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This article describes a new tool to measure and aid in guest satisfaction. Through a strategic partnership, Infor (a business application software company) enlists TrustYou (a market leader in online reputation management) to help create a system used to provide real-time access to positive and negative feedback from guest. There are three widgets designed to search through data and streamline them into summaries that hotels can use to enhance their customers experience. All information reported is current information, that way hotels can quickly respond to their guests. This technology is key in creating the best guest experience possible and it allows hotels to do so within a matter of minutes. The real time access feature would allow hotels an opportunity to turn a would be negative experience into a positive one. Hotels rely on "word of mouth" Marketing, especially with social networks, blogs and message boards becoming such a huge part of the daily exchange of information. We must admit, a lot of us value the opinions of our Twitter followers. It is vital for hotels to keep up with these different areas of communication so they can strategically position themselves in an ever growing and competitive market. They can address concerns immediately while at the same creating opportunities to build their brand. Hotels must utilize this advanced approach if they want to survive in this industry.

This article describes the infor company（a leading provider of business application software） and trust you（a market leader in online reputation management） built online reputation management software for hospitality industry. Hoteliers could access to the social senciment on a real time. From the customer's perspective, there are many factors related to choose a hotel form more than hundreds choices. Not only the hotel's facilities and services, but also the reputation on the internet will influnce customer's slection. Nowadays, with the rapid development of social networks, the senciment plays a great role in people's life. For example, in China, there is a web-site, named as "Quna". On that web-site, people share the travel information, rate the restaurants and hotes. The new travelers could get some ideas about the hotel choosing. Therefore, the hotel manager must pay attention to the public reputation management in time. Now, the hoteliers could access to the social senciment in real-time via a series of dashboard, embedded widgets. What's more, by this tool, the hotel employees could correction error, redeem hotel's reputation, improve customer satisfaction, and improve hotel's occupancy rate.

I believe every business, especially if it is a huge corporation, should protect and control their company's data. A company's data falling into the wrong hands can be a huge drawback for the company, especially if it comes into contact with a competitor. This article explains how IBM have introduced a new security tool with Big Data to identify any suspicious internal and external security threats as well as flag any company secrets from displease employee's emails and their social medias. The new system can alert any frauds and risks from decade worth of emails, financial transactions, and websites. CIOs will be able to conduct a sentiment analysis on employees to see which worker is the most likely to expose company's information. Some can argue that employees have the right to post anything on their social media's accounts but if an employee still is employed by the company then it should be all bets off. The company should have all rights in making sure their information does not get leaked out by an employee who is simply having a bad day.

RFID, event applications, wearable technology, virtual reality, and social media are upcoming popular uses for event planners. With RFID event planners are able to keep better track of the guests attending the event as well as keeping them more involved. I first heard of this a few months ago when attending an event and it described that a chip with RFID was placed inside the wristband-type ticket. For me, the most interesting thing is the wearable technology! Imagine an event where you can have directions given to you or a layout of the event right on your wrist! Also, the watch can notify you of events happening within an event or you can see order your food or see the menu. To know that soon enough it will be a norm for everyone to have some type of wearable technology and that event planners can truly get the guests involved through this use is exciting.

This article introduces four new advances to technology that help ease the process of event planning. Projection mapping, 5G, Branded multi-use apps, and event diagramming.

This article shares the technology innovation with meeting/convention operations and how these technology help offer better guest satisfaction.

The article discusses how Artificial Intelligence is transforming the travel industry and in return affecting the hospitality industry. The AI that the article states are chatbots, voice-based digital assistants, facial recognition, personalized recommendations, sentiment analysis, and much more. AI has greatly benefitted the travel industry and made things easier for the traveler.

Most future trends for Customer Relationship Management are predicted to be online marketing and competition. However, companies realized they are losing touch with customers, which brings up attention on customer service. So more and more companies are trying to mix technology with customer service. For example, mobility is still coming on strong and a long way to go with Microsoft announcing strong mobile options in the last month. The customization of IT and the "Bring my own device" movement add new pressure to mobilize CRM. Social CRM is a long way to go here with increased investment in linking Social analysis into CRM via customer sentiment as well as networking and key decision matrices through connectors to LinkedIn becoming popular. However, all the apps or software designed for CRM solely emphasizes from management perspective, such as marketing, pricing and reading reviews, which lost reaction with consumers. Instead of only reading customer reviews, we should arrange more agents to respond to build two-way communication.

