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E-commerce is based on the process of buying and selling products or services on the internet or other computer networks. Ecommerce rapid growth in these last years can be accounted to very important key factors, such as: Technology, thanks to this important factor now computers are not the only way for ecommerce, you can also use mobil phones and handheld PCs to make any transaction. Easiness, is another important factor, thanks to it you can order anything with the same day delivery option. Price factor, with ths option you can compare prices with the rest of the world so you can decide which is more convenient for you. Safety/Guarantee, online sellers provide safe product delivery guarantee. Online Gift Shops, you can book gifts like flowers, cakes, perfumes, stuffed toys, etc. and send it to your loved ones anywhere in the world. Thanks to their focus on comfort ness, easiness and tension free shopping ecommerce will keep going further and improving their sales.

Yea, I agree with you. Ecommerce proved its significant based on the fact where time is important. In the commercial markets, time plays an extremely important role to both the business and consumers. From the business perspective, with less time spent during each transaction, more transaction can be achieved on the same day. As for the consumer, they will save up more time during their transaction.

The article is talking about the yield management system for hotel. It first introduced the importance of the yield management in hotel, and by using the proper yield management hotels can maximize their profit. Then the article showed us how a yield management works for a hotel and the regular pattern of the peak days in a week. The author wrote all of these just want to show us what the YM system can do better for the hotel, but I will take it to reconsideration. This system must be based on the data source to do the yield management, however, besides the price, the outside events or economic changes will have a very strong influence on the hotel occupancy. So this system is helpful for the hotels, but the hoteliers should not rely on it.

Yield management is the way of influencing consumer and getting more profit by manipulating the prices according to what season, month or weekday. The price of the room and the value of night is zero if this date passes. The owner must be very careful when changes the prices when its time to populate empty rooms, rates cannot be dropped dramatically. Customer can learn it and will always book at the very last day when the prices are the lowest but if your hotel focus on business travel weekdays make more revenue, if its more a leisure travel hotel holidays and weekends should bring more profit. The prices can be higher in peak season and holidays. The software for yield management might be afforded in order to get best results in price management, bookkeeping, human resources, customer service and what not. If you don't have enough resources you should subscribe this software and not risk with creating your own software for same purposes.

Global distribution systems work by connecting travel companies (airlines, car rentals, cruise lines) to travel agencies (online or human) who then connect with the interested traveler. By this chain, the travel agent is able to offer real time availability from the companies to the traveller. The benefits of this system are the ability to deliver tons of information direct from the relevant companies, it is convenient for those that use them and easy to track travelling trends and interests. To me, it works like a mass marketing strategy. The content is generated by the owners and instead of enlisting their own man power, they utilize the efficiency and convenience of remote technology to mass distribute. The intended consumer receives the information without ever having to think where it's coming from, but inevitably trusts its reliability. The productivity of this system is something that those in the hospitality industry cannot ignore because this represents moments of the first interaction between the interested consumer and your operation. In order for the information to reach them in a convenient medium. In summary, GDS's help information get from the travel company to the consumer everyday in real time via global networks.

Global Distribution Systems (GDS) are largely responsible for the expansion of the travel industry. They provide the foundation for most internet-based travel services offered globally, and they link the providers of travel services in real-time. To make the travel business more complex and informatics, the GDS system provides global data, pricing, inventory, offers, and real-time availability of flights, hotel rooms, car rentals, and even bus tickets. GDS enables travel agencies and their customers to access travel information, purchase and compare options for reservations, and schedule trips. One of the most essential tools for the travel industry is the GDS system. Global Distribution Systems are server-hosted web platforms that offer worldwide discounts on the booking of travel-related goods like airfares. Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport are the three main GDSs in the market, and they are connected to more than 650,000 travel agents. Travel agencies depend on GDS's assistance to maximize their own profits because GDS is a direct seller of airline tickets. To increase their revenues and their ability to offer tickets to customers, travel agencies enter into an agreement with GDS and gain access to a listing of fares.

