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Switching to the cloud from a client server platform pays off with a big drop in both the initial capital outlay and the ongoing operating costs for the property management and other systems.

pects of a franchisee’s business, from guest check-ins and housekeeping services to billing and finances. Over time new features have been rolled into the software platform making it more robust and useful for hotel owners—it’s currently distributed in eight countries and available in four languages. And while plenty of cloud-based PMS packages are now available from third-party vendors like Micros, Maestro, and RoomKey, Choice’s internal solution has garnered its fair share of attention. “We had been getting knocks on the door from IT vendors at other hotel companies and individual Choice franchisees that own other brands, saying they were interested in our product,” says Pacious, “So we set up a new division so we could take a look at other opportunities we could develop.” This led the company to launch SkyTouch last year, a new division that develops and markets cloud-based software solutions to hotels inside and outside the Choice system. Pages: 1 2 3 4 2013-06-18 Sean Downey !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })(); (function() { var li = document.createElement('script'); li.type = 'text/javascript'; li.async = true; li.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https:' : 'http:') + '//platform.stumbleupon.com/1/widgets.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(li, s); })(); inShare0 Related Articles attachment-3

his led the company to launch SkyTouch last year, a new division that develops and markets cloud-based software solutions to hotels inside and outside the Choice system. Pages: 1 2 3 4 2013-06-18 Sean Downey !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })(); (function() { var li = document.createElement('script'); li.type = 'text/javascript'; li.async = true; li.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https:' : 'http:') + '//platform.stumbleupon.com/1/widgets.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(li, s); })(); inShare0 Related Articles Hotel Market Insight: Cleveland a

This led the company to launch SkyTouch last year, a new division that develops and markets cloud-based software solutions to hotels inside and outside the Choice system.

The app works by giving the user a list of all available hotels in the immediate area of the device which have same-day availability, with a two-step process if the user wishes to book from the handset.

Booking.com says it secured $1 billion in transactions via mobile devices in 2011

Validation of the marketplace for same-day bookings via mobile devices was illustrated again last November when HotelTonight secured Series B funding to the tune of $9 million in a round led by Battery Ventures.

Sabre Travel Network, for example, saw an increase of more than 7% in its GDS bookings during the first quarter of 2012 over the same period last year

“And it’s a steady trend that’s gone up over the last several years,”

Many hoteliers are attempting to leverage those increases in demand through dynamic pricing models, which offers clients a percentage off a hotel’s best available rate on each travel date as opposed to a fixed, negotiated rate for the year

But that does not mean leisure travelers are not using the GDS as well.

“If they are shopping online with (the OTAs), then they are using the GDS

Indeed, overall demand has increased from both leisure and corporate travelers

Corporate travel demand is primarily responsible for that uptick

“Hotels that have typically had a negotiated rate for each corporation can actually work better with corporations with dynamic rates, as long as they are able to ensure they are giving that corporation access to whatever the deal of the day is

One of the trends she is seeing in the GDS channel is the increase of combined business and leisure trips

“Insurance companies are also pushing today that (companies) know where their employees are,” which the GDS facilitates,

There’s more opportunities for hotels to put promotions, put leisure opportunities on there … It enables hotels to really take value of the GDS.”

More and more, Kennedy is seeing corporate account managers ask: “What would you offer our travelers for their weekend stay if they wanted to stay longer or extend?” “What can you offer for group rates?”

The GDS is not going away any time soon because of the unique solutions it provides for hotels and travelers alike

For instance, it is better-suited to handle incredibly large look-to-book ratios

The GDS also provides enhanced marketing support

Although these and other benefits will continue to attract hoteliers’ inventory, Cole said the GDS would provide additional value if distribution costs were lowered

Travel-management companies are coming up with many security reporting and informative ways to show corporations where people are at any point in time, which can be important for insurance purposes

. “People are traveling for business in parts of the world and extending it to stay for leisure.”

The pricing model provides corporations with a lower rate when demand decreases but also gives hoteliers the opportunity to achieve higher rates when demand increases, Kennedy said. “It’s a win-win for both sides.”

Many hoteliers are attempting to leverage those increases in demand through dynamic pricing models, which offers clients a percentage off a hotel’s best available rate on each travel date as opposed to a fixed, negotiated rate for the year,

Corporate travel demand is primarily responsible for that uptick

Sabre Travel Network, for example, saw an increase of more than 7% in its GDS bookings during the first quarter of 2012 over the same period last year,

there is a risk that firms focus too much on one particular channel at the expense of others

what the industry really needs to do now is focus on how the customer got to that point, how they moved through and interacted with each channel, and what role each channel played in getting the customer to book.

Big data, personalization, and being relevant is key in the marketing battle.

marketers need to identify those channels that are helping to drive more conversions, or can influence the conversion funnel.

