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In 01 Mar 12 someone share a article about the global hospitality accounting system. That article talks about how the Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP) are in the process of making a user guide for the global hospitality accounting system. This article is an update that publish recently. It shows where does the project stand right now and what is next for the project. However, the first part of phase one- covering the UK and continental Europe- is now well in progress.

HFTP's Global Hospitality Accounting System Users Guide will set a global method for hospitality industry.   Recently, research is being conducted into current practices. This research will identify who is doing what in different parts of the world, with a view to establishing best practice and providing practical guidance for students, practitioners and professionals involved in the industry.

Hospitality Financial and technology professionals was developing a global hospitality accounting system in the past year. Their fist step is to cover the UK and continental Europe. The second step is to do search about South and central America and cover them. The third step will begin for China and India, and the last two segments will be Russia and North America. This is quite a large program. If the program was completed, a globally accepted method that financial professional, ownership structure, investors and benchmarking information services can use to support  efficient operations will be formed, and a globally accepted method to monitor investment performance from region to region will also be formed.

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.

Today's travelers expect a strong network security. The challenge is that many hotels lack the IT resources because of budget. As a result, IT functions are limited to making sure security patches are up to date and services are running rather than proactively identifying security threats and preventing. This article introduces cloud-based security system as a solution. With the network security system, IT headquarters can monitor and manage the entire network. Also, hotels can save the cost for on-site IT resources and security appliances. It was interesting that cloud-based security is a solution for network security when there are many opinions that cloud computing is not safe. 

This article talks about the limitation of hotel network security issue, then introduce one solution to it. First of all, it mentions since the usage of Internet is growing big more than ever, customers has more attention and requirement on Network Security. Actually, staff of IT department spend most of their time on updating system and other mid-level support, while they should spend more time on proactively identifying security threats and preventing attacks. This happens due to finance and human source constraints. Lucky for us, there is already one effective solution, keyword, cloud computing. Buy applying cloud computing, IT staff only need set up firewall, configure security system on headquarter. After then configuration is done, they send out these IPS device to branch companies. The security system will automatically update through these devices, no more traveling between properties.

While many hotels right now are keeping and tracking down their valued customers' information, lots of those hotels are facing security problems also. Customers expect ironclad security that protects their entire "online" experience in the hotel, from online booking and iPad-enabled check-in to the wireless connectivity in their rooms. In today's cyber threat environment, that makes the hospitality industry a desirable and lucrative target for attacks. This article mainly talked about how to strength hotel network security.It suggested that a strong network security solution should combine cloud-based security configuration with plug and play installation of a firewall and IPS appliances. Which can be described as Taking Network Security to the Cloud.The IPS device will automatically contact and authenticate to the installation cloud, retrieve its configuration, and then reboot into the hotel's network ready to protect.

This cloud-based system seems like a good, inexpensive alternative to a traditional POS.

last semester, one of my stretegic projects is just based on this cloud system. It save the money on purchase, trainning, maintainence, and update fees, what is more, it is safer than the personel system and convenient to transfer, share, and update the information. But I am concerned about it related devices----I phone/I pad. What I know is that I phone never wholesale its products or for rent. So the cost for the device purchase, maintence and update is still a big part.

I wonder what the target market of the 300 plus restaurants that are currently using this domestically is? It raises concerns of user acceptance for those who are not familiar with Apple products, as we all know these people exist. User acceptance would be high if it is marketed to the appropriate demographic.