" Benefits of Global Distribution System Global distribution systems are widely responsible for the growth of travel industry and stepping stone of most internet based travel services. Benefits of Global Distribution System for Travel Agents and Tour Operators GDS systems deliver worldwide data, rates, inventory, offers, real-time availability of airlines, hotel rooms, car rental, bus tickets, and many more to make the travel industry more informatics and sophisticated. How Travel GDS Marketplace Is Reshaping the Travel Industry GDS stands for Global Distribution System and it's essentially a central reservation system that allows travel agencies and their clients to access travel knowledge, buy and compare reservations choices and book travel. functions across the world and connects the travel service suppliers or vendors to the travel agencies in real-time, by providing a centralized service that covers the bookings of airline tickets and more. permits travel agents to access, in real-time, availability, feature and costs for airlines and extra travel services worldwide. The leading global distribution systems are Amadeus, Sabre, Galileo, and Worldspan. This permits users to buy tickets from various suppliers or completely different airlines. GDS can link services, rates, and bookings that combine a spread of products and services in travel sectors: e.g., airline bookings. Independent travel agents, travel agencies are now using an increasing sophisticated GDS system to seek out the best travel and accommodation and rates for their clients. Travel Agencies have historically relied on GDS for services, products & rates to produce travel-related services GDS system is one of the most necessary tools for the travel business the system will yield results with real-time pricing and availability comparisons There are 3 major GDS within the market- Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport here are over 650,000 and travel agents connected via a GDS system Systems enable users to bu

It has always been said that restaurants are a hard business in the hospitality industry to manage. There are many factors that can adversely and favorably affect the progress of the restaurant including and especially accounting. This article discusses what it is a manager should look for when choosing accounting software. Moreover it specifically highlights what factors this software affects. Menu items are something that will be efficiently priced if a good accounting system is in place. Pricing is crucial to the profit margin of a restaurant because it should accurately show costs and ensure that a business at least reaches breakeven. If this is not done correctly restaurants may find themselves spending more than they should be rather than making economical sense in their purchases and pricing. An accounting system can also assist restaurants in keeping track of vendor prices. By cross-referencing the known price of purchases from current vendors up against other vendors in the market, a restaurant can search around for the best prices and maximize their profits decreasing cost. Good accounting software will also prevent bad business by alerting a restaurant when inventory is low. You should never completely run out of supplies will a good accounting system that allows you to track this information. Tell me, have you ever been to Pollo Tropical and they ran out of chicken? How annoying would that be? Lastly the article speaks about knowing where most of the profit comes from. Once again, good accounting software will ultimately keep any manager on top of his game and help him decipher what areas are doing well and can report this efficiently and make decisions based off of this. Agreeing with my belief in the discussion earlier this week, accounting has a trickle down effect on everything within the restaurant and ultimately will have an effect on the profit.

This article about the IDeas Revenue Solution Systems which will enable hotel managers to effectively manage pricing with just few clicks. It is the leading provider of the pricing and revenue management software for the hospitality industry. Now they have come up with its own pricing system which will enable the managers to seek revenue growth in their budget. This software is specifically designed for the clients who face tough competition from the dynamic service markets, with other brands deploying the revenue management systems, it has become difficult to compete. This software is scheduled to be released in the other half of this year and the benefits include, forecasting occupancy, set room rates and make competitive pricing decisions. It is a simplified system which requires minimum training and interaction to learn and operate. This will further help in increase in revenue, can be used by busy managers with just few clicks, it gives room for improvement to enhance guest satisfaction. On the other hand it has minimal upfront costs and with positive outcomes and very little risk. this will also help the limited service hotels to compete with the current and prospective hotel owners with this simplified pricing capability. It is interesting to see how IT has evolved into the hospitality industry by providing the best possible systems, software's to compete in this results driven industry, where a company can fall behind any minute with the pace at which the support systems have taken the reliability for lifting the revenue, in order to invest more and attract more customers.

