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In class you mentioned the high surveillance and passenger monitoring on cruise ships including the alerts of children going into non parental rooms. I found this intriguing because there are always a slew of people in the media that had the misfortune of going missing while on a cruise. In the last two years 41 people have gone missing and this does not include the Costa Concordia capsizing numbers. While the camera's might be rolling and the identification cards can track if passengers left the boat or stayed on I still wonder what the cruise lines do to cover up crimes. In Hospitality Law we learned that wherever the next docking country is that is where the crime that occurred on the ship will be investigated by. Most of these Caribbean Islands do not want to deal with missing persons or rape that occurred on a cruise ship so the cases get swept away. So despite the fact that cameras are supposedly on for safety here is an article with some interesting cases of missing people from cruise lines. I think a better technology would be to have the RFID enabled wristbands worn by all cruise ship passengers so that they can be located at anytime. This should be mandatory but disguise the tracking part by selling the fact that the wristband allows the passengers to make purchases with it.  Royal Caribbean Oasis of the Seas has this but it is voluntary and mostly requested by families who need to keep tabs on their children. They have only made 1000 wristbands and the article is accessible here : http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/view/7415/1

This article discussed the importance of being ahead of the curve and why the 'wait and see' approach is not beneficial in most cases. If you 'wait and see' you can become irrelevant very quickly as there are many others out there, in many cases other parts of the world, making new inventions and discoveries daily. This article gave a great example where a school system implemented tables and the amount of money they saved was $25k/year. There are many benefits to staying ahead of the curve and as the article states "If you don't do it, someone else will".

A "wait and see" approach has a higher risk than it being avoided. One of the cons is that it can pave the way to a company no longer being relevant. New opportunities for sales and growth may be missed if a company does not begin to evolve quickly.

Technology has taken event planning to the next level. Within the past five years digital administration and mobile engagement are considered to be the two primary causes for change in the events industry. In an article written for Sonburst Communication it states "Digital administration is now key when planning a new meeting. For large events, it's not enough to just sell a ticket online, print them an agenda, and check IDs at the door". Attendees now fall into different categories that may require different forms of check-ins for example someone on the VIP list may receive a gift bag and private cocktail party or someone with special dietary needs once checked in the system notifies the catering term of their confirmed arrival. Digital administration has made it easier for event planners to manage these different kinds of request quickly and on a digital platform. The digital platform is generally tailored for each event before the event. Everything in pre-loaded to the system for example, registration, BEO, event time line, seating chart and set-up and break-down. "If you are not utilizing the smart phone every attendee has in their pocket at your event, you are missing out on a great opportunity and even neglecting attendee expectations." Today's generation is expecting to have the event information available to them at their finger tip. Mobile engagement allows event planners to give them just that weather through email, website, or event app. This also allows event planners to notify guests of any last-minute changes. For example, a change in event time line. Everyone is going digital and most people send more than half the time while at an event on their phones so why not make this information available to them.

This article briefly sumarizes the uses of Beason technology which are potentially to be applied in 2021 under the pandemic. They includes tracking the spread of COVID-19, tracking social-distancing, tracking of missing items, remote ordering for restaurants and inventory management.

This article provides a detailed account of the variety of ways that E-Commerce can be used within the hospitality industry. With the advent of the Internet and new and improved technology, it has become much more imperative for companies to remain competitive in this space. From VR to targeting, as well as online tracking, there are a variety of tools that hospitality firms can employ to attract customers via the Internet. As the Internet is the primary resource that people utilize to shop for hospitality products such as hotel rooms, airfare, etc... it is incredibly important for companies to remain on the cutting edge in regards to their marketing online and attracting and retaining customers.

The hospitality industry is faced with numerous responsibilities when it come to the satisfaction of guest. with the tremendous acts of growth within trends it is often difficult for vendors to keep up with the trends. some of the new trends that are being introduced include personalized features which is playing a major role today. Another major trend is now called virtual reality. I think this trend is a great addition to the industry because it allows customers to virtually place the item in their home to see if it fits their style. Also with the pandemic situations with can help with the idea of social distancing .