Smart Web PMS is a web-based PMS. It do not need hotel to install complex software, all you need is a computer with an internet connection. The dashboard displays the new reservations, recent check-in and check-outs, available units and urgent tasks on one screen. Once the information update the change will immediately show to all the users in real time. The reservation board show all the rooms states. Make reservation is simple, all you need to do is click the free unit. It also makes the online booking become more convenient. This PMS connect with most popular reservation platforms. Once the price or the availability of the hotel is changed the information on the reservation platforms will change. Once the platforms generate a booking the information will update immediately on the dashboard and reservation board. The workorder management system will report the existing repair task and problems in real time. It can send notification to the appropriate employees to deal with these problems. With the help of powerful system and filters we can find the information about the client quickly. It protects the data security by set access levels. Employees with different access levels have different aspect of the system can be viewed and edited. You don't need to worry about the security problems by use this system. This system back up the database in two separate servers in order to avoids damage of hardware failure. This system use https to transfer data which is the safest way to handle sensitive data. The servers who store the data are protecting by complex firewalls. I think this PMS is a good choose for hotels especially for the hotel that just start their business because this system charge base on the real number of units in the systems. It cost less than the traditional PMS.

I like the Web-based PMS. If i was the owner of a hotel, I would like to use the Web-based. It would save my money on installation of several softwares and require less IT managers to maintain the system. All changes about rate, status and workorder would be updated to all users in real time.

Yes, compare with the cloud-based PMS. I prefer the web-based PMS, because it keep the data more safe and the monthly cost is lower.

Having a good network security eliminates viruses and you are less vulnerable to identity theft or malware that can ruin your data. It is good t run regular weekly scans to ensure that your machine is not infected. It is also good to update the anti-virus programs and the operating systems to ensure that you computer is protected against the latest threats. Using a firewall will help to protect against malicious software and prevent people from traveling through your network connection. With router security, by using a strong password protection people won't be able to get access to stealing your data and this will improve security. Using a computer network suite such as Norton or McAfee is a good option because they have a variety of software, including anti-virus, firewall, identity protection and back up features. They all work together to protect your computer from threats.

Sometimes, virus comes from the misoperation of the staffs. A lot of times, when the anti-virus system warns the user of the computer, most people will not spend too much time reading and thinking about the warning. Then they pay make wrong choice so that virus are downloaded to the computer.

In this weeks reading, the article, "Why Investing in Hospitality Technology is Investing in Good Business", mentions how due to the economic downturn hotels have turn to cutting technology and staff levels as a method to minimize costs, yet this is a recipe for disaster, if not conducted adequately. Technology is continuously evolving, it is important to make decisions regards IT investment that will be useful in the coming 3-5 years. Technological infrastructures should operate to facilitate a process or procedure for the overall benefit of the hotel, rather than take a day-by-day approach. In an ever-demanding industry, it is critical for hoteliers to be adequately prepared with automated systems, reducing if not eliminating important manually conducted tasks which are damaging the operations of the hotel due to the lack of real time information which will help revenue maximization. In moments of recessions, companies minimize their cost reducing what is foreseen as unnecessary such as IT investment, yet is important to maintain a level of preparation and not losing the opportunities presented by the market.

Hotel owners and managers are putting eyes on technology in the hospitality industry slow recovery period. All pundits agree this method can bring some recovery. The international hotel organizations have made many plans of improving investment in technology and staff. Progressive hospitality organizations have updated and invested in new technology and training, change the industry requirements and market. Before investment, the most important is to look at what operational efficiencies the technology can bring and how the technology will benefit the hotels. There are many technologies are good choices for investment, such as Revenue Management Systems. This technology is efficient and can help hotels track historic data, forecast future demand and so on. We also need to technology is changing all the time. So this is a big challenge of managers to make decisions for a long development. We also need to realize that the hospitality industry is changing, strategies will not always be applicable to new, unique situations. It is important for hotels to increase advantages in the competition.

Those hotel groups that fail to recognize the speed of change in technology and what this can bring to the business will find themselves significantly under prepared when the market starts to strengthen. While "its never too late" to act - there is a significant opportunity cost in doing nothing or worse still, cutting technology out of the day to day operations. For a hotel to effectively operate and ensure it is maximizing its incoming revenue, the right technologies needs to be in place. Through investing in the right technology at the right time, savvy hoteliers will be ensuring that their facility(s) are able to effectively maximize their ongoing revenue capability now and into the future.

