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Apple has made an announcement regarding the release of the iPhone 5 this Friday September 15.  How does this affect hospitality?  With all of the enhancements that apple has pressed forward with this new iPhone, hospitality will feel pressure to adapt and change with the times and you nailed it, they will have to continue to buy new tech.  If apple is able to make their iPhone 18% thinner and 20% lighter while making it larger and more durable, the hospitality industry will have to respond in their own tech.  Also, this new technology enables hospitality firms to direct their efforts more effectively with better tech.

This article deals with the recent announcement (although in the view of many an illegal announcement) of the Obama administrations one year delay in the employer mandate until January 1, 2015. This announcement leaves still leaves in place the individual mandate. The reason for the delay was to provide time to adapt health coverage and reporting systems while employers are moving toward making health coverage affordable and accessible for their employees. However, there are many points in the ACA that will still go into effect as listed in the highlighted sections of this article. Several business groups are commenting on the delay and providing further direction such as the United Benefit Advisors. The UBA group has posted a listing on what actually has been delayed and what remains a requirement. All groups agree that the added time will give business some breathing room while companies continue to decipher the actual effects and requirements of the ACA. Either way now that the bill is passed and signed into law one thing is for certain, the smoke has cleared and none or the promises made by the administration of what the bill would do are true.

This article is talking about a distribution system called Amadeus. It gives agents easy access to a hotel listing and view its multiple offers from different source, which is similar to Google hotel finder. however, a day after the announcement of this system, HRS announcing to all hotel partners a commission increase from 13% to 15%

Google made several announcements at a developer conference that could bring drastic changes to event technology, both in the immediate future and further down the line. One of Google's latest gadgets is Google Glass. There has been much talk about both it's functionality and its detractors. However, it is highly functional for events. It allows you to scan tickets upon entry and it also allows you the ability to send a live feed of the event. This is advantageous for those who want to go to events but are not able to attend in person, for whatever reason and is ideal for Google Plus hangout integration. Google also announced that Youtube Live (live streaming on Youtube) would be available to all partners in good standing. Before, live-streaming on Youtube was only available to certain partners. So Glass now has greater potential to be used by more partners to live stream to Youtube. Lastly, Google planted sensors all around the convention center where the conference took place, and collected data (temperature, humidity, light, pressure (including nearby footfalls), motion, air quality and both RF and ambient noise) to study the crowd and how they moved around the conference. Crowd management and control is a delicate issue and this technology could give real time data into what the crowd is doing.

The article talks about one of the most popular provider of pricing and revenue management for hospitality industry, which announced today a new pricing system -IDea. It offers effective and affordable pricing to any hotel. System is well-known by simplified and intuitive approach and requires minimum training and interaction to learn and operate the system.

Unattended POS is growing global trend which industry leaders will soon have to adapt in their business place. Quick service restaurants are quickly adapting to this change as it reduces wait time and increase in customer return rate. Other key benefits for businesses are the decrease in labor costs & minimal errors when processing guests' request. Ideally, merchants must speak with vendors to customize the self-service kiosk and to ensure they are in compliance. In the end this will expand revenue and efficiency.

Unattended POS machines hit a global growth of $9.22 billion in 2018 from 2017, and is still climbing. The unattended POS machine has shown to be particular popular in the quick service restaurant sector. McDonald's has announced a plan to put 1,000 self-service kiosks in their stores per quarter. Taco bell and Subway have also announced they will be adding the kiosks in their stores as an initiative to offer a heightened customer experience. The machines have come with the benefits of reduced wait time and faster customer turnover. POS growth is attributed to aligning with today's consumers' expectations. Customers value their time and rising labor costs can be eased with the machine as it expedites transactions and covers tasks not relied on by human interaction.

This past weekend, I was lucky enough to attend the New York City Food and Wine Festival Burger Bash.  This large scale event held 300 people and utilized 28 burger places to demonstrate their burger might.  The technology they used was interesting.  They first had ticket scanners that corresponded with bracelets, clearing you for admission.  They gave everyone coins to vote in a process that would declare the Burger champion.  On stage, they had many microphones, with a whole band rocking out.  They used ID scanners to check how old people are.  I think that this event utilized effectively technology, but only used somewhat dated means due to their relaxed nature.  It was highly successful, but in terms of tech, very simplistic.

I found this article on artificial intelligence (AI) - unfortunately the article did not mention how much companies are investing into AI, but that more and more are integrating it into their software/apps. It's stated that they are investing into AI technology to interact with clients, and to help streamline operations. To give a few examples, in the last couple of months, Mezi for Business announced that they would launch Mezi, an AI virtual travel assistant. Kayak also announced that one is now able to book hotel rooms through the Amazon Echo device with the help of Alexa, Amazon Echos' virtual personal assistant which previously only offered search functions. An interesting number that the article does mention in my opinion, was that if a travel agent was doing 1,000 bookings a month, the travel agent would now be able to do 5,000 a month.

This blog article relates to the merger between Mariott and Starwood Hotels. For decades Starwood hotels had been investing in a technology transformation program to move Starwood properties from their old mainframe technology to a more modern reservation system called Valhalla. Valhalla is an all in one system and manages reservations, call center, eCommerce Web, Property management and Rev mgmt systems. One would expect Mariott to migrate their current properties to Starwoods PMS however this was not the case. After the merger Mariott announced that they would be migrating the 1200 acquired Starwood properties to their reservation system. I don't understand why Mariott would do this as this would be a backward move. It's a bit strange because their purchase price for Starwood factored in a $500 million Starwood IP technology value which was not owned by Mariott.