The innovations of e-commerce with application in hospitality is becoming a growth trend for this industry. Many more guests are interested in the experience of personalized attractions and the creativity of what brands has to offer. Many merchants are creating a tool that allows the software to remind shopper/guest about what left in the carts to reduce the number of missed sales.

I must admit, I stand along with Alasdair Chalmers MD of DP&L Travel; I am left confused and have more questions than answers. I do not understand the goal and/or reason of the NDS standard.  The article states that it is not a system, but a standard for airlines to provide more detailed information about flights and products on the GDSs.  Benefitting customers with more search options, choices and lower fares.   It raises the controversy of agents being concerned with data availability and feeling uncomfortable with a centrally controlled information....  I think I am missing a big piece because I do not exactly understand what the concern is. I'll need to think about this and reassess....   please share your comments and clarity!   

Depends on the worst killer in the restaurant profit, in my opinion is the financial analyzing only in the tax day. This managing decision that not summary the financial statement everyday will lead to the confuse cost management and missing the chance for the maximize profit margin. Especially, cost is the most important part for the daily financial analysis. This article talks about how to manage the cost under effective way and make the property working for more net income. For instance, this article introduce about how to pricing the menu depends on the historical selling data and how to make some development and promotion encouragement for the guests loyal consuming behavior under the low-season.

I feel that implementing technology in event planning can be of a great benefit to hotels. THe business of meeting and conventions can be a profitable one but the competition is tough. Hotels need to offer a wide variety of services to attract conferences to their properties. The use of technology now day is expected and hotels that do not offer these opportunities will stay behing the curve and miss on great opportunities.

It was recently brought to my attention that Donald Trump has expanded his portfolio with the $150 million dollar purchase of Miami's Doral Hotel & Country Club. I was casually watching the coverage of the 2012 World Golf Cadillac Championship on NBC and saw Ivanka and Donald on the screen but just brushed it off because of their well known passion for golf. To be honest, it was more exciting for me to see Watson fall to Rose after missing a birdie putt in the playoff round. Anyways, after searching Market Watch for 'IT Investment' and 'RFP' I stumbled upon this article and it all made sense. I am now pleased to summarize the exciting $200 million dollar investment Mr. Trump made with intentions to "reposition all aspects of the resort" resulting in a "greatly enhanced guest experience." Although not explicitly stated, I assume this investment will also include a 'renovation' of the current IT structure of the hotel and country club to increase productivity, revenue and ultimately ROI. Linda Robertson, from the Miami Herald, reported on March 8th that Mr. Trump stated, "to have 800 acres in a city like Miami -that opportunity will never arise again." It will be interesting to see how The Trump Organization follows through on their investment and achieves their goal of making Doral a "world-class facility benefiting of the resort." This article also mentions that The Trump Hotel Collection had been selected by GSA as the preferred developer for Washington D.C.'s The Old Post Office after an "exhaustive" Request For Proposal review. After researching the topic I could not find for what exact reasons he won, besides money. I will take a further look into the news. A lot of exciting new developments for The Trump Organization in the recent few months.

Now as the world developed, security of every area becomes more and more important especially in hospitality industry. More and more new technology is used in hotel. From this article, we know that the Hilton Americas-Houston has installed a cutting edge digital video system that relies on facial recognition technology.The hotel isn't just monitoring for potential outsider threat; it's also keeping an eye out for rogue insiders, too. The hotel is using facial recognition to monitor employee behavior, paying particular attention to any former employees who leave on less-than-pleasant terms. All employees are informed that video monitoring of them takes place. The video system monitors the areas where employees come to punch into time clocks in order to verify the person's identity. But perhaps more significantly, the facial recognition system is used to watch for any suspicious activities of employees or former employees. For security problems that happened already, the system can find relevant surveillance footage in seconds rather than hours, which can aid in solving crimes and possibly prosecuting criminals. Hotel security could also derail potential dangers before they happen by, for instance, uploading a digital image of someone who is banned from the hotel and letting the system send an alert when the person shows up. Using facial recognition, the system would issue an alert if the person walked into a hotel so security so then hotel security could then escort the people out of the hotel. In serious cases, footage can be stored and e-mailed to an insurance company or local district attorney.