This article informs us on the different levels of integration to accounting, ecommerce, rental, shop management and other software modules. There is a slight difference between integrated and interfaced. Interface is when the system is linked to another accounting system like quick books or Peachtree in order to transfer data between them in order to communicate with third party programs. Integrated modules use the same file and information, data is consistent in order to avoid double entry. Most accounting systems are built in and tightly integrated into the software so there is an instant update of inventory quantity, customer history, account receivables etc. There are some advantages of a separate accounting package which include saving money, no retraining, and better overall design with stand alone accounting systems. Some disadvantages of a separate accounting package will be out of date information, updates and maintenance can cause problems, difficult configuration. The built in (integrated) accounting includes updates, quick reference, and easy configuration. Disadvantages are poor design. According to this article it seems that accounting systems which are integrated are far more efficient then interfaced accounting systems. Although it clearly states that both words are used interchangeably and both can give plenty of problems with the software. But with integrated individuals are just working with one program while with interface individuals have to learn two programs and user interfaces.

The article shows how a unified computing and communication system helps a company implement a new technology. While the new technology system is worth a multimillion-dollar investment; the benefits have provided the company excellent financial results. It allowed the company to consolidate 18 room reservation and telephone operations into a single location. Another advantage from the update is the capability for Station Casinos to connect 15,000 different devices which include some of the newer slot machines that have been installed. The new technology reduces downtime; this is an advantage as downtime could lead to potential monetary loss. Finally, the update while costing millions of dollars, the financial return on the investment is tremendously impactful to the company.

This article speaks about a seemingly successful turn around for a struggling casino group in Las Vegas after making multimillion-dollar investments for I.T. over a period of time. While it has not completely eradicated all their problems, Stations Casinos Inc., which operates 18 hotels, and casinos off the Vegas Strip has saved tremendously by providing a cohesive communication computer system that has allowed greater efficiency ultimately saving money. An example of efficiency is cutting down data center server racks from 12 to one. More advantages showed with reduced cost due to less power and energy being used to maintain more infrastructures. An upgrade in network allowed for their slot machines and security cameras to connect across the board. This is important because, " about 80% of revenue comes from slot machines," said Baltz. These are just a few advantages the Stations Casinos Inc., has experienced since their investment. After reading this article, it just goes to show how important the I.T. department can be to the profitability of a hotel, casino or other hospitality entity. Usually we think of the product or service as the revenue generators of a business, but this type of article shows that, by saving money, the trickle down effect of increasing profits will occur when you cut expenses.

If there was ever any question that IT investment could drastically benefit companies, this scenario is the proof. A group of struggling Las Vegas Casinos really turned there negative situation around with the use of new interactive technology. This interactive technology is not only beneficial in the hotel world, but apparently casinos as well. The possibilities for this technology are endless, as long as it continues to advance. Guests and costumers who continue to be satisfied with their enhanced technological experience, will give companies and businesses large profits. Just as the casinos had a drastic turnaround by utilizing technology, other groups will do the same.

Frontdesk Anywhere provides not only a common feature of sharing information with reservation system, but it makes a further step and integrate hotel management, reservation system with travel agents. Although the advantage that this article discussed include that customer will no longer be mislead and have accurate information. But actually, oversell happens all the time in hospitality industry. So it means more to hotel that hotels may save lots of labors as well as expenses to keep the information for travel agents updated. 

