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The rise of tablets.

Tablets have become a success in faster casual and casual-dining restaurant and seem to be better for all around service. Customers like how fast they are able to order, servers are happier because they see a trend of getting more tips at the end of the night, and businesses are profitable because less servers on shift and more profit in business pockets. People tend to spend more money with games to play and ability to order more food in less time. There is a benefit for data collecting on experience at the restaurant as well that helps the companies out on what they need to focus on. Tablets are showing great promise and will most likely be on almost all casual dining tables.

AI has become a very useful tool in the hospitality industry and continues to grow in this community. It has become useful in many different industries such as hotels, restaurants, and even at home on our computers. This study showed AI in many different areas of the world and how people respond to robots and AI helping them with simple tasks such as running food, checking them into their hotel room, and answering questions. The hospitality industry has been developing this type of technology for some time now and it has been getting positive feedback for the most part. Technology can be a very useful tool to this industry when utilized right.

Thank you very much for sharing this article on Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics in travel, hospitality and leisure, it was indeed quite informative. What I thought was very interesting is how the various perspectives of robotics were focused on; from the customers' perspective, the firm's perspective, and the governance's perspective. Consequently, providing a much wider understanding of the benefits of the adaptation of robotics and AI, in general. Further, I learned about the term "Smart Tourism." Nice post!

This is one step closer to creating a virtual experience for hotel guests entirely. This article is about a completely automatic system that delivers guests their room service needs quickly and virtually. This machine is called "Butler" and is considered to be a virtual room service that has changing menus for food and saves much time for people that would be doing that now. They, later on, plan on having the system be able to deliver drinks and much more. According to recent surveys taken by the hotel, these services has had much positive feedback.

This article talks about different aspects of a online event planning solution. It can customized with the clients with different needs. You will have a strong technology partner. It also allows attendee management.  The last and the most thins is that it can easily help to market the events. 

The first and last impression upon guest check in/out process plays a critical role in guest satisfaction and experience. Throughout the hospitality industry, the Valet department is the first and last department guests interact when they pick up or drop off their car. This article offer some technology and software that the hotel industries can use to enhance guest Valet experience. One of the major problem Valet department face is locating the car and the car keys when the guests come in to pick up their car. To reduce the traffic time that are spend in locating the car and car keys, this article recommend a hand held device that comes with a software suites to enhance guest wait time experience. The Valet attendant would enter guest information which will then transfer this information to the hotel wirelessly. Furthermore, this hand held device could scan the Car VIN number or license plates to eliminate error in typing information into the device. This device also remind Valet attendant to input the location of where the car was parked and confirm that the key are secure. I feel that this device will save Valet attendant time in serving the guests. Attendant will take less time in inputting the number of the license plate and can track the location of where the car was park easier and faster. An Automated parking access and revenue control system is also introduced in the article. This system helps parking facilities save money where guests can process their ticket at the pay station instead of having a cashier to process their ticket upon departures. Guests can pay the bill and leave without making any stop at the exit to make payment. This system will be great amenity for business traveler that have a limited time yet hotel should not use this system to cut labor expenses. Such system should be offer but guest should have the access to talk to a Valet attendant to obtain their bill and provide feedback about their Valet experience and overall hotel exper

TripAdvisor just launched the new TripAdvisor GreenLeaders program, which ranks hotels across the U.S. according to their engagement in environmentally-friendly practices like linen and towel re-use, recycling and composting, solar panel and electric car charging station implementation, and green roofing.

With TripAdvisor's launch of the new GreenLeaders program, it will help hoteliers as well as restaurants and other businesses increase their Green initiative commitment. I know for the Florida Green Lodging Certification, it is a simple, yet tedious, form to complete, covering many aspects that can help reduce waste of products, energy, and gasses. Thanks to a bill that was passed in the not-so-distant past, certain aspects of the government travel requires their selection of lodging and/or meeting facilities to be green. This is in an effort to encourage those changes in order to secure government business, as well as to encourage personal & leisure travel, government or not, to choose green facilities. The more we increase the demand for green properties, the more properties will seek to make the necessary changes and commitment. In addition, the application process changes periodically, increasing the information and steps necessary to become green. Through all of that, we will begin to notice bigger steps to be made to save our resources and our environment. TripAdvisor launching this program will only help in these efforts. Along with increasing efforts, the feedback will be a great tool for use when selecting how to make those changes. Sure, nothing is perfect and you will still have those that prefer the convenience instead of the overall "Save the Earth" way of life, but we will be able to see what is working and what may need to be adjusted a bit.

Harbortouch and Tabbedout have joined forces to develop a touch screen POS systems that can be pay by using your mobile phone. The POS system was developed to help business generate more revenue while increasing guest satisfaction. Tabbedout let restaurant know what are the frequent items guests love to order and these information help restaurant understand their guests more. In addition, Tabbedout let mobile user input any feedback about their dining experience. Both Tabbedout and Harbortouch help restaurant focus more on food quality and delivering their food to the dining table quicker. Tabbledout also give guests coupon to invite them again in the near future for another dining experience.

This article describes a new tool to measure and aid in guest satisfaction. Through a strategic partnership, Infor (a business application software company) enlists TrustYou (a market leader in online reputation management) to help create a system used to provide real-time access to positive and negative feedback from guest. There are three widgets designed to search through data and streamline them into summaries that hotels can use to enhance their customers experience. All information reported is current information, that way hotels can quickly respond to their guests. This technology is key in creating the best guest experience possible and it allows hotels to do so within a matter of minutes. The real time access feature would allow hotels an opportunity to turn a would be negative experience into a positive one. Hotels rely on "word of mouth" Marketing, especially with social networks, blogs and message boards becoming such a huge part of the daily exchange of information. We must admit, a lot of us value the opinions of our Twitter followers. It is vital for hotels to keep up with these different areas of communication so they can strategically position themselves in an ever growing and competitive market. They can address concerns immediately while at the same creating opportunities to build their brand. Hotels must utilize this advanced approach if they want to survive in this industry.

This article describes the infor company（a leading provider of business application software） and trust you（a market leader in online reputation management） built online reputation management software for hospitality industry. Hoteliers could access to the social senciment on a real time. From the customer's perspective, there are many factors related to choose a hotel form more than hundreds choices. Not only the hotel's facilities and services, but also the reputation on the internet will influnce customer's slection. Nowadays, with the rapid development of social networks, the senciment plays a great role in people's life. For example, in China, there is a web-site, named as "Quna". On that web-site, people share the travel information, rate the restaurants and hotes. The new travelers could get some ideas about the hotel choosing. Therefore, the hotel manager must pay attention to the public reputation management in time. Now, the hoteliers could access to the social senciment in real-time via a series of dashboard, embedded widgets. What's more, by this tool, the hotel employees could correction error, redeem hotel's reputation, improve customer satisfaction, and improve hotel's occupancy rate.

B4Checkin provides 'customized, revenue-maximizing online booking, communication and feedback software systems'. It was awarded 2012 Editors' Choice Award for Best New Technology for its mobile-friendly online check-in solution. The technology provides experience similar to prior online flight check-in. The technology is directly installed into Property Management System and Center Reservation System. It is user-friendly as well as efficient for hotel operations. It populates information from PMS and sends it to the guest 24 hours prior with an option to check-in online or upon arrival. THis allows for expedited check-in process and cutting labor expenses.

Stacked could have easily failed for being "ahead of its time" when it launched its cutting edge iPad ordering system last year in Southern California. From start to finish, the iPad's touch-screen technology allows customers to control their dining experience -- from delivery of the first drink to type of burger toppings to timing of the check.

Based on this article "Stacked" seems to have had great success with implementing the Ipad/eMenu type ordering in their establishment. I found this article to be very useful with the Q&A, addressing some of the major concerns with trying to adopt a similar system. One of the questions involved an older couple "shoing" the server away when offering ordering assistance. I had originally thought of that as a challenge, but when reading the answers, I discovered that it's not as big of an issue. It almost seems like a new challenge for customers to beat when faced with it the first few times. I have actually encouraged a friend of mine that lives in California to visit the restaurant and give me their feedback, I'm excited to hear the results when they come!

Increasingly, consumers expect their travel experiences to include the latest and greatest technologies that they experience in their daily lives. This is driving increased investment from hospitality (esp. hotelier) CIO's in digital customer engagement. Top technologies include virtual/augmented reality for consumers as training of employees; voice activation in hotel rooms and common areas as well as for coaching staff; mobile apps for booking, check-ins/check-outs, IRD orders, and front-desk communications, as well as back-end management of labor, inventory, and customer relations; RFID asset tracking; interactive displays; and robotics. All of these trends culminate in Innovation Incubator hotels like M Beta at Charlotte Marriott City Center where technologies are rapidly prototyped and guest feedback is provided in real-time to help drive decisions about which technologies represent the greatest value to cutting-edge hoteliers through guest engagement.

An article talks about very intelligent system created for the businesses and specifically for event and meeting planners, which calls for communication after the events and discussion of various topics such as how to improve the next projects.

Very nice idea, to exchange experience in order to make the service better. I wish it was used in many other spheres.

It is a really good idea.The ability to add guest to a hybrid network in a secure and controlled way helps company achieve our goal of connective a social community for sponsors, speakers and delegates around all our events that spans across the entire lifecycle in a very cost-effective manner.

I have found this creative system which is "innovation software" hotel PMS. Like the cloud-based PMS system, it is low cost and saves money. And it is also flexiable and simple to use. Which is more special it's that it has online training via its elearning portal which save time and money that all staff are fully competent in using the system. The most important reason for this system is that the SaaS is not like the others that the data is hosted locally at the hotel so if the internet is disconnected, the PMS system doesn't. This advantage is more pirior than the others because most of the cons for the other system will face this internet problem. And also, this system doesn't lock the company into a long-term contract which means it is possible to change or stop the contract if the hotels not satisfied with it. I think it is a good choice for the small hotels to choose. What's more, this system releases software to all clients every quarter, at the meanwhile, it would deeply value the clients feedback and use it. In its website, the client has the right to calculate the savings for detailed requirements. For instance you can enter the no. of the bedrooms and the average room rate, then the % commission charged on web bookings and so on. After you follow the fomula that it presented, it will calculate for you. It also has a online demo for free as long as you quickly sign up. And the clients are available to see clearly about all the services listed on the website. One of the service I want to mention is the ePOS integration which this software completely re-developed the way POS & PMS communicate with each other and eradicated the dreaded "Micro interface" standard. It's just like a wonderful package to deal with all the complex situations.

