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In the article Mr. Lassana Tunkara talks about the positive impacts information technology has on the travel agencies, tourism industries and individuals that uses the internet. Everybody is becoming computer literate since it's the number one means of communication through the internet. Information technology has taken over the world. In the past if you want to book a vacation, you would have to find the closest travel agencies to you. You would spend a couple days in the travel agent office looking through brochures. With the advance in information technology, you can do so from the comfort of your home with just your laptop and an internet connection and logging to your desire website. The tourism and travel industry depends a whole lot on the internet as a means of communication, through emails and other forms of communications. With the advance in information technology cost is reduced, the speed at which information is transferred and retrieved has increased. Information technology has transformed the tourism industry, it changes the way the services are delivered and customers' expectations are much higher. With the internet all these industries are able to communicate with each other, such as travel agencies, airline, hotel and car rental companies. Doing reservation is much easier for everyone involve, it can be done anytime and anywhere without having to sit in a travel agencies office going through tons of brochures.

The county of St. Mary's has just launched their new website that now has features such as an interactive map, trip planner,& events calendar. By making these changes in their website potential tourists can find out what's going on in this town.  Local business owners and attractions are able to upload and edit their own information on the website, this helps to keep their events and pictures all current. With this website change, St. Mary's hopes to drive a lot of new and repeat business to their area.

In this article we can see how "security" is a common topic of concern among the hoteliers and I found very interesting that IT experts warned hotel mangers that in many cases where personal data of guest is stolen, the source is not exclusevily obtained by hacking computers, but by the lack of procedures to properly store this private information. The other important topic in this article is the wake up call for hoteliers about the chinese market and their interest to visit the US. The articles lists some online marketing facts about the importance of social media to the chinese and how we need to utilize social media to approach that market.

This news introduces that China is going to have GDS for tourism industry in October. This is a big progress in China's tourism industry. With the rapid development of China's tourism industry, GDS will play an important role in tourists' daily life. Since China is a big market for this industry, the establishment of GDS in China is a sign of GDS becoming more and more popular in worldwide.

Google Transit, which uses data from over 500 global markets' transportation systems, is partnering up with Google Hotel Finder to make tourists' stays more time efficient. Google Hotel Finder added a new filter that shows consumers the maximum travel time from any point of interest to their hotel. It has placed a 20 minute default distance from point to point. Tourists can type a specific attraction, like Buckingham Palace, and it will show you hotels within 20 minutes of it. Google also allows you to choose the transit time; the smaller the time the smaller number of hotels within the range. Moreover, Google Hotel Finder can also search for hotels in selected areas for popular city locations. Prior to this, Google had Google Calendar, which allowed business consumers to choose hotels based on travel distance to their business meetings. Overall, Google's Hotel Finder targets both the leisure and business consumers. As a consumer searching for hotels in unfamiliar areas, this feature would be really beneficial because it allows me to plan my stay more accordingly. Usually, consumers choose a hotel based on travel time from the main points of interests, whether they are attractions or business meetings. Google Hotel Finder will now share this information with consumers before they actually even choose a hotel. I have a strong inclination that this type of consumer technology will drive hotels to use travel times as advertising tools when they use Google as an advertising medium.

Unified Computing System (UCS) technology is widely used byStation Casinos Inc., which is a one of high-tech Station Casinos Inc. invested and do a good implement in their properties. It not only help this company do a good business and also help the it employees keep their jobs.

Hotel guests are a captive audience and are often looking for the convenience factor when making their purchasing decisions, such as where to eat that night. If hoteliers take the initiative with their WiFi solution, they could be soon be reaping the financial rewards.

Implementing the right technology can bring a company back to business therefore it is really important to Know what technology is the best for the organization in order to improve productivity and attract potential clients.

The article give tourists amazing stuffs while they are travel around world. Instead of keeping a key to guest room, a mobile with new technology app enalbles them to enter their rooms without any key or card and so forth. What's more through this technology, guests can get access to places of interests, shoppiing area to get directions, transportation, drink and food, anything that they need during they are out of hotels. It allows guests to use it as a electronic purse to easily consume anywhere at anytime. Now there are some hotels in USA, are now install this new technology, which indicates a new way for guests to enter the properties. And it will be more sate to carry a necessarymobile with guests rather than a little key or card, which are much easier to lose or be stolen, I believe, the new technology both benefits guests and hotels.