GDS companies continue to evolve and implement new technology to stay in line with current consumer demands. After initial resistance, they are implementing the NDC program into their system. NDC (New Distribution Capability) is a travel-industry supported program launched by IATA for the development and market adoption of a new XML-based data transmission standard (source: https://www.iata.org/whatwedo/airline-distribution/ndc/Pages/default.aspx) This article discusses the need of the airlines to upload useful content and for the travel agents to be more actively involved in order to make it useful for them. However, with major airlines' bookings split between 50% direct booking and 50% agents, and the airlines' efforts to drive more direct booking traffic, I wonder what is the sentiment of the companies to provide with more content and information on a platform that competes directly with their efforts to increase direct sales from their websites. Selling air tickets directly from their sites not only allow the companies to decrease booking fees and commissions but also allow them to collect much needed date from the consumers who use their services.

This article goes into being patient when it comes to launching a new or similar product. Many companies try to be a trendsetter but sometimes taking the backseat is much beneficial. Startup and trial and error runs are ultimately decreased. Reviewing the feedback of others on social media outlets can help make sure you don't stumble over the same issues.

This article explains why a wait & see approach is sometimes the best approach for some companies before launching a product in a very competitive market which already has a company providing the same product to consumers. Many companies have waited to see what issues consumers are complaining about when their competitors have launched a product to later launch a better product better than that if the competitors. Such companies are Pandora versus Apple Music, Lyft versus Uber, Apple Cash versus Venmo, QuickPay, and Square Cash.

Hospitality has a need for human interactions. However 52% of travelers believe automated systems are safer. This article discusses the pros and cons of using robotic technology in hospitality. Then it goes further to show that the best options is to integrate some robotic technology in places where employees are overwhelmed in.

Even though there was many innovations of technology that has occurred. There is nothing like a personal touch. Guest love to communicate with a human to be able to get a real and honest opinion.

This article on "Sustainable Hospitality Technology Made Possible" gives detailed tactics on how properties can lower their energy and consumption costs, and reduce waste which ultimately leads to protecting the environment. As explained in the article, this sustainability shift did not occur overnight, but rather through a progressive process that encompasses corporate social responsibilities and consumer sentiment.

The article talks about the switch companies are making from in-person to virtual event platforms. With the current pandemic and the increase of remote working, virtual events are gaining in popularity. They are convenient and allow attendees to network and connect with sponsors, performers, and exhibitors digitally. Virtual event platform companies are using the cloud to integrate customizable solutions for clients. They are also engaging in collaborations and strategic partnerships with innovative companies to incorporate new technology solutions such as AI and Deep Learning into their platforms. This technology also enhances data collection from your attendees that businesses and organizations will use to identify consumer sentiment and deliver customized and improved solutions on future events. Vendors will use this data to develop new strategies for technology enhancements and modifications to their virtual content to adapt to businesses' changing needs. This technology isn't just being used in the hospitality industry. End-users in many different sectors such as banking, financial services, healthcare, and academia, are using this technology to stay connected for high profile meetings and share information to provide better research on COVID-19. These businesses are partnering with networking and connectivity providers to gain technical support and collaboration. This will be a trend that will significantly impact events in the hospitality field as it provides convenience for attendees and cost savings for the companies as they do not need to spend on venues, F&B, and hotel accommodations.

This news talk about Aptech computer systems for the hospitality industry. This system can assess the cost and revenue ratios of potential investment opportunities and gathers and coordinates data from a wide variety of hotel systems, including STR data, for enterprise performance reporting and analysis, this systems also leverages advances in text analytic technology and convert written online ratings, comment card detail, and other guest-satisfaction measures into quantifiable metrics. So this system can simplify back office operations , through the data operators can match guest sentiment data with daily performance and their competitive set, so they don`t need to do work on the data collect step. Save time and save cost.

Prospera Hospitality is a successful hospitality operator with 18 properties under the most recognized flags of the industry. In the article it is said that one of the reasons for this company's success is its centralized accounting software that allows them to create flexible financial reports. As different owners have different goals, thanks to its flexibility they are able to deliver them personalized reports. The software that is use by Prospera is Profitvue web-based enterprise accounting and performance management that generates individual and multi-property general ledger, enterprise resource planning, accounts payable, statistics, and financials. This software also generates side by side reports that help owners compare the performance of each hotel and identify problems or successful practices. Being a cloud based system creates a great number of advantages for this hospitality operator. As some of their properties are small with select services they don't have the resources to support on- property software. The software is installed on bigger properties and in the smaller ones only a PC with internet connection is needed.

