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Article discussing the challenges and benefits that Chinese hospitality companies are dealing with when implementing cloud solutions. There are a couple examples of this process from hotels and an airline.

Super important and relevant article about how big brother is watching us

IHG launched Guest Reviews and Ratings for each of its seven existing hotel brand websites in Chinese, English, German and Spanish. For customers, this service gives online customers the convenience of reading authentic customer feedback while bookend their stays. For hotels, this service can verify the guests who really stayed in IHG's hotels and gave an unbiased review for recent stay.  IHG is always at the forefront of online booking in this industry. it was the first hotel to introduce online booking system in 1995. In 2002 IHG pioneered Best Price Guaranteed. 

Because of increasing demand, China has been one of the fastest developing markets for Meru--an American wireless network provider. The company expects that its revenues in the Asia-Pacific region will double in the next two to three years. The company thinks that China's education industry could be a safe place to find profits and the rapid-growing hospitality industry in China is likely to become another gold mine. It is estimated that China's five-star hotels could exceed 1000 by 2015. However, China has a habit of adopting its own communication standards so that overseas communication network providers seem to have trouble adapting to the different industry standards. Therefore, Meru has reached a decision to cooperate with China's telecom carriers to better develop the market.

Why invest in mid-range/ business hotels? Marriott hotel administration is expanding its business and deciding to grow up to 105,000 rooms worldwide by 2014. Their project is to open one hotel in china per month for the next 3 years to a total of 100 properties across 40 Chinese markets. Marriott plans to hire 30,000 employees by the end of 2015 in china. This will be a great stimulus for the Chinese economy.

Restaurateur's evaluation of machines purchased in move to automate noodle making process in business units owned. Owner reports that machines are working proficiently and cost of ownership provides good ROI vs human wages. Also mentioned were projected cost advantages achieved through greater economies of scale vs variable cost that would be incurred utilizing human-based alternative.

Foodservice automation technology: Robot Serves Up 360 Hamburgers Per Hour | http://bit.ly/18p0HoW SushiBot Serves Up An Order Of 3,600 Per Hour | http://bit.ly/14gEmg3 Foodservice automation technology issues: Fast food strikes NYC | http://nbcnews.to/175TET1

Noodle Power Rangers! Only thing I am worry about is the sanitation standards, not to mention you have no idea what goes inside that noodle dough mix. Other than that, cute little robot with automation technology in food production.

The almighty smartphone. Worldwide study, spanning different continents shows a commonality between peoples, and the importance of a smart-device i.e. phone, tablet etc. in their travels.

This short but sweet article gets straight to the point. It discusses a world wide study that was carried out spanning different continents shows a commonality between peoples, and the importance of a smart-device i.e. phone, tablet etc. in their travels. Demographics included; Chinese, Japanese, American, British and Mexican to name a few. The mobile smart phone was found to be "the single most indispensable item [travellers] carry with them, ahead of their toothbrush, deodorant and driver's license."

This article addresses a main point, "cloud computing is a growing sector". it further accents the economic factor in cloud computing and the need for capital for its maintenance and viability. The article specifically speaks to the limitation of providers due to the high cost required for its implementation. Specifically, where it says " given", the substantial upfront capital needed to be competitive in the field, addresses directly the point that only large developers with deep pockets will be able to not only enter this arena, but also sustain themselves in it. The article also makes a compelling point which is not contradictory , but thought provoking which is that although it is expensive and there is extensive competition, the market and the need is "huge". This means that potentially regardless of the resources it takes to start up, there will be a demand and need for cloud computing services in the future, particularly as more entities refrain and stay away from development and maintenance of their own in house services. The article focuses on the largest players in the sector which one expect are the tech giants; Amazon, Microsoft and Google and the fact that they have a two thirds of market share in the present day, which is a lions share of the market by any standards. The article further discusses this sector in foreign markets and the effect economies such as the Chinese economies will have on these sectors, and in fact addresses how instability in Asian markets directly affect the stability of cloud computing domestically. This is a key area to watch in the future.

Since China has joint WTO, China promise to open its market to foreign companies one by one. Although the foreigner companies know that Chinese business environment has huge difference from the western countries, all of them want to get into China and want a piece of pie of this huge market. In the report, the three GDS-Abacus, Travelport and Amadeus-have a positive opinion of the business future in China.

E-commerce has been going through a faster, sustainable and overwhelming developing era, particularly in China. Within over 450 million of people using internet to communicate, China has been potential to lead the development of E-commerce and E-business. This article talks about 3 proven strategies helping China to well improve the E-commerce industry which are to build our own networks, outsource to third-party providers and form partnerships or acquire existing firms. i do believe these kind of methods will boost a brand new ending for our E-commerce development.

