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This article explains that PCI is a bunch of regulates intended to keep credit card information safe. The regulations span from only using certified terminals to each individual should have their own login credentials. Using PCI helps not only gain trust with your customers but your reputation with business partners.

The article talks about the effect that cloud computing has had on property management systems. Particularly, PMS integrations.

My opinions on this article are based on my own experience with PMS systems, specifically Oracle Opera. It has been a terrible experience over the years trying to solve any type of issue with Opera and the support is existent but very limited, which makes it difficult for an average front desk agent to even understand what is going on. With Cloud-Based PMS systems, it would definitely need to be crucial to develop excellent customer service that will actually help with things go wrong with the PMS system.

New entrants into the property management system have provided better alternatives to the legacy systems. Integrating those systems has been somewhat a challenge but in the future they(Cloud system) may well be the norm.

This article is about technology trends in the event industry. It talks about what event planners are doing to implement more technology in their events; it gives examples such as audience using smartphones to interact during the meeting, events, conference, etc. Now event planners use technology to collect information in real time, which helps them to adjust their event at the moment, this is a very smart strategy.

This article contains information about the expected event trends this year that will possibly increase ROI. The list of expected trends all surrounded the technological advancements that are enhancing event planning. The advancements include the increased use of smartphones to conduct business. This technological increase will also reduce company costs. It is also expected to improve company value. I agree with technology improving company value. Technology is advancing majorly throughout the world. It is also making it easier for companies and consumers to interact. Smartphones, alone, are very popular in today's economy and are a great example of technological advancement. Being that people already use their smartphones to check emails, save event dates and contact other people (whether over the phone or by video), conducting business will be somewhat simple to adapt to. Increasing company technology to reduce costs is a good move. However, the companies should keep in mind that losing one cost will only open the door for another one. When dealing with technology, there are always risks (usually malfunction risks). So, companies should keep in mind that there is a possibility that expenses will incur for the technological maintenance that will be needed to keep the technology operating.

The Great Recession has been come to end point; therefore, expected corporate and event spend will begin to rise from 9 to 20 percents in next two years. The author has scooped out 5 major trends that will rapidly increase Return on Investment (ROI) for 2013 and future. 1. Smart Events will take center stage: in 2011, 205 million people attended 1.8 million events cost more than $263 billion in direct spending in the U.S alone. But only 25 percent of organizations see its effective, in 2013 organizations will choose smart event technology to help them operate more effectively 2. Automation will help event planners reduce expenses: Strategic meeting management ( SMM) technology can help event planners adapt to new methods to identify event-related functions and reduce costs. 3. Planners will achieve greater efficiency through solution consolidation: In the future, organizers will lay out their workloads by choosing consolidated solution, saving time and freeing up event planners to focus on making event better and well organized. 4. Event  organizers will engage audiences with smartphones: New all-in one apps will help organizer to provide all the information needed for attendee about the event. 5. Meeting planners will leverage technology to gather in-dept attendee information: focusing on the need of attendee is a crucial part of event planner, to be able to get requirement of attendee in real time will help organizer to adjust their plan, strategies on the fly and increase ROI. Increasing the need for events in 2013 and future requires event planner to be able to get familiarize with new event trend and technology to minimize the cost and maximize the ROI for an organization.

Consumers behaviors have changed due to Covid-19. They demand more sanitary practices on places. One of the things of the 'new normal' lifestile is e-menus. The Interactive Firm has launched MyMenusOnline which is a touchless digital restaurant menu. With MyMenusOnline consumers simply scan with their phones a QR Code to view the restaurant's menu. Besides the digital menu presented by the professor in the discussion, this could be the future of menus in restaurants.

This article is an interesting one, highlighting the changes in trends in Event Management. The article starts off by explaining that the major changes in the meeting and planning areas of a business is due to the introduction of the smartphone technology in the business. It goes on the explain that there are mobile applications used just for events. It seems that the more that people and businesses become aware of the use of the mobile device as it relates to technology, it will make it even easier to customize and request different things for an event. Technology will be the core to different and new trends in the meeting and planning areas of businesses. It evident that the use of different mobile applications will make every thing easier for event managers. It allows managers to communicate with their customers and understand what exactly it is they need.

This article looks at the rising use of Smartphones and smartphone apps for the event planning industry, and more specifically at industry meetings. The use of the technology makes it easier to connect the audience on points like engagement, interactivity, and business-to-customer- networking. As the importance of social media interaction in business, so does the need for interaction between business leaders increase as well, and helps to create a successful marketing event.

The main point of this scientific report was to demonstrate how e-waste is becoming an issue and why the current structures in place today are simply not enough to overcome this issue. The author goes into detail the common issues with e-waste: hazardous materials being disposed of incorrectly, the side effects e-waste has on human and environmental life, how current infrastructures in 3rd world countries are not able to keep up with the waste load, why certain policies aren't enough and how new techniques such as the ones being applied in Nordic countries may be the answer to the issue. Ultimately the author makes the argument for why it is an issue, how the issue is growing, and presents alternatives on how to better tackle the e-waste issue.