This article focuses on steps needed for successful marketing campaigns with in the hospitality and tourism industry. The use of the internet has far reaching implications as this is the way that most communication takes place. Social media plays a huge role in giving and receiving information. Travel review websites and tourism publications can be used for advertisement purposes. Surveys offer instant feedback (positive or negative) and can determine whether or not customer referrals will be given. Forming partnerships with other companies such as restaurants, boat/bus tours, taxi cabs, etc. helps both parties.

The hotel and hospitality industry has become aware of the green revolution. Hotel guests are now leaning towards hotels that are environmentally friendly. This has lead to hotels establishing environmental programs, growing their our fruits and vegetables for use in the hotel restaurant, non- daily towl and sheet cycling, etc. There has also been an increase in eco-tourism. If the hospitality industry wishes to capitalize on the green revolution they should follow the trend closely.

This article discusses the advantages of having a "green" hotel and how much it impacts the guest experience, in a positive way. From not using chemicals and growing food on site, they have capitalized on a new type of traveler and will find these guests to most likely refer business and be a repeat guest. These travelers know they are participating in "experiential learning" that benefit the environment and provide a more local experience. They are also generating revenue as guests are staying on site and enjoying the local fare, such as food grown on site.

The article introduces five ways to improve eco-friendly reputation for hotels. Recently, many tourists are interested in green and sustainability, and when they choose the hotel, the characteristic about sustainable business operation can be a big benefit tourist can consider. First, it is about eco-friendly heating and energy. The energy bill takes up a lot when considering the total expenditure, so it is necessary for hotels to manage the power effectively. By utilizing energy management system, hotel can track the energy consumption in the entire building and control the expense. Second, hotel can adopt waste reduction technology. Most wastes are coming from poor stock control. Thus, hotel should employ the tracking system to monitor the items that are being disposed of often, and use the record when they purchase the items. Third, sustainable laundry can be the way to operate the eco-friendly hotel. Eco-friendly polymer laundry beads can reduce the water usage and electricity expense. Also, an effective material can cut down the frequency for linen to be replaced. Fourth, lighting technology can be used. By applying the occupancy sensors, hotel can cut down the cost, and use energy more effectively. Lastly, it is iPad POS system. According to the article, they said iPad POS saves about 97% of power consumption compared to Window-based system. To sum up, these five ways can be adopted for sustainable hotel operation, and having the eco-friendly hotel brand will be a big advantage to increase millennial guests and advertise the hotel.

This article describes the ways to make the hotel greener and more appealing to the environmentally aware guests

Airbnb wants to invest in Africa due to the many touristic attractions that bring in people from all over the world. Additionally, through this technology, they will boost people-to-people tourism in Africa, building a new economic engine for local families and their communities.

This article talks about both the pros and cons of eCommerce in the hospitality industry. It talks about how it has changed and helped the industry but also the side effects that it may have.

"Plainly, the physical plant is nothing but the destination with sound and catchy architecture that enhances tourists' experience." But it doesn't stop there. The physical plant must have an interaction with other topics to complete the product, to make it appealing to our guests and lately to create a loyalty to the brand. Physical plant, service, hospitality, freedom of choice and involvement are the steps for developing a product.

The Primary aim of this research was to undertake a qualitative study of how public sectors events developing agencies in Australia determine strategies to foster events tourism and the stakeholder orientations they adopt in shaping these strategies. Events tourism has been described as the planning development and marketing of events as tourist attractions to maximize the number of tourist participating in events as either primary or secondary attractions. A strategy is an integrated set of policies and programs intended to achieve the vision and goals of the organization or destination. For this investigation, three different framework of events tourism strategy making depicting alternative stake holder orientations were created. They include: * The corporate market-led framewook * The community destination framework * A synergetic framework The reactive-proactive model of strategy making employed by Australian event agencies appeared to be associated with Corporate market-led strategy making.