As indicated in the title, this article is about the once in a lifetime deal between HRG and TravelSky. This collaboration is quite advantageous to both parties since HRG is a prestigious international provider of corporation services and TravelSky happens to be the preferred GDS provider in China. Traditionally, the booking of travel in China has been a manual process for users. However, this integration will provide clients with convenience and cost effectiveness thanks to the CRS technology. Travelers will be able to access real-time information and wide search criteria - which in return will guarantee an increase in productivity and overall winning formula for all parties involved.

Surface interactive table is very popular in recently years. It is a technology that through glass capacitive touch screen. The technology is used to capture guests touch on acrylic surface. This kind of interactive table could be included games, internet and communication to offer a complete interactive experience. Guests can pass by, touch or approach the screen to activate the system and the content will start immediately when guests use finger to point the device. The technology has a lot of methods to use. The screen not only can click, double-click but also rollover, multi-touch. Because some users are use the same screen for meeting, playing game and organizing, the interactive table has a lot of ways to use even to perform activities which use two hands in parallel. If the hotel has this technology, it is really a surprise. The businessmen will use it for meeting and communication. The children use it to play games together and the travelers are likely to design maps, mark destination and organize their tourism.

In the hotel that I used to work in Down Town Miami they have two surface interactive tables. Guests love them! As you mentioned before they play games such as chess, Chinese checkers, and you can play the piano too. You can also check for directions, listen music, and look for information. I know there is a restaurant in Orlando that have Surface interactive tables too, it would be nice to check it out.

That is a great idea that Paris is putting into practice. For only 199 Euros which is around $256 dollars you can get a room like that, I will totally do it! Comparing rooms here in South Beach that are much more expensive and do not have The Eiffel Tower as the view, that is a great deal. And, they are just testing this concept for 3 months and if they see that the demand is high enough they will keep it for longer. This, at the end will result with higher profit and product differentiation. Customers will love it!

Microsoft is releasing in October 2012 the new version of the most popular computer operating system Windows 8. This new feature is not only for laptops or desktops, it is mainly focusing on touch screen devices. Lenovo also unveiled their Lenovo Yoga hybrid. This computer allows you to tuck the keyboard flat behind the screen and transform the device into a tablet shape, it can rotate 360 degrees. Windows 8 allows you to put your favorite app such as Facebook or Twitter into the start screen, you can add more apps, customize them and it refreshes constantly so the information stays current.

The director of the Trade Service Division of China's Ministry of Commerce, named Di Jiankai, stated by media of China that nation is going to create 10,000 green hotels by the year of 2012. When I was working on my ecological part of remote environment analysis for another courses, I realized that "Go green" is so much important today even every nations are thinking about it, not only China. As we all know, pollution has been becoming one of the most significant issues in the world, such as CO2 emission, overuse of water, energy using by fuel fossil and so on. By different kinds of pollutions, hospitality industry, especially hotels, have to take more into consideration about the pollution trends and have to think more about the impacts from those pollutions. In my opinion, hotels have to pay more for new eco-technology. However, since "go green" will attract more guests, which means lots consumers come to the hotel just because its "eco-label" or "eco-brand". In this article, Gong Ping also said that not only decorations outside, even the materials using inside should change to be green. For instance, the bath tubs, which is more popular if it is organic.

This article is about touch-screen use in restaurants.

Great idea but not new... Sakae Sushi Chain here in Singapore installed flat screen monitors with mouse on each table in their 36 outlets, and that's way before iPad came out. They have upgraded all to iPad now. http://www.ipadforums.net/chinese-dedicated-ipad-forum/46640-excuse-me-menu-please.html

Dear friends, i thought that this might be interesting for you to know. Did you know that our favorite Netflix wasn't the first online DVD subscription service? It was a Blockbuster . com :) And the fact that people will mostly shop online? 192 million in the USA! (I' honestly like shopping outside, so this way i can smell, touch, and try; although eBay is doing pretty good job by selling cheap Chinese stuff and having a free shipping. You can not even return the package , because it's 3 times more expensive to return than the original cost! ) What do you think? Thanks

This article highlight how robotics can be used to have consistency in staff across multiple markets while also addressing the shortage of qualified applicants in todays competitive market. As time goes forward efficiency and reliability of robotic workers and AI will become ever more prevalent and emerging products like the ones in this article are very good examples of the direction and trends of staffing in the future.