Increasingly, revenue management needs to integrate with all the disciplines – sales, marketing, channel optimization, loyalty marketing, and operations.

China, where the number of outbound tourists rose by 70% in the first 6 months of 2012.

India, Brazil, and Russia are growing,

By 2020, about 50 million Indians are expected to travel overseas, according to estimates drawn up by Tourism Australia, which has been actively targeting this market.

Enable your staff to enter and view information for specific properties and locations, without giving them access to the financials of other locations or the entire business.

Track real-time performance centrally and across all of your locations. View your information by individual location, by groups of locations, by concept, by region—or by any other dimensions you use to measure performance

The reference is also encoded in a ticket's barcode as well as on baggage tags, which security experts have noted essentially makes it a public passcode.

With that information in hand, it's possible to access someone else's booking information using the booking reference number and the last name of a passenger. From there, an attacker could change meal preferences and seats, fraudulently claim frequent flyer miles, update email addresses and phone numbers and cancel flights.

Global distribution systems, such as the one run by Amadeus and other booking software providers, including Sabre and Travelport, date back decades. But their software has been woven into web services that lack proper security controls

GDSs do not offer a first authentication factor. Instead, the booking code (aka PNR Locator, a 6-digit alphanumeric string such as 8EI29V) is used to access and change travelers' information."

Given only passengers' last names, their booking codes can be found over the Internet with little effort."

“In our society, we always have to have the new, best product,” said Aaron Blum, the co-founder and chief operating officer of ERI, on a tour of the facility

5G promises faster speeds and other benefits. But experts say it will also result in a dramatic increase in e-waste, as millions of smartphones, modems and other gadgets incompatible with 5G networks are made obsolete

But less than a quarter of all U.S. electronic waste is recycled, according to a United Nations estimate. The rest is incinerated or ends up in landfills

Environmental concerns aside, compacting flammable lithium-ion batteries with paper recycling can be dangerous; recycling centers have reported an uptick in fires

Even when e-waste rules exist, it’s left up to consumers to handle their old devices prop

ly. But recycling them can be a

We don’t necessarily have the measures to make sure people aren’t throwing it away,” Walters said.

One solution is to make electronics last as long as they once did. At ERI’s facility, Shegerian showed TIME dozens of televisions from the 1970s and 1980s that stopped working only recently

Our products today don’t last as long as they used to, and it’s a strategy by manufacturers to force us in

o shorter and shorter upgrade cycles,” said Kyle Wiens, the founder of iFixit

Some environmental groups say multibillion-dollar companies like Apple and Samsung should pick up the cost of recycling the devices they sell. Lawmakers in parts of Europe and Canada and in some U.S. states have passed so-called Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws, which require manufacturers to establish and fund systems to recycle or collect obsolete products

Even so, some companies are increasing their recycling efforts on their own, whether for the economic benefit or the public relations boost (mining fresh materials has financial, environmental and human costs of its own). For instance, Apple in 2018 introduced Daisy, a smartphone-recycling robot that can take apart 200 iPhones every hour, and says it diverted 48,000 metric tons of electronic waste from landfills that year

About 6 million lb. of discarded electronics are already processed monthly at recycling giant ERI’s Fresno plant.

Americans spent $71 billion on telephone and communication equipment in 2017, nearly five times what they spent in 2010 even when adjusted for inflation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. (Apple alone sold 60 million iPhones domestically last year, according to Counterpoint Research.)

That stream is expected to turn into a torrent as the world upgrades to 5G, the next big step in wireless technology.

Part of the problem is regulatory. Only 19 states have laws banning electronics from the regular trash. In states without such rules, like Nevada, electronics often end up in garbage and recycling bins, said Jeremy Walters, a community-relations manager for waste collector Republic Services

Our products today don’t last as long as they used to, and it’s a strategy by manufacturers to force us into shorter and shorter upgrade cycles,”

A variety of interesting newer selling models including tingo.com, backid.com, guestmob.com and hallst.com, can be categorized in a consumer discount group

Over the last few years, social media has emerged as a new “channel,” impacting guest satisfaction, OTA channel conversations, brand evaluations and revenue.

Now with the emerging social-media channels, user-generated content effects not just brand perception but also revenues.

The company used more third-party vendors than usual, which helps margins but cuts down drastically in revenue.

The world's largest online retailer has also been using promotions such as the Amazon Prime program, where customers can pay $79 a year to receive unlimited two-day shipping. The offer draws customers to the site, but over a busy holiday season, the shipping costs hit the retailer hard.

lower demand than it expected for video game sales and European currency fluctuations

A lot of people underestimate the profit of the e-book. You don't have to pay money for delivering or printing, so you can get tremendous revenue,"

Last week’s groundbreaking for a new solar micro grid at Fort Hunter Liggett, Calif., is the latest example of a military “going green” -– saving environmental resources and taxpayer dollars, too.