The degradation of the environment constitutes a main concern of modern society, and this in turn affects firms' strategy. As a service industry, the tourist sector is particularly interesting as the focus of an investigation on environmental management practices for two main reasons. First, this sector has an increasing economic importance. Second, the tourist industry shows an increasingly higher environmental concern. This paper studies the driving factors for hotels to deploy environmental management practices. An analysis of environmental management in especially hospitality industry, get a good point or goal between other industry because most of the individuals spend their money in hotel or any other resorts, they seems to have their right to use all the resources in a reasonable perspective. Most of them turn on the light in their room even they don`t actually need it. Some of them over consume plenty of the food in buffet and so on. This situation happens in each corner in the hospitality in the world in real time. Along of the current tendency coming up, most of the customers realize that green environmental practice is necessary as well as the hospitality industry on account of the cost control and higher profit anticipation by the owner and hotel inter company. Once we have agreement with the goal that saving electrical power and other natural resources, in order to saving our earth, how could we implement the environment protection in hospitality industry and which angle should we cut in to this research, that`s why we should analyze environmental management, organizational context and performance in hospitality industry. After we dig in, found out multiple elements effecting environment management, then we could have a reasonable and profession angle can be followed, get the solution of environment protection in hospitality on site by a very practical way.

This article explains the booking trend of hotel in 2017 and afterward. Even though online booking tools such as website, mobile apps have made tourists easier to book the hotel in the world, in hotel's perspective, GDS is still the main contributor to increasing bookings and enhancing the hotel revenue. According to the article, GDS booking increased by 11.6 percent between the year 2015 and 2016, and around 60 percent of bookings at hotel were made through offline sources including CRS, walk-in, call or GDS. Among these, the major tool was GDS. Furthermore, the change of economic and political environment has caused hotels to have the right tools to decrease the loss. Thus, hotels should be equipped with the technology platform to monitor and support inventory and distribution channels. Every hotel has different situation and different booking channel. For example, when I was working at reservation department, our main booking source was an online. In other words, each hotel should find out what their main booking channel is, and based on that, suitable strategy to improve revenue should be developed even though this article emphasizes the importance of GDS booking.

The EDTS company believes Savannah's economic and employement growth could attract hackers from obtaining personal information of tourists and visiting customers. Charles Johnson, the CEO of the company believes it is a duty for hotels/restaurants to provide data security for its customers. He believes that not only big companies such as Equifax and Yahoo are vulnerable to hacks, but also small businesses. He adds that when small businesses are hacked, they can be ruined. He stresses all kinds of outlets to protect their data before they have a major breach.

The article talks about Green initiatives on a global scale. The hospitality tourism industry sees a possible path of development in building a tourist environmental friendly location. The companies are increasingly aware of the great potential lying in the relationship between tourism and the natural environment within the cities. The article also explains how urban green tourism is greatly responsible in making the city enjoyable to all citizens, tourists and investors to spread the benefits of urban tourism to its surroundings. This will impact the relevance of cultural resources, minimum environmental impact and maximum environmental sustainability. In reading the article, I believe the ecological and landscape values are a significant part of their endogenous capital which could stimulate their socio-economic development in which urban green tourism would play a vital role.

The article introduces how to manage revenue and cost strategies for boutiques and independent hotels. Compared to big brand hotels, boutique and independent hotels have less brand power, and less power of a brand sales team. So, they need to find the right tools to adapt and fit their own property. Firstly, GDS is a good source to gain an exceptional return on investment, but it costs a lot to adopt for small or mid-sized hotels. Thus, direct bookings can be the most cost-effective way for them to choose. By identifying the sales from group and OTA, revenue can increase and optimize profits. Hotel can hold events as one of the ways to increase revenue. Mixing F&B and event can achieve financial success. Also, independent hotels can use destination marketing to emphasize tourist spots and host more business trip. Lastly, the importance of social media and website is very high for boutiques and independents. As they constantly update their site, search engine optimization should be kept up with. Considering GDS system in the context of small property, they are not afforded to adopt the system though it has a lot of benefits to increase revenue. Thus, they should find the right tool to adapt while considering the budget or common booking tool utilized.