In this article, the author mentions something about the online booking glitches happened sometimes. Although they are not a big deal, it affects consumers in some degree. First, the fare jump happens sometimes when consumers are booking their flights online. While they clicking the searching results, it will come out a price, the fare jumps after they click the price and they are ready to book it. For example, the price shows in the search result list is 582, when consumer clicks the price button and is ready to book it, the 'fare jump' happens at next booking procedure page. It always makes consumers a little angry but have nothing to do with it. I meet the same problems in the past when I booked the flight. Those spokesmen said that these are technical problems, those inventory systems, called global distribution systems, do not always have the freshest price information, which in some cases changes so frequently that between the time the travel agency site queries the distribution system for a requested fare and the consumer actually clicks on that fare, the prices could have changed. In my opinion, that's part of reason, staffs who in charge of the website is another big part of reason. Second, consumers also meet the problem of mix lower-class tickets into the first-class search results. That is the responsibility of e-travel agencies, because they mislabel or fail to label the fare on different occasions. It seems to be another glitches, but it will affect consumers a lot when they are booking. To sum it up, details determine success or failure. Even though these are tiny problems, in a long run, they will disappoint consumers and finally lose them.

In 2009 the GDS usage declined from 98% to 79%. ALthough there has not been a demand to use this technology, there has been a demand in the first quarter in 2012. There has been an increase because of corporate business demand. GDS is being used to transfer room inventory to global distribution partners as well as travel agents and OTA's. Hotels using the GDS technology offer a percentage to a client instead of a fixed rate. This happens as long as companies have access to the hotel's system everyday. According to Robert Cole, The GDS system is notgoing anywhere because of its unique solutitons to hotels and travelers. It makes it easier for everyone.

This article is about how global distribution systems are still in demand even though they were said to be dying out. Industry leaders thought that with the development of online travel agencies, GDS's would soon be out of business. This isn't the case though. Well it is proven that member travel agencies have been using GDS's less this could be linked to the economy. The people who are purchasing travel through online travel agencies are still using the GDS every day. Business travel is also up in the past 10 years and also an increase in business travelers extending their stays for leisure. With that leisure and corporate traveler are help keeping GDS's alive. But GDS's would be even more profitable if they lowered their transaction fees.

The GDS has decreased steadily over the past decade, but recent studies have shown that there has been a small increase. The increase is thought to be due to corporate travel.  Many hotels are trying to increase the use of the GDS through dynamic pricing models. This model offers a percentage off the hotels best available rate depending on what the demand is. The GDS provides many benefits like facilitating the online search process, offering immediate access to information without using a marketing budget, and high sense of security. The only downfall is that the distribution costs are too high, because transaction fees usually are around $5. 

Intercontinental Hotel Group(IHG) now said that the company will try to focus on mobile marketing to counter challenges from aggregators such as Expedia, Priceline.com, and booking.com. These aggregators enable guests to search by showing the price and location and book hotels at a time. They are such an important outlet for sales, however, they drive down the price and also drive down the brand. Hence, IGC now trying to focus on mobile marketing to connect guests journey from search, shop, compare, booking, confirmatiln, pre-staying planning, arrival, stay and depature.

Everything in life and business today is about how you can make big bigger, fast faster and everything more personalized. This article is giving suggestion about how GDS may evolve in the future to make it more personalized to the buying customer as well as making it more GDS more secure. GDS are starting to price compare with competing sites and businesses are offering incentive of not having service fees if you book directly through them. Where is this leading the GDS systems? Perhaps into the Blockchian technology, where a customer can purchase a token and essentially cash it in when they exchange it for the service being done. This is allowing for more secure transactions of moneys. GDS will never go out of business, but there is always a way someone is looking to make it better, Blockchains may be something of the future trend.

This article analyzes how user-generated ratings have a positive impact on hotels revenue growth. It looks at this through three different methods: one, ratings that the uses provide, two at how those ratings are "distributed over the scale," and three, the number of reviews that hotel receives. The article observes 240 small to mid scale hotels in Italy. Some issues we see come up revolve around the subjectivity of user-generated reviews and how that can positively and negatively affect hotel occupancy and interest. Ultimately, it appears that hotels that already have a high star rating will benefit most from these user-generated ratings because they have a stronger bargaining tool. The other benefactor are small, niche hotels whose increase viability and unique qualities help it in encouraging new tourism and high level experiences.