This seems similar to the casino facial recognition technology that Professor Cilli mentioned in the video lecture. Its interesting that you mentioned protecting the Hotel and their guests from disgruntled former employees backlash. With the Hotel common areas not being private space I don't see why guests would have a problem with privacy infringement.

3VR highlights hotel security program that incorporates facial recognition to track guest, identify unwanted or banned guest and monitor employee attendance and behaviors. Also it can be used to help those pesky items that guests seem to keep losing by using color, size and other physical attributes. While this system has many benefits to a hotel, I see this being only feasible in a large property where the sheer volume of customers and guest can produce enough revenues to offset the cost of this system.

This article in USATODAY published in 2011 talks about the cost benefit analysis of RFID tags and hotel linens. Hotels are using this technology to keep an accurate count of all their linens: bathrobes, bed sheets, towels, bathmats, pool towels, etc. The benefit of having an accurate count is especially significant today with the rising price of oil which in turn raises everything including cotton. By investing an additional dollar per towel the Hotel can cut down on labor costs and improve housekeeping productivity. The initial investment is high which is why many hotels cannot afford the technology. I would recommend that high-end luxury hotels invest in the RFID tags however because of the higher prices of luxury linens. By preventing asset pilfering the Hotel will retain their initial investment in linens.

I saw that and I enjoyed your cruise ship article very much. However I am glad that cruise ships are still making RFID wrist bands optional because of privacy concerns, the last thing you want to worry about while on vacation.

In my opinion it's an ideal solution but a bit impratical. Is it worth spending that one extra dollar on all the linens in a hotel just to prevent 5% to 20% known loss? Intention of cutting losses might end with increasing cost. Don't forget the tracking RFID also requires maintenance, which also costs extra.

Telecommunication is a kind of trasmission and information. In old times, smoke signal or colorful flags were used as telecommunications. Nowadays, telecommunication involves use of electrical devices such like telephones and videos.  I think there are lots of people among us working in restaurant right now. So I want to ask a question: Does it frequently happen  that the phone rings when you are crazy with customers' orders? I am always struggling in such crazy situation which leads me to bad working mood. In this article, it mentioned telecommunication method that help servers in restaurant handle with phone calls in rush hours. Instead of voice message, Automated Attendant will send voice messages directly to managers' emails, which means not have to pick up the phone to hear voice mails. It really makes sense because sometimes servers even have no time to listen to the voice mails in phones, which will let restaurant miss some important dinner reservations. So as a server in restaurant, I do think telecommunication is helpful and significant.

Rackspace updates its Private Cloud system which is more accessible, powerful, and secure. It plans to deliver two versions of this system-enterprise with installation fee and private for free. All of the most updated applications are involved in this system such as KVM hypervisor, Opscode Chef, Image Service, and more. The only missing application is openstack storage, which will be available next season. Compared with previous version or other comparable products, new Private Cloud is more accessible, powerful, and secure. For example, new users can install this software within seven steps no matter what system they have. Then they can share more than 2000 applications from rackspace, most of which are free for individual clients. In my opinion, the most innovative output of this update is the hybrid cloud model. It allows an enterprise to manage both public and private resources based on a single platform. Moreover, it is quite convenient for them to move VMs between that multi-based clouds. We can make a positive forecast that this application will be more mature after getting connected with OpenStack Storage. Thus, it is a good alternative for both individual and enterprise users seeking for secure network environment.

The termination of South Carolina Hospitality Association's director of accounting and membership, Rachel Duncan, is the latest development in the Tom Sponseller suicide investigation. CEO Tom Sponseller, leader of the South Carolina Hospitality Association for the past twenty years, was found dead last Tuesday in the company's parking garage after a suicide note was found in his office desk. Although the Feds have been conducting an ongoing investigation into the agency's finances, Sponseller was not their person of interest. The hundreds of thousands of dollars missing from the South Carolina Hospitality Association is tied instead to Rachel Duncan, the agency's former director of accounting. An outside audit of the association's finances is still being conducted however there are several sources of money embezzling being brought forth. Who is to say this tragedy may have been avoided if the Hospitality Association had outside parties conducting internal audits on a regular basis, but it would most definitely have shed light on the situation sooner.