My article this week is about how GDS (Global Distribution Systems) can be compared to a seatbelt. The author opens the article discussing the main reasons we still continue to use seatbelts; even though they aren't the most comfortable or fashionable items to use, they still do their jobs in saving our lives when it comes to a collision of some sort. The author is in favor of GDS and makes the claim that like seatbelts, the GDS may not be the most up-to-date or may not appear to be as nice as other local systems to each individual airline, but they get the job done and there are no other systems out there like it that we know of (no other systems that do everything he GDS system does that is). The main topic of discussion that the article is concerned with is the recent decision made by the company Lufthansa to start charging its customers an additional surcharge for using GDS systems instead of going through its own system. The author clearly makes it know that she doesn't believe Lufthansa when they say they are charging this additional surcharge because GDS is the most expensive channel to go through. "Because there's no reason to think that an airline should expect to distribute its products without any cost, Lufthansa's recent gambit seems more of a tactic for increasing lagging direct distribution... Its strategy seems to rest in shifting distribution costs to corporate buyers" claims Rose, the author of the article. The author also points out some of the draw backs of using agency portals, the main reason being that a customer cannot compare rates of other competitors and that agency portals cannot handle high volume transactions like the GDS can. It is also made known that there are costs that come with other channels as well, like the prices you pay for building airline websites and keeping them updated. The author concludes that "Given the history of negotiations between airlines and GDSs, it's impossible to know whether Lufthansa is using DCC as

Hotels are at risk for cyber attack. It can cause a customer to lose trust in your brand and make public relations difficult to control. There are different types of attacks that are more prominent for hotels and that includes: Phishing attacks, ransomware, POS and credit card attacks, and DDoS. In order to protect your hotel you need a CISO to monitor the system and make updates. In addition you will need infrastructure updates and secure procedures to protect against attacks.

Inthe hospitality/tourism industry it's so easy for cyber threats to come up and this year it has been increasing in the industry. Cyber hackers find it easy to target places like hotels for instance where there are overnight shifts of people inputing valuable and sensitive information in the computers the hackers have felt like they hit the jackpot knowing this so it's important for businesses to have security with their techonology.

This article talks about how there is a serious concern in the hotel industry when it comes to credit card and identity theft. They talk about how all the major brands in the hotel industry were all victims of highly publicized, major breaches in the last year alone. Also, including airline and banks, hotels maintain a wealthy amount of database of personal and financial data. For example, with new technology systems being created, POS systems are a weak security point for many networks because they are constantly in use and are not always updated or even protected from vulnerabilities. The article talks about personal details for hotel guests are frequently stored in a variety of locations including restaurants, facilities, and government buildings, so hackers have a greater possibility to access your personal information. The bigger hotels are in more danger because of the volume of guests that come in and out of the location. Smaller hotels should be concerned not just about their security but also by ransomware, an increasingly favorable tactic to extort hoteliers by hackers who encrypt the hotels data making it inaccessible until ransom is paid for. I believe hotels need a toolbelt of various securtiy technologies that can be used to prevent future malicious attacks. I think by managing and implementing a firewall is essential which helps get rid of dangerous traffic from coming onto the network and preventing sensitive data from being hacked.

MOD 10: This article discusses the main tactics of cyber hackers that target hotels. Point of sale (POS) systems are easy targets for hackers due to their constant use during operation hours and because of that their security measures aren't always up to date. Hotels have large data banks since they're storing consumer profile information such as home addresses, phone numbers and credit card numbers. There's a large risk when it comes to security breaches within franchises because they have access to their parent company's regional, national and global systems. If their systems are hacked and breached, then that puts the whole system of the brand at risk. Security breaches within a system can also damage a brands reputation with the public. According to the article, "Recent major breaches at Fortune 500 companies and household names across the retail, restaurant and hotel sectors demonstrate that anti-virus, anti-malware and firewalls alone are not enough to secure businesses from the ever-evolving threat landscape." Smaller properties are even at a greater risk because not only do they have to monitor their compliance with PCI but also monitoring their security systems for their database and PMS system. Some of the recommended software's that should be used by hotels looking to be proactive with their company's cyber security is File Integrity Monitoring(FIM), Unified Threat Management(UTM), and Security Information and Event Management(SIEM).