Unlike traditional collaborative software ventures which emphasize open communication across an entire organization, innovation management software is more selective in how different members of the company interact. It is ranked by reputation which reflect more accurate information.

In the highly competitive hospitality industry, it is the intangibles that encourage guests to spend more, provide positive feedback and return to the property in the future. The most powerful of these intangibles is service. No amount of hiring, training or incentives can ensure top-notch service if employees don't have appropriate systems providing information at their fingertips. In addition, as properties incorporate more services and amenities, the need to integrate these functions becomes increasingly challenging - and important. Here more and more hotels use the PMS, Property Management System. As we know, the PMS also has the function that developed to administer a seamless process in the management of a hotel's room inventory and audit, customer relations, as well as invoicing and billing, the Amadeus PMS features inter-hotel communication capability for hotel chains and an email confirmation facility. We compare PMS to the other system webrezpro. We find that the PMS is more and more comprehensive now. The functions of PMS are useful and improve day by day. Another important thing is that PMS links to GDS technology, which means PMS should collect the data more and more effective and quick. From the GDS system, the materials that GDS provides are in details which are very useful for PMS to deal with and save the time for hotel. From the view of manager, it means more gross profit for hotel.

This article talks about Hotel H2O and Amadeus, they have come together in order to operate the Amadeus Property Management System. This system was developed to manage the inventory of room and audit of a hotel, as well as customer relations, invoicing and billing. The General Manager of the Hotel H2O mentions "We have conducted an extensive survey of the various hotel property management systems available in the market and have come to the conclusion that the Amadeus Property Management System (PMS) best meets Hotel H2O's requirements. With the growing sophistication and demands of hotel guests, the Amadeus PMS will enable us to properly cater to our guests' needs and provide them with the unique experience that only Hotel H2O can offer". Amadeus is the system that global travel and tourism industry chose to partner transactions processor. The company delivers distribution and technology solutions to assist its customers in the fast changing industry.

Hotel lock vendor SSA ABLOY launched a four-month pilot at the Clarion Hotel Stockholm. The program can allow hotel to send hotel room key directly to guests' mobile phones before arrival.  With the mobile key, hotel guests can check-in and out using their mobile phones.  In addition of increasing guest experience, mobile phone can also increase security, it allows hotel to revoked the key and reissue. At the same time, decreasing using of physical cards can save the environment. 

To know who your guests are and what they like is definitely a competitive strategy for hotels. From this article, there're tons of Apps working to assist and improve Customer Relationship Management system. According to what I searched, infusionsoft is very time consuming and team initiative to customize properly. It's hard to make each application perfect but the purpose behind them is clear: to communicate with customers as more as we can. Those Apps make teams spread across large distances (and businesses set in one location) to collaborate on leads, contacts, discussions and other items and make this extremely simple to do. So being able to collaborate on more aspects of your daily operations is much more beneficial to overall sales and customer experiences. Some applications bring collaboration to a few narrow aspects of CRM, some bring collaboration to the center of the app, and regardless if you're managing other aspects of your business through software you will need to find ways to collaborate on that as well. Many companies accomplish this by using a variety of applications, but it absolutely brings integration issues and high monthly bills. So a lot of helpful solutions are center collaboration with a feature-consolidating environment across a variety of aspects of business management software. WORKetc is a business management app that combines CRM, PM, Finances (expenses, invoicing, etc) and help desk software into one - and brings collaboration to all of these aspects. Thus, it's essential to collaborate them wisely instead of combining as more as possible.

Reservation Nexus is a reservation system for bed and breakfasts and inns. It has quickly become the system to beat in the hotel software arena with a fresh approach to online reservations, guest management and automated marketing, bed and breakfasts, inns, hotels and lodges will have many advantages such as increasing reservation, more time, freedom and profit. It helps hotels to offer customers a better service when feedback, such like sending a blessing email for customer's birthday, a thank letter after customer check out, and offering the travel map before customer come to hotel. All of these are automatic. In other words, this is Automated Marketing, which revolves around capturing and utilizing guest information. Reservation nexus holds a spirit of Red Carpet Service, a popular service spirit in US, they treat hotel just like hotel treat customers, kindly, patient, and professional. Besides, it can save money for hotels, it updates itself instead paying to update. It is providing on-line non-downloadable software to store, manage, track, analyze, and report reservation data. By some settings, Reservation Nexus can eliminate time consuming tasks for hotels to manage business and customers. Making it easy for guests to book online means more reservations, Reservation nexus did this.