Group items tagged

For conferences, a corporate event planning software may meet very specific needs such as awards management.

A delegate event app is a mobile application that attendees can download to their mobile devices before the start of an event. It will include various functions such as seeing event details, setting meetings with other attendees, and even in-app messaging. On the other hand, the check-in app is designed for event organisers.

The event planning software simply makes communication between you and your attendees easier and less cumbersome.

You can either upload email lists in the software or work on databases from past registrations. This feature is very helpful if you are soliciting feedback from your attendees after an event.

If you are still employing old-school methods such as using paper registration forms and accepting offline bank transfers, it is time that you turn to technology to automate these processes. Registration and ticketing can now be easily done through an event website. An event planning software practically allows any interested party to register and pay for your event online.

create an event website for your upcoming events; this is one of the best ways for you to generate publicity.

One of the most practical uses of a software for event planning is its feature to let you build your own event website

Investing in a software that is entirely dedicated to helping you with your tasks just might be your best move yet.

sing smartphones and tablets has logistical advantages, too, particularly with large groups.

The latest element in high-tech co-worker bonding is all-virtual teambuilding game platforms.

online software, which costs $100 a month for as many as 100 players, involves dividing employees into teams that get new mini missions every week, like sharing your favorite lunch spot, or posting your most awkward childhood photo for points.

It’s about connecting with people.”

hoping to increase engagement and productivity among employees by adding gaming elements to intranet platforms.

Jive Gamification module. The software incorporates role-based missions, challenges, status levels, and badges into digital education and training experiences.

Experts emphasize, however, that these new virtual teambuilding platforms are meant to augment face-to-face bonding, not replace it

Mobile - Ensure the property has a strong mobile strategy. Many Asian countries have a huge (and ever-increasing) mobile shopping base. Make searching for your hotel on mobile devices easy for these travelers and they’ll be more likely to stay with you.

PPC on OTAs - Take advantage of pay-per-click listings on OTA sites. Expedia’s TravelAds program gives your hotel top listings on result pages, which is great for both branding your hotel and encouraging guests to choose your property over others.

Short Term Strategies:

LOS Packages - Ensure your hotel has LOS packages live and bookable on your site. These guests will want to stay to explore the area and LOS packages will keep them at your hotel as long as possible.

Multilingual Website Options - Make sure your hotel website auto-translates to various languages, especially to accommodate your top international feeder markets. Your hotel fact sheet, or a one sheet document that gives the basics of your hotel, should auto-translate as well.

35. Offer guests bicycles for short trips instead of driving.

40. Plant a garden and harvest organically-grown vegetables for your restaurant.

Chances are that your IT department is directly and indirectly one of the largest power consumers in your company.

The benefits range from lower costs to happier employees:

Reducing environmental impact.

Lower operating costs.

Improved morale and workplace health.

Improved company image.

Lower capital costs.

Consolidate

Rightsize.

The five principles of green IT

use devices that perform more than one function so that you only have one device to power.

Virtualize.

Virtualization is one tool you can use to consolidate multiple workloads onto a single server while making it easy to move them from server to server in order to balance workloads or take systems offline for maintenance or replacement.

“Where to start?” You start by taking a baseline measurement of where you are today, making incremental improvements, and measuring the impact you’ve had.

Manage your waste stream

Your network connections (and power) come in at the top, meeting a core router that’s probably in your data center. (You may have a data center, or you may have a closet, but you probably have some place with a set of central switches, servers, storage, and backup devices). The tree gets wider as your network fans out to your offices, where you may have an IP phone and workstation in each office, plus copiers, fax machines, and printers in common areas.

Techniques for greening your office space.

Use one PC per employee, and size the machine to the task being performed.

LCD monitors are the norm today.

Set up sleep schedules on your PCs and your monitors;

Consider the waste stream that office equipment generates.

Measure.

Measure your energy consumption

Set goals

Make incremental changes

Measure again to evaluate

Repeat.

Control.

Get Experienced Help.

It can be difficult and expensive to hire and retain an IT security team

One way to implement these advanced toolsets includes outsourcing to a managed security firm specializing in this type of service

POS systems are a weak security point for many networks because they are constantly in use — and aren’t always patched, updated or protected from vulnerabilities as frequently as required.

personal details for hotel guests are frequently stored in a variety of locations, including billing, facilities, restaurants, etc.

otels are made even more vulnerable thanks to POS system provider breaches

  Phishing remains a particularly popular tactic used by hackers everywhere, including those that are targeting the hotel industry to trick both prospective guests, who give up credit card and personal details, and insiders, who then give up valuable login credentials.