The article give a specific description of the importance of marketing analytics in hospitality industry. It can provide a ways to better understand guests' purchasing and staying behavior, as well as audience engagement across a variety of marketing channels.

Our Philosophy "We believe that independent hotels and smaller chains deserve the chance to compete with well-established hard brands with massive budgets. With that in mind, we develop smart, innovative and affordable tools to help even the playing field. May the best hotel win!" This company (evolution) looks to distinguish their brand by giving the opportunity to independent or small chain hotels the chance to fight with big chain hotels. Having said that, in this article they (evolution) state that a 40% of a corporate negotiated rate is no visible on the hotels' GDS. As stated previously, this percentage refers to that of a small chain hotel or independent hotels, not big chain hotels. After researching this sector, of corporate customers, they found that the GDS nor the CRS nor the CM (Channel manager) are sufficient for a satisfactorial system. Thus saying that these systems do not work on this specific market because the information provided through them is probably erroneous for many reasons. Such reason are stated by the article as follows: 1. wrong access codes provided by travel agents (miss communication) 2. hotel's rates are visible but not go according with the contract. 3. incorrect access city codes have been supplied (miss communication). 4. availability for those rooms are not applied in time by the hotel (probably because of lower staff). 5. lower rates from other sources (other sites give better rates than corporate GDS). 6. wrong rates loaded for the corporate customers (wrong information and not having glanced at it on time); among other possible reasons. I believe all this can be fixed by taking proper actions (evolution also offers solutions to these problems), but not everyone has a desire or the focus to attack them, thus falling on these situations.

Hotels have always considered theft a cost of doing business. From linens to furniture, for some guests everything is up for grabs. However, guests are not the only ones responsible for missing assets in a hotel. Staff is also responsible for miscounting, misplacing, and missing items, uniforms and supplies as well. As a result, hotels are now turning to tracking technology to account for their assets. Since asset tracking can mitigate loss and increase revenue in the long run, modern asset management will necessarily have to rely on tracking devices. According to the article, radio frequency identification system (RFID) is now the latest and most efficient uniform inventory technology available. It allows MGM, for instance, to track 125,000 uniforms of its ARIA Resort inventory in Las Vegas. Chips are either pre-installed or sewn into the uniforms. This technology was first implemented in 2009 and has resulted in balanced inventory ever since. Moreover, these chips can also be installed in expensive bed comforters, paintings, lamps and even TV sets. Asset tracking enables not only accurate audits of items like towels and bathrobes but also deters guests and staff from theft or misplacement.

MOD 11: This article is about Airbnb starting to penetrate the events and meetings sector of the hospitality industry. While their involvement is very minimal, Airbnb has offered booking accommodations for events nearby. Recently, Airbnb released a booking tool for meeting planners to showcase some of the Airbnb properties that would be nearby the event space. Airbnb's involvement in this new release would only be to provide economical accommodations for nearby events, the website wouldn't be used to provide specific details about the event. This new release of technology with Airbnb is very easy to use and almost anyone can look up potential trips using the tab Airbnb for Events on their website. There are some challenges that can occur with this new release, some being that meeting planners won't be able to negotiate discounts, nor will they be receiving commissions for people who book with Airbnb for Events. Also these Airbnb accommodations may not meet the expectations of the attendees for the event since they're use to staying in a clean-cut hotel room.

This is an article that compares the new form of cloud property management systems versus the original installed in the property PMS. It compares the features missing from both ends such as the fact the installed PMS can not get free upgrades but it does not require IT expertise. The article makes a great point in stating that both systems can be great for a small business, where as most people assume only an installed PMS works for a small business because it is the more affordable option but because of the fact that one person is usually running the small business they can benefit from having access to the PMS from anywhere which is only capable from a cloud PMS. It is also important to remember that when moving to a new system it can not be assumed to be exactly like the previous system.