This article explores the different tactics hotels should use after a cyber attack. The article mentions several different type of attacks such as Phishing when hackers trick customers into giving up their login credentials. Ransomware, when hackers encrypt data making it unusable and inaccessible for the hotel. Not one solution but rather companies should be equipped with a series of technologies from firewalls to file monitoring programs. Some of these technologies, like SIEM requires an intelligent IT team to have the capabilities of analyzing and monitoring the reports produced. This may be more difficult for smaller businesses to implement and maintain.

This article discusses the liability for a cyber breach at various branded hotels between the franchise owner or the corporation. The Trustwave 2016 Global Security Report stated that the hospitality industry had the second largest amount of data breaches. Additionally, more than half of the breaches are from a corporate/internal network breach. According to a Ponemon study, the average cost of a data breach is $4 million. While this is alarming, it is a surprise since hotels store numerous amounts of personal customer data including guest's credit card information. The article states that cyber hacks are largely due to the gap in not knowing who is responsible for the cyber security. There is an issue of control of data versus franchise network requirements. The hotel brand places individual franchisees in control of their own cyber security. However; they must rely on many centralized corporate owned reservation systems that could be possible access point for cyber attacks. The article suggests that the individual franchisee should make more effort in protecting their customers information as the hotel brand will take most of the blame. This does not help either side. Also, it mentions that in order to protect the hotel franchise it is important to have updated systems and should consider investing in cyber insurance.

Due to the vulnerability of some POS systems, hackers have made the example of SAP whose POS system does not authenticate or check any internal commands, meaning if an hacker is able to get into their POS system they can change prices, add discounts and even disable the check out systems. Even though they have made the example out of SAP, it is said that this vulnerability is across almost all POS systems. One reason that this is happening is because many companies that run their POS system off the internet are not updating their programs, such as the windows, the internet explorer or the POS system itself. Today companies are very aware of the measures they must take to ensure their POS systems are safe as many breaches have happened causing many people to have their personal data stolen, therefore due to the efforts POS system breaches have been decreasing over the recent years.

The Maestro PMS has a new feature, called the single guest itinerary, that lets hoteliers give guests a more personalized experience. Since each guest is different, and would have different preferences in terms of activities, the feature allows the operator to create an itinerary that would have the guests reservations for things such as dining reservations and spas. It updates in real time if a guest wants to move things around, so that the guests can see what their new itinerary looks like as soon as they make any changes. This feature is included in all Maestro systems, both cloud and on-premises.

At the International Hotel Investment Forum (IHIF) it was established that hospitality investment has indeed grown up. The article points out how new generations are now slowly taking over which means hotel need to stay updated and change with the new expectations and needs. A huge investment was made for this exact cause to keep the next generation of travelers interested.

The article reports that the great majority of hotel guests desire to have state of the art innovation for their convenience, such as casting and voice interface technology. The type of innovation stems largely from guests being able to use their laptops or phones on the TV, while also access hotel services such as restaurant hours and possibly food services from the same interface. They assert. however that it is important for hoteliers to know how guests may be able to keep their identity hidden from potential practices such as "integration with the platform that may use this data for remarketing", integrate a system that can understand an manage foreign accents. It also brings up concerns of how to measure return on investment, showing a increase in revenue and that it is possible to update the interactions with guests once the technology is deployed.

A security researcher, Mr. Noam Rotem has found a security vulnerability in the widely used Amadeus airline software. Mr. Rotem booked a flight with El Al and the company sent him a link to retrieve his Passenger Name Record (PNR). Rotem inputted a random booking reference number into this link, which is sent to all customers upon booking, and he was able to access other passenger's information. This raises concerns among attackers changing seat flights, meal specifications, or claiming flyer miles. The security researcher also viewed email addresses, phone numbers, and was even able to cancel flights. Additionally, this data can easily be accessed because reference numbers and last names are printed on baggage tags, making this available for many to see in an airport. The Global Distribution System does not have any form of authentication factor or password to keep this information safe. The GDS has not been updated to ensure security in many years. The company claims that the PNR process must be in accordance with the whole industry, and it needs to collaborate with everyone in order to form a new procedure.