File Integrity Monitoring (FIM), Unified Threat Management (UTM), and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) should also be considered

This is the most obvious technology we can’t live without. Let’s be honest—-most of us are glued to our smartphones and our favorite apps 24 hours a day.

Chances are, if you walk around a convention center or hotel lobby, you will see people with their heads down, tapping away furiously on their smartphones

How did we ever find time to accomplish everything before smartphones came into existence?

your event management system with a customer relationship management (CRM) system such as Salesforce,

the benefits of the SaaS (software as a service) delivery model are becoming increasingly apparent.

These applications are advantageous to planners because they allow us to access all details and execution aspects of an event from any web-enabled device—be it a computer, smartphone, or iPad

With SaaS cloud apps, just provide end-users with reports-only access to what they need and nothing more. 

integration options available to planners, you are now blessed with the ability to link up your event management system with a customer relationship management (CRM) system such as Salesforce,

2. SaaS Cloud Apps

With all of the information you  could ever need to access right at your fingertips through event management applications, you can ditch the millions of pieces of paper and now access contracts, registrations, room blocks,

Live and virtual events are about giving the attendee a choice as to how they spend their time

“webinars on steroids.” Live and virtual events are about giving the attendee a choice as to how they spend their time.

virtual events save the planner and attendee time, money, and resources.

virtual events save the planner and attendee time, money, and resources.

Virtual events are a great way for planners to fill seats at a cost that won’t make anyone wince.

This is the best tool in the box for improving future events.

4. Social Media and Viral Marketing

Did you know that one out of three consumers is online for three or more hours per day? Or that 90 million tweets are sent out daily? What about this one: One of every eight minutes spent online is spent on Facebook

Some of the best traction you will get is from people sharing interesting tidbits they may have learned and enticing others to learn more

Today is the day of the iPad and the tablet, and a more simplified life.

3. Virtual Events

In a world where everyone is always on the run, our top five technologies for event planners are no surprise—but what these tools can accomplish might impress you.

our top five technologies for event planners are no surprise—but what these tools can accomplish might impress you.

our top five technologies for event planners are no surprise—but what these tools can accomplish might impress you.

our top five technologies for event planners are no surprise—but what these tools can accomplish might impress you.

our top five technologies for event planners are no surprise—but what these tools can accomplish might impress you.

our top five technologies for event planners are no surprise—but what these tools can accomplish might impress you.

our top five technologies for event planners are no surprise—but what these tools can accomplish might impress you.

our top five technologies for event planners are no surprise—but what these tools can accomplish might impress you.

Smartphones

Chances are, if you walk around a convention center or hotel lobby, you will see people with their heads down, tapping away furiously on their smartphones. 

Whether the ubiquity of these devices is a blessing or a curse, the fact is, event professionals and participants alike would be lost without them.

SaaS Cloud Apps

SaaS (software as a service) delivery model

These applications are advantageous to planners because they allow us to access all details and execution aspects of an event from any web-enabled device

Additionally, with all of the integration options available to planners, you are now blessed with the ability to link up your event management system with a customer relationship management (CRM) system

Virtual Events

Virtual events are a great way for planners to fill seats at a cost that won’t make anyone wince.

Often complementing physical events, virtual events save the planner and attendee time, money, and resources.

There is word that the economy is making a recovery, but many of us have yet to see it.

Social Media and Viral Marketing

Did you know that one out of three consumers is online for three or more hours per day? Or that 90 million tweets are sent out daily? What about this one: One of every eight minutes spent online is spent on Facebook. 

So this should be a no-brainer

This marketing can come from either you or your attendees. Allowing attendees to share things that they like and getting them involved in hyping your event is a great way to spread the word. 

iPads and Tablets

Today is the day of the iPad and the tablet, and a more simplified life. 

When combining tablets with mobile event applications, planners can also communicate in real-time with participants and share or update information in seconds. Never leave home without one! 

You no longer need to replace your old menu books with the new ones whenever there are changes in your menu items or prices

You don’t even need to be physically at your restaurant to update the menu.

4. Boost Sales with Cross-Selling

Boost

you can determine any food and beverage items you want to promote

If your competitors have invested in software to automate their restaurant operations, then you must too

restaurants have provided mobile applications to make it easier for their customers to place orders. Many also have joined food delivery applications such as DoorDash, GrubHub, UberEats, and many more.

ustomers, especially millennial ones, cannot be separated from technology

They want to keep connected with technology even when they are eating out. This is why many restaurant owners have switched to E-Menu.