iPerceptions put information together on online travel shopping. One question being what are some of the things that keep travelers from booking rooms. Price was number one on this list of things. This is not surprising because most online travel customers comparison shop to find the best deals. Next, after price, functionality and site design were among the biggest stumbling blocks to those who wanted to book online. Having a website that is easy to navigate so the customer can get the information they are looking for is critical to that traveler actually making that reservation. 8% gave up after being unable to find what they needed. And 7% had a technical issue when trying to book. That's 15% altogether. The survey also concluded that it is mostly leisure travelers who were seeking information as opposed to business travelers. Although, business travelers were more likely to complete reservations. Maybe this can be accredited to the fact that business travelers have all the information they need so they don't have to spend time searching. Or the increased frequency of travel makes them more familiar with sites and where to go and how to get information. The highest percentage of respondents said they arrived at a website by typing in the web address. This leads me to believe that in addition to having a website that is functional and easy to navigate, your web address must be memorable and easy to spell. Those who got to the site by search engine came in at a close second.

This article is explaining how Henry Harteveldt, an airline and travel industry analyst, believes that GDSs will evolve into value creation hubs, or VCHs, over the next five years. He believes GDSs have served airlines the best among many transactionally based industried; however, many areas of airline marketing, sales, distribution and e-commerce are looking for more. He specifically states that airlines are looking for "more flexible, robust commerce platforms built on contemporary software and architecture", as well as "commerce platforms that can support extensive fare and product transparency, dynamic pricing, rich basic and ancillary product merchandising and retailing and the ability to reliably and securely process the massive volume of shopping sessions." VCHs will be used to support the high-volume, high frequency shopping, similar to GDSs, and the system will the new technology that powers airline CRS/PSS host systems, reducing the need for costly conversion disruption.

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.

This article talks of seven ways in which a POS system can help a small or medium size business through making the owners responsibilies easier to manage. The tools provided by the POS system can help with everything from payroll, to inventory, to pricing and coupons or sales.

This article discusses a war between American Airlines and Orbits, and how they cannot come into an agreement in regards to using the GDS. American Airlines is mainly the provider for most of the fares and traveling but orbitz is there other marketing strategy that is used to sale the tickets online. Nonetheless, American wants and pushes for travel agents to use their direct system to book flights rather then using Orbitz or another chain of coming to book travelers flights. America does offer a variety of prices depending on different categories, as well as frequent flyers miles/points if they book with American website and sources. In essence, American Airlines still wants to have control of their flights and prices as they are the main sources from the beginning of time.

This article, posted on seekingalpha.com discusses the success behind Kayak. Kayak is an OTA that "gives consumers a one-stop research solution to best fares along with other value-added services like flight status updates and pricing alerts." However Kayak's revenues stem primarily from advertising and referrals. The article futher breaks down the percentiles of the profits with ads at 55% and referrals at 38%. Kayak's stock is at a premium and only seems destined to improve. A very interesting graph portrays estimates of its improvements for both ads and referrals.

With the development and improvement of technology, point-of-sale (POS) systems nowadays are playing a vital role in the industry. In this article, the author has mentioned that POS systems let businesses track usage, monitor changes in unit dollar costs, calculate when businesses need to reorder, and analyze inventory levels on an item-by-item basis. In one word, POS systems enable businesses to keep track of their cash flow. The author also introduced some features to consider in a POS system, including: ease of use, entry of sales information, pricing, updating product information, sales tracking options, security, and taxes for businesses to choose the most appropriate system for them. Since every business is unique, it's important for every business find that system meeting their all requirements instead of just using a popular one.

Module 3: Networking (Rebecca Noble)

This short article talks about some of the ways technology can improve a retail business, but I think it may apply for larger businesses. ways of reducing inventory cost, improve customer satisfaction, keep track of the companies margins (sales margin) and also improving your knowledge of forecasting for the business.

This article demonstrates the significance of technology in today's business world. It encourages entrepreneurs to invest to invest in technologies that enhance the efficiency of business operations. Such include the point of sale (POS) systems, electronic inventory control system, and a central data base among others. This is because they come with various benefits including reducing inventory costs, improving customer satisfaction, facilitating inventory control, among others.