A Green Hotel Association hotel, which is in Duluth, MN, used LED lights to replace incandescent lights in the last winter holiday season. The LED lights is 99% more energy efficient than standard bulbs, because LED just 2.4 watts compared to 245 watts with standard bulbs. According to the hotel report, there was over 32% less usage than last year, during the 45 days holiday season. Moreover, LED lights have a longer lifetime than stander bulbs-25,000 hours versus 700 hours. Additionally, the feedback from guests was entirely positive. Frequently guests commented about the curb appeal of the inn's exterior lighting. There will more and more hotels use LED lights in the future.

Pizza Hut deployed fingerprint biometrics as a part of their point of sales (POS) systems in 118 locations throughout East Coast in South Carolina, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia to reduce employee theft. Before installed the fingerprint reader, restaurant managers used simple ID number to authorize discount, overrides and voids. Moreover, employees also have their own ID number to clock in and out the payroll system. Because managers always need to share their authorization credentials with employees to fix some problems, some fraudulent employees use those credentials to steal money or check out early. By using fingerprint biometrics, restaurants' managers can eliminate the use of ID codes and accurately tying managers and cashiers to their actions.

Typically, the guest room energy costs will take up 40% to 80% of total energy costs of a hotel property, which depend on hotel size, location, and occupancy. There are 80% guest room costs related to the air conditioning and heating (HAVC). Another 20% of guest room energy costs are tied to electrical. Hotel HVAC systems are designed to maintain a guestroom at a fixed temperature both day and night. In many hotels - whether the guests are business or leisure travelers - the rooms are frequently unoccupied for much of the day. During those times, it will save hotels money to setback the thermostat or completely turn off the heating and cooling. Occupancy control system accomplishes just that. There are two major occupancy control system: cardkey system and occupancy sensor system. The primary benefit of occupancy control systems is that they reduce energy use for the hotel. Orchard Garden hotel installed the cardkey system to control their HVAC system and lights in guest room. According to calculate, there are average 26% reduction in HAVC energy costs. A second benefit is that occupancy controls reduce peak demand. However, both of cardkey system and occupancy sensor system have some weakness. They still need to enhance their technology and design to fix the problems

The normal POS system, which often includes hardware and software, such as receipt prints, and cash registers, is designed for large size business, such as chain restaurant. However, for some small business, the regular POS system is so expensive. Fortunately, the online POS system company offers a chance that small business can use POS system by internet. The technique is similar as cloud computing. Users do not need purchase any hardware. Moreover, those companies also provide some special services that based on internet. For example, one company combines POS system with social media, which allows users move between the online point of sale interface and their business or personal pages. In that way, customers are able to tell their online friends about purchases, thus increasing referrals. Additionally, another company -Vend offer the solution of a lost Internet connection by providing both on- and offline performance. If for some reason the connection is interrupted, the program continues to operate, offering automatic data synchronization when the Internet is restored.

Choice Hotels International, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels, InterContinental Hotels, Marriott International and Wyndham Hotel Group have combined to build a new serach site-Room Key.The site is essentially a metