46% of online users count on social media when making a purchase decision. 8. 71% of shoppers believe they'll get a better deal online than in stores. 9. In 2010, Groupon turned down Google's $6 billion offer and became an IPO the following year. 10. Pizza Hut began offering online ordering on its website in 1994. 11. India is home to the fastest growing ecommerce market, and France is home to the slowest ecommerce growth. 12. Ecommerce sales are expected to surpass $200 billion in 2012. 13. Consumers spend between $1,200 and $1,300 on online shopping per year. 14. E-retail will grow to 9% in 2016, up from 7% today. 15. Online sales from social networks will grow 93% percent per year within the next four years, according to consulting firm Booz & Company. 16. From 2011 to 2016, 15% more people will shop online, taking the number to 192 million in the U.S. 17. Analysts say that an explosion in the mobile payments market is just around the

This article is about the innovation in the back office arena. When many managers are still doubting back office technology efficiency, at Tropical Smoothie Cafe, based in Destin, Fla. with 275 franchise locations, operators there are adding up money saved by setting up RedPrairie's Performance Management (RPM). Benefits could be like control labor cost and food cost, especially for those franchise companies with hundreds of hotels or restaurants throughout the country even the world, RPM will provide a complete compared among different locations reports in a few minutes. Besides, back office begins to meet iPhone, which make it possible to see real-time information about what was going on in the restaurants, including open checks, servers logged in or out and even sales for the managers. Another sign that technology is changing is the ability to combine accounting, inventory and point of sale into one solution without the old challenge of interfacing disparate systems. In a word, it is really convenient to get the back office intelligence.

Global distribution systems have thought to eventually become extinct but the growth of new technologies has given GDS new hope. The three main companies that control this market are Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport. Each of the companies has expanded their market penetration via their subsidiaries that are currently operating with global distribution systems. In 2014 Amadeus brought in almost $1billion in revenue. In addition, Sabre and Travelport showed positive growth. Airlines on the other hand, would prefer to directly have travelers book with them to save on fees. At the same time GDS brings attractive promotions to customers making them useful to the airlines and their revenue. GDS has stimulated the growth of online websites like, Expedia, Kayak, Orbitz, Priceline). Where potential customers find competitive rates and can book more than just a plane ticket.

For every hospitality organization, the online press should be an important component of public relations, sales and marketing plans. In addtion, the business websites and its press room should be able to provide all the info needed. Therefore, the most important question to ask: does your web site work for the press and analysts that visit it? So, the top six steps to have an effective online press room are: 1. Make your press room easy to find 2. Press release index 3. PR Contacts 4. Photos, images and video 5. Background Information 6. Press Clips and Press Coverage Page