E-Menu is one of the most effective ways to retain your current customers and acquiring new ones.

Your restaurant guests can also add or delete items from their order lists and place orders in just a few clicks.

E-Menu helps you modernize your restaurant and make it more advanced than other restaurants.

When your restaurant guests are happy with the service you provide, they will most likely share the great experiences with their peers and post good reviews on Google, Yelp, Instagram, or Facebook.

speeds up the check-in process, prevents registration fraud, and adds an extra level of security to an event or conference by ensuring that the person who registered for the event is actually the person attending

Of the more than 250 guests that attended, most of whom were in-house corporate event planners, 126 used the facial recognition check-in, resulting in a process that was five times quicker than the barcode or QR system used at the previous year’s events.

“insanely cost-effective” option,

facial recognition can drive down the costs of check-in to less than a dollar per attendee.

You can use a basic Android phone or an iPhone or tablet to work with the process, so you don’t have to invest a lot of money to make that work for you,” Wynant said.

Hampton Hotels partnered with agencyEA to create a vending machine that used facial recognition technology to dole out “smile swag.”

I think brands are starting to see it as having a really good opportunity to broaden what some of their goals are and engage audiences in new ways

we believe it is an increase in the monies collected from internet connections that is driving the growth in telecommunications revenue that has occurred during the past two years.

more hotels are beginning to follow the successful paths of those chains that have always opted to charge for internet connectivity.

A tiered pricing structure based on connectivity speed is the current trend in hotel internet charges. While this practice will most likely not restore the profit-producing days of the old telephone department, it will most likely curtail the slide in telecommunications revenue until the next wave in communication technology comes along.

hotels can use it to maintain full control over every aspect of the process, from booking, to marketing, to online reputation managemen

the funding will help innRoad accelerate its offerings on that side of the equation, which will help hoteliers connect directly with potential guests, something that provides long-term financial benefits over dealing with online intermediaries like Expedia and others

innRoad offers a lot of value to small hotels looking to get the tools they need to compete with bigger players

"I think that you will begin to see more hotels going to RFID and smartphone entry before using biosystem recognition," says Wolfe. "These systems are expensive, and there are many consumers who just don't want this information stored somewhere -- for a variety of reasons."

Systems that track the other qualities that make each human unique are in development as well.

Yet more card-free security systems are on the way.

Many industry watchers are keeping an eye on Houston's largest hotel, the vast 1,200-room Hilton Americas–Houston. The hotel has a facial recognition system that can identify and track guests, employees, and even suitcases. With 700 employees and an annual $16 million payroll, the system offers benefits such as employee time-theft monitoring and prevention for the hotel. But travelers aren't that concerned about employees taking an extra cigarette break. What it means for you is that the system includes alerts if unwanted people are on the property and a response time of mere seconds if there's an incident. Customer service is heightened as well: Returning guests will be recognized and greeted by name. And with 1,200 rooms worth of luggage in transit, the system makes it a lot easier to find lost or misdirected bags.

not everyone wants to be on-camera, all the time. With concerns about "snooping" and a Truman Show-like lack of privacy, might guests feel that systems such as this are too intrusive in our hotels? "

Technology is opening new doors to hotel safety, and the way we navigate hotels is set to change in the blink of an eye. Or the swipe of a cellphone. Or the print of a finger. With futuristic systems like scent and iris scanners and digital facial-recognition, hotel security is being taken to the next level. #plain_module { width: 590px; height:170px; border: none; float:left; margin:0px; font-size:12px;} #plain_module img {border:none; width: 13px; height:14; border: 0px; margin:0px; } #plain_module .mini_main { margin: 0px; padding:0px; width:585px; height:220px; repeat scroll 0 0} #plain_module .mini_item_header {padding:10px 0px; margin: 0px 0px; font-size:16px; color: #555555; border-bottom:1px dotted #CCCCCC;} #plain_module .mini_item {padding:5px 0px; margin: 0px 0px;} #plain_module a { color: #49A3CA; text-decoration:none; } #plain_module a:hover { color: #F98419; text-decoration:underline;} span.gray {color:#949494;} .mini_main li{list-style-type: none;background-image: url(http://www.aolcdn.com/travel/bullet);background-repeat: no-repeat;background-position: 0 1px;padding-left: 10px;} Those plastic key cards that once seemed so innovative will soon go the way of the actual key. The new thing is contact-less Smartcards and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) cards that need just be waved to allow room access. Much like the cruise world's one card system, these cards may soon make hotel stays easier by allowing guests to pay for services, as well as to check-in and check-out, through a single device. Travelers may even be able to save preferences on the cards, from pillow type to floor choice. RFID cards are already in use at New York's Plaza Hotel, and Starwood Hotels are considering introducing them into their hip Aloft and Element properties. But travelers worried they will constantly have to traipse back to reception every time they lose their card need not despair. Security systems in some hotels do away with cards altogether. "In addition to Radio Frequency Identification, there are also systems that use a smartphone, such as an iPhone," says Frank Wolfe, CEO of Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals. "When a guest checks into a hotel and provides their phone number, they get an encrypted sound code via text message." You can then play back the code to unlock your room door.