This article is a little old in the 3Q 2012 information, hover the overall scope is what was poignant. Last year, Facebook reached 1billion users, 20% of which (200 million) where fans of just 49 restaurant brands. This shows that, those who are using the social media properly are gaining the benefits of marketing. The Restaurant Social Media Index (RSMI) tracks brand social media through Influence, Sentiment and Engagement. At the time the top five brands were McDonalds, Subway, Starbucks, Chic-fil-A, and Buffalo Wild Wings. Now, the top five are Chipotle, Wendy's, Taco Bell, Starbucks and McDonalds. The top trend in Emarketing, based on RSMI is that social and mobile are displacing emails as the main way to reach customers.

This fellow has an interesting argument for switching the hotel's PMS to a cloud-based version. He is specifically referring to Opera Cloud PMS. He believes that if you don't switch from a license to a subscription model, your hotel will be left behind and unable to take advantage of new features that are likely to become the norm in hospitality. And without those capabilities, the hotel becomes disadvantaged competitively which leads to waning revenues, which leads to cost cutting measures, which leads to more lost revenue and so on; the death spiral. Is my hotel PMS ready for the future? Is it easily adaptable to meet the unexpected wishes of the traveler? The author is calling it "future proof technology". It's a gamble if your business isn't ready for it and I suspect when owners review their P&L's, they are willing to take the risk of waiting to see what happens. The author also makes reference to the sustainability benefits of transitioning to a cloud-based PMS. However, if moving to a cloud-based PMS is more expensive than the hotels current PMS solution, spending more money to be environmentally responsible, while noble, is a tough sell to most owners.

This is a smart move, both from a environmental and a cost cutting perspective as refillable containers will likely reduce costs over the long run. Marriott has been looking at replacing this process for years (Marriott Banning Little Shampoo Bottles By 2020 Associated Press - https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/marriott-banning-little-shampoo-bottles-2020-n1047116) However, even Marriott admits that it doesn't have the process right yet. There will be a significant impact to smaller operators whom 1) Will be challenged with an additional increase in cost for new dispensary options 2) Have less access to big brand economy of scale purchasing which specialized dispensary products will require. Though this is as a policy almost a foregone conclusion, there seems little doubt that extensive thought has to be put into the impact on operators as a whole, and the customer made cognizant of the fact that costs will rise due to this change.

Current hospitality trends within the hospitality industry. These current trends are bringing awareness to cloud base storage, application mobility, social media marketing, and integration of amenity software. Companies are now outsourcing its IT department to minimize operating expense.

@corrie242 these six trends discussed are very important to keep efficiencies and competitive advantage, and I can confirm that at the Hotel company I work for, most of these are all in use. The social media use and monitoring has been a big shift in how we have changed the way we capture our guests' sentiment from comment cards being left or mailed to the hotel, to being able to receive immediate feedback in a very public way such as through Tripadvisor, Open Table, Facebook, Twitter, etc. We employ a digital media manager who assists in monitoring all that is said about us through these different channels so we can respond and try to stay on top of what is being commented.

This article was a very interesting read and focuses on the savings and improvements that technology can deliver by outlining six trends. The main item that peaked my interest was the trend of Cloud / Software as a Service (SaaS) or cloud computing. I have been introduced to this concept over recent discussions with a close family member. Like the article noted, the argument that was given by my relative in support of this system was that this concept is the new way to go in information technology. This option is very cost efficient and like the article mentioned it has no initial hardware costs or associated expenses like full time, in-house IT staff to maintain the system. It can also allow management of your network system to be done offsite giving hospitality operators the time to service their guests more efficiently and effectively. With technology constantly changing it is very important for hospitality operators to be aware of the emerging trends in the industry. These trends can aid in considerable growth and improvements that can be beneficial to their businesses.

This article explain how different hotels are using robotic technology to help serve the hotels guests and help hotel staff.

This article talks about how we have seen technology in restaurants change in the past year as well as what to expect moving forward. Restaurants have begun to see how new technologies like contactless pay are allowing them to expedite services and benefiting their businesses. It also discusses how even though things like QRs have become more common they won't replace aspects of service experience that are crucial to hospitality.

This article offers a telling account of how Disney developed and implemented the MyMagic+ initiative, providing important insights into how major corporations approach massive tech-related capital investments. Among the most salient takeaways: 1) how Disney recognized that the parks' pain points could be addressed through the public's growing predilection for personal, always-connected; 2) how these massive internal projects can pit different departments against each other, and how sometimes that antagonism can lead to beneficial results; and 3) how a project like MyMagic+ can have a profound positive impact on the company and still be considered by many to have not fulfilled its potential.

This article discusses the various ways that AI is being integrated into the hospitality industry and the positive effects it has had in the industry.