Sam Colt wrote an article for Business Insider titled Tablets Are Making Waiters Obsolete - An Chilli's Is Leading The Way. This article bothered me a bit, because knowing what I know about Hospitality we build our brand around customer service and customer satisfaction and how can we do that if we are eliminating the person to person interaction. In his article Colt mentioned Chili's "has recently introduced tablets in dining rooms nationwide that customers can use to place orders, browse the menu, and entertain otherwise noisy children". I understand the thought behind keeping your guests entertain while they wait for service; however, I believe it should be just that, entertainment not self-service. Dine in restaurants should not be treated like a fast food restaurant and guests should expect a reasonable wait time. Having that person to person interaction makes a dining experience more enjoyable. E la Carte co-founder and CEO Rajat Suri argued "if someone does not want to spend time with a server, they're going to ignore the server anyways." My thoughts are why would you dine in a restaurant if you do not want to be severed, why not go to a fast food restaurant. Chili's states the tablets are solely for increasing customer satisfaction and increase revenue and suggests the tablets are making the life of waiters better.

This article highlights the importance of announcing a security breach quickly, and explains the argument on whether it needs to be carefully analyzed before releasing the breach. It explains the importance of releasing the understanding of a hack as quickly as possible to maintain people's information (i.e. bank information) safe.

This article discusses the new partnership between Hotel Software companies RMS and M3. RMS is one of the industry's leading cloud-based property management systems, meanwhile, M3 is a hotel accounting software. Also, a cloud-based software, M3, was created by hoteliers, for hoteliers. This partnership creates a new level of immersion for properties that adopt the two platforms. Unrivaled communication between the two systems would generate more detailed reports and analysis combing the two largest databases used on property: the property management system and the accounting software system.

RMS and M3 announced the cooperation to launch the cloud-base financial platform. This system will be able to integrate and transmit property management data from RMS and daily key financial data and property statistics of the M3 platform to help companies make more accurate decisions.

This article announces the global collaboration between Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Inc. This collaboration is going to allow the Wyndham to upgrade their infrastructure tech and deliver an entirely new way to experience customer service. What I found to be very interesting, besides Wyndham being 90% cloud based, was that AWS is going to help the hotelier develop a new way for guest to automate check-in and leverage AWS partner to deliver customized offers. It will be able to recommend local attractions, restaurants, and entertainment.

InteSolv, a provider for high-impact technology consulting strategies and customized business solutions, announced their new custom Web Event Management service for existing PGi Adobe Connect customers. Customers are able to choose from a variety of services to best fit their needs: event planning, seminar room set-up, audio provisioning, presenter training and coaching, campaign reporting, etc. In order to maximize conversion, the InteSolv solution allows customers to customize their message while InteSolv manages the administrative/technical traits. 

Makesoneplans.com is a site that utilizes social media to connect prospective clients with vendors. This allows a person or group of people to easily become their own event planner.

Cvent and Destination Marketing Association have joined as alliance partners. This was announced in January 2013. According to DMAI, Cvent will provide meeting professionals with more educational opportunities and promote the use of destination marketing organizations. The purpose of promoting DMOs is to show they can be the a point of contact. DMAI supports this because they are looking to support the meeting community and advocate why DMOs are a valuable source for meeting professionals to go to directly. With this alliance, CVENT has integrated information from the empowerMINT website by DMI into its own Destination Guide. DMAI foresees this will help meeting professionals quicken searches during the RFP process. Added to the Cvent website is a new feature to the RFP process which allows planners to add DMOs and CVBs on every RFP they send. After reading the article I found this to be an interesting alliance because I think both organizations will be able to help each other make meeting professional's lives easier. Cvent is a popular program in the events industry since it allows you to fill out one RFP and send it to multiple companies over the internet. DMOs are important part of the industry, which can help a planner plan an event in an unknown destination or provide contact information for additional venues or products. Integrating information will allow meeting professionals to save time but still be able to focus on the event. An important area I believe it promotes is the use of DMOs, which makes it more convenient for people to find DMOs in specific regions. DMOs have a great impact on the event because they know the region, especially if a meeting planner is not from the area. Ultimately this alliance will help further the important value DMOs bring to the meeting community.

Aptech Computer Systems INC announced four hotel companies have selected Aptech's financial solutions software. All four of these hotel companies represent 17 properties that mange their own hotels. This software is a fully integrated accounting system that has business intelligence and focuses on hotels in the hospitality industry. Aptech can either host the system, or the client or a third party can. The system also helps to maintain data security, maintenance, and updates. This is one of the most widely used Business Intelligence systems throughout the industry. I think the idea of accounting software for hotels in the hospitality industry is important because there are different aspects to hotels than other businesses. A hotel sells an experience instead of a product, so there are different focuses when working on an accounting statement. The system can help a hotel focus on what only pertains to them instead of other businesses. I find the system to be interesting and useful because it can help accountants' only focus on hotel related business.

Mobile digital payment company Square announced today on its blog that it will begin selling a "Business in a Box" solution that will act as a full point-of-sale system for iPad-toting business owners. The hardware package starts at $299 and includes two Square Readers, a Heckler Design WindFall iPad Stand, and an APG Vasario 1616 Cash Drawer (as pictured above).