This article, published in 2015, covers a study performed in Turkey to analyze factors in hotels that lead management to prefer desktop-based PMS over cloud-based PMS or vice versa. The study uses qualitative research to determine the reasons for the usage of PMS and the advantages and disadvantage of either system. The study found that, among others, significant factors that contribute to the form of PMS implemented by mangement may include the size of the property, reservation channels, and prior level of IT experience.

This article covers a study performed on various hotels to determine management's level of IT knowledge and security implementations in relation to the hotel's IT security budget. The article discusses four types of technology impacting the hotel industry and how management responses to trending technology can affect a business, particularly in terms of a data breach and overall security. The study finds that an alarming percentage of hotel managers are not adequately informed on the risks and procedures of IT management and security, and many do not have proper IT security measures in place despite having an appropriate budget.

As this article mentioned, we are striving for the goals that makes the Internet available to our guests and environmentally sensitive. Because it does not produce many CPUs and can run fewer computers for conserving the energy. It can save resources. This article introduces a green system. With only one CPU instead of ten, you save a lot of resources and energy. In my opinion, I like this idea. It can provide more convenient and better service to customers and save resources and energy. In addition, if we can provide a reliable WIFI connection to our guest rooms, people can be more comfortable to use it.

This article is interesting because it talks about how the hospitality industry and e-commerce have merged. Technology is continuously evolving nowadays and hotels need to keep up with new ways to reach more customers. They are now using e-Facebook commerce to market themselves. With the ever increasing usage of smartphones, the hotel industry has developed mobile apps for customers to do business through there. These strategies are both very effective and time efficient.

This was more of a blog discussing the impact of E-Commerce in the hospitality industry breaking it down to it's 4 forms of trade it can occur. It breaks it down to the 3 technical components computer networks provide and how taking into account these components e-commerce integrates itself in the industry. It was also interesting reading how this has increased a high demand in IT to service customers as hospitality organizations have to rely on efficiency in both internal and external interactions. It also discusses how his system isn't as strong in Asia and lastly the security importance and challenges it carries.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a massive surge to online conferencing. This conferencing would not be possible without the cloud. Moving forward this could be the way most work is done as some employers would prefer to have their employees work from home.

This was an interesting article as a while back this was a subject I touched up on once when researching technology for restaurants and I actually didn't think this software technology was this old already. LeanPath pretty much is a technology to help reduce food service organizations reduce their food waste by 50%. With the UN Sustainability goal it calls in the world to reduce their food waste in half by 2030 so LeanPath has set a goal to start a program in providing free or reduced cost hardware/software to qualified resourced constrained educational and non-profit organizations to further expand in this initiative. When they first started it was software that was installed on the PC but now it is cloud based. They started to incorporate behavioral science so instead of just providing numbers and raw data they are incorporating photography to create a deeper environmental impact as one would be more self conscious seeing a pan of wasted food to relate the data than just reading a statistical number of the same result.

Due to increasing weight being given to to environmental and social impacts of business, greener computing alternatives are becoming more and more attractive. Going green computer-wise includes more than using green materials in production. It also extends to reduction and control of energy during production and use as well as disposal and reuse of devices.

Green computing (also known as Green IT) is a concept and/ or action, which was launched in the early 1990's after realizing that the planet is not an endless source of energy. Creating, distributing, maintaining, and most importantly, disposing machinery related to technology has become the focal point of Green IT. So, the "whole life" of the IT equipment plays a vital role concerning its objective/ aim of having a positive impact on the environment. Additionally, targets of this program include curtailing energy consumptions, raising awareness and utilization of green energy, properly disposing equipment, reducing footprint, reuse/ refurbish/ recycle, and more.

Biometric Technology is being implemented in restaurants offering better health and safety, personalised dining experiences and efficient payment methods. Restaurants are using facial recognition for the following: 1. Contactless payments - scanning customers' faces for safe payment verification. 2. Social distancing and capacity measures - helps identify proximity between individuals and tracks number of people inside a store. 3. Loyalty programs and personalized dining - opted-in diners are recognized as VIPs giving them personalized service and suggesting past preferences. 4. Fast-food restaurants - customers don't need to remember a password or long into an app. Facial recognition is being implemented in drive-through lines to save time. 5. Employee systems - technologies can check body temperature and accuracy of mask wearing, it also simplifies cocking in and out and gives them login access to the POS terminals.

AI continues to evolve in fast food locations. McDonalds is piloting voice recognition systems in their drive thrus hoping to hit their 95% accuracy benchmark before deciding whether to roll this out to 14,000 McDonalds locations. The technology is improving ordering processing on average by 20 seconds per order and could reduce human labor hours by 9 hours per day.