Systems that track the other qualities that make each human unique are in development as well. Movement-activated video-capture systems were showcased in New Zealand in September 2010. Researchers are at work on devices capable of recognizing an individual's gait or walk and even their DNA. Frank Wolfe says, "If you want to go 'way out there', there are some systems being explored that can allegedly sniff someone, and also systems that can recognize the pattern of blood veins on a human being which are apparently unique to the individual," says Wolfe. Quite common in Japan, vascular-recognition systems such as this are still "several years off," according to Wolfe. "I think that you will begin to see more hotels going to RFID and smartphone entry before using biosystem recognition," says Wolfe. "These systems are expensive, and there are many consumers who just don't want this information stored somewhere -- for a variety of reasons."

hotel maintenance management software allows you to implement a plan for scheduled maintenance. By regularly maintaining the equipment used in each room, you can spot problems early on and fix any issues.

Save Money by Conserving Energy

With hotel maintenance management software you can track the amount of energy and water that is normally used at your hotel on any given day. You can also set alerts to notify you if an excessive amount of energy or water is being used.

In addition to spotting problems, your new maintenance management software can monitor high-energy consumption equipment, like boilers or walk-in freezers, to ensure that the equipment maintains an energy-efficient level of operation. Not only does this help decrease your hotel’s costs, but guests like to know that they are staying in a hotel that is environment friendly

Track Your Inventory Levels

With hotel maintenance management software, you can track the levels of all of your supplies so that you know when you need to place inventory orders.

In addition to tracking your inventory, you can also track your suppliers and allow your suppliers to have access to the amount of inventory you have on hand. This gives you access to the suppliers contact information if you need to place an order and allows you to contract suppliers that can monitor your inventory levels and automatically ship what your hotel needs.

Track and Prioritize Your Work Orders

Tracking work orders allows you to see which work orders are open, in progress, and completed as well. Because your employees will always know what needs to be completed, they can easily stay on task

Track Your Employees Hotel maintenance management software also allows you to track all of your employees’ information. You have the ability to create work schedules for your employees, monitor the amount of time each employee works, track corrective action, and run payroll reports. Having all of this information located in one place makes it easy to manage multiple employees.

Plan Your Annual Budget

You can separate the expenses by department and use the information gathered in detailed reports to help you create each department’s budget for the following year. This way, you know an average amount of money that each department spends per month so that you allocate your funds appropriately.

As further described below, the hospitality industry possesses a number of factors that make them attractive to hackers: large volumes of valuable information, multiple vectors for accessing information, large workforces and dependence on vendors, to name a few.

First, the increasing incorporation of technology into hotel operations can lead to more breaches.

Predicting the future is a difficult and fraught task, but in this case, it is straightforward – there is no reason to expect that the number of cyberattacks will drop

Information such as how your room is priced compared to competitors, or the current month’s profit as compared to the previous month gives deep insights.

Budgets Compare profits (between current and past periods) Prepare financial statements, balance sheets Cash flow statements Payroll management Business planning and much more

 5. Speed and efficiency:

2. Access from anywhere:

3. Information in real-time:

 4. Ease of use:

1. Automation and Accuracy: A hotel accounting system makes it easy for you to generate invoices, account statements, produce payslips, and much more.

Tech-savvy hoteliers have adopted cloud-based property management systems (PMS) to perform a host of tasks including accounting.

the real strength of this platform is the way it handles and streamlines the industry supply chain.

Talks are on with hotel aggregators for providing curated procurement portal to cater to their specific needs.

helping them define and scale product, harvest technologies and streamline operations.

improving demand prediction for suppliers and simplifying the process of product discovery and supply chain management.”

Avinash Garg – a hospitality management veteran who brings with him over 35 years of experience in the Hospitality Industry.

Amit is very positive about the future of hospitality industry and shift to e-procurement.

the companies that have adopted the e-commerce route saw a 51% increase in their revenues and a 49% increase in profits.