The 1-megawatt facility, to become operational later this year, will provide one-third of the power for the nation’s largest Army Reserve training post, and ultimately it will save $1 million in energy costs annually,

The concept caught on quickly, expanding to more than 30 Army installations, including posts in Germany, Alaska and Hawaii. Now, the Army hopes to take it a step further with net-zero energy, waste and water initiatives. Several pilot programs are expected to be announced during next week’s Earth Day observance.

It didn’t take long to recognize that conserving resources saved money that could be used for infrastructure upgrades and new facilities

Costs largely drove that decision.

It also involves working as partners with communities -- those directly on the installation as well as beyond its gates -- to pursue environmental goals.

It didn’t take long to recognize that conserving resources saved money that could be used for infrastructure upgrades and new facilities.

Last week’s groundbreaking for a new solar micro grid at Fort Hunter Liggett, Calif., is the latest example of a military “going green” -– saving environmental resources and taxpayer dollars, too.

Meanwhile, the Army Reserve has joined “big Army” in expanding this focus to the operational force.

He adds that companies should also monitor for leaks of the data.

a dark web monitoring specialist, says this kind of incident can be avoided by regularly checking who has access to cloud-based servers:

“confident that no financial, payment card or password data was involved in this matter."

“This incident also highlights the importance of speed when mitigating digital risk; watermarking data with unique synthetic identities can enable organizations to detect these threats immediately and be the first to find out if their data is available online, before someone else does. Setting up email listeners for these watermark identities can detect a breach before the data is shared online, if the hacker is testing for valid addresses.”

advises that the same security levels for data on premise need to be in place for what is stored in the cloud.

It’s a near-universal challenge for enterprises: the move to hybrid environments and more complex, fragmented networks makes it even harder to keep control. Without consistent policies you can pretty soon have a tangle of security gaps and compliance violation

A modern property management solution must evolve alongside guest expectations.

Modern, cloud-based PMS are capable of automating certain back-office tasks (such as reporting, which we discussed earlier).

The right PMS is the one that plays well with your existing tech stack. Without the necessary integrations, a PMS cannot perform its functions correctly

Streamlined reporting allows management to spend time on more pressing priorities.

When a vendor manages an attractive price, but without reliable support, it’s usually not worth the small savings. Inevitably, systems go down -- and often, the outage occurs during peak usage.

The trade-off of short-term savings is rarely worth the long-term reputational damage, staff stress, and missed revenue opportunities related to poor customer service and downtime.

When a vendor manages an attractive price, but without reliable support, it’s usually not worth the small savings. Inevitably, systems go down -- and often, the outage occurs during peak usage. The trade-off of short-term savings is rarely worth the long-term reputational damage, staff stress, and missed revenue opportunities related to poor customer service and downtime.

Additionally, when assessing PMS software solutions, it's important to consider the cloud-based functionality, real-time occupancy, automation, and revenue management capabilities that can improve your hotel business operations and guest services.

Businesses and organizations are rapidly adopting more cloud-based services in their daily operations. This means automatic failover capability and uninterrupted network access have shifted from being merely valuable to being absolutely vital to keeping services running around-the-clock.

do your homework, and find a failover router that's right for your company

They also are looking for deals on hotels' social networks. According to a Google/Shopper Sciences study released in December, 48% of social network users follow travel brands to learn about promotions and sales.

Mobile writes a similar story for restaurants. People who are seeking a restaurant at the last moment tend to be your younger customers, and they simply expect the technology to be there.

A study by the National Restaurant Association confirms that these mobile guests are checking out customer review sites as they make their choices.

Customer reviews are also important to the hotel industry, but the jury is still out on exactly how hotels should interact with people who post reviews.

The hospitality industry and its allied businesses will continue to expand their interaction with mobile devices and social media. Things are moving fast, but we also can be sure that there are curves ahead.

A related threat is that of “skimmers,” or devices that catch credit card numbers when consumers use them for payment. The problem primarily is contained to the restaurant industry, but Callaghan is concerned it could spread to hotels.

Ironically, one of the main reasons terrorism tops the list is because it has become less of an issue in recent years, sources said.

“The greatest business risk, as I see it … is insurance fraud. And it’s the most expensive,” he said.

The hot-button issue within the realm of hotel-information technology is mobile and cloud technology.

“Liability” as a general label refers to hoteliers being held liable for the acts, which are often criminal, of third parties, the AH&LA’s Callaghan said.

“Security” still is something of a taboo in the global hotel industry, said Paul Moxness VP for corporate safety and security at The Rezidor Hotel Group, a Brussels-based hotel management company, with more than 400 hotels and nearly 90,000 rooms in its portfolio.