This article includes 5 security risks (including technology related and not) common in the hospitality industry, as well as some specific examples and ways to avoid those issues. It was written in July of 2022 and as a result is likely relevant today. Although not all of the security issues are technology related, I posted this article because I believe that all of them can at least be addressed by incorporating technology. For example, unauthorized visitors can be addressed through increased camera and scanning technology to identify visitors that may have poor intentions entering the premises.

This article is about the integration of social media in marketing for restaurants, and particularly how that has adapted and changed as a result of the pandemic. The article gives a brief introduction with some statistics outlining the particular usage of social media by different generations and how they make decisions regarding the content they see on that social platform. It then goes into detail about how Instagram is the primary platform that leads to success for restaurants marketing. It then takes a slight turn and explains that many consumers are looking to give their business and attention to entities that take social or other stands and seem to have a genuine care for making the world a better place. It has also been shown that outsourcing of marketing has reduced as a result of the pandemic and the need to save money during the hard times. Additionally, there is something that consumers find appealing about the genuine marketing that an internal employee is able to do on a platform such as instagram. The article concludes that even though the pandemic has been a terrible thing, it has forced restaurants to become more proactive and innovative in their marketing strategies.

This article is about Proximity Marketing and the many different specific ways it may be applied. These applications include: QR Codes, WiFi, NFC, RFID, Geofencing, and BLE Beacons. In all of these cases, it is vital to proximity marketing that there be an end-user mobile device (such as an iPhone or Android) as well as location-based technologies. We are all fairly familiar with QR codes as those have become widely used during the pandemic. What we may not have considered though, is how logging into a WiFi gives a lot of information about you to the business, as well as a future means of communicating with you (assuming you made an account and/or gave them important information such as an email address). Geofencing is also really cool because it allows companies to set up a virtual boundary that collects data from mobile devices that pass through that boundary. This allows a business to truly know what kinds of consumers go in and out of whatever establishment the geofence outlines.

This article relates to augmented reality and a few of the different ways it is being incorporated into hotels. Augmented reality allows the hotelier to enhance the guests environment real time in a number of different ways. Some of these ways, as described in the article are: interactive hotel rooms, gamification, augmented hotel environments, and beacon technology. At the end of the article there are a number of links to articles about other digital trends, such as robots being used in the hospitality industry!

This article gives an excellent brief introduction to the history of POS systems and how they have evolved over the years. It is evident that as other technologies (such as smart phones, the internet, etc.) improve, so too do the POS systems. They adapt as new capabilities become available and to the ever changing needs of the consumer. I also chose this article because my research paper is on POS systems and I believe this will be a great resource for me to use.

I chose this article because my paper will be on POS systems in restaurants and this article outlines a bit about Cloud-Based POS systems. It explains how the data storage works remotely through the vendors servers. It also outlines a list of reasons why Cloud-Based storage could potentially be more secure than local storage. I think that if I were opening a restaurant I would definitely use a cloud-based SAAS POS.

This article is about Virtual Restaurants, Ghost Kitchens, and the differences between the two. To be honest, I was not really familiar with either of these concepts before today, though I can see the appeal of both and why they are increasing in popularity. It's obvious that the pandemic played a large role in accelerating the popularity and significance of these kinds of services but I do not think things will slow down. It is evident that people like the ability to order a wide variety of food and get it in a timely manner while still retaining its quality. I think that ghost kitchens are a great opportunity for people to test out their restaurant concepts without committing to a long term lease, a large investment in equipment, etc. I think that it will lend to more diversity in delivery food and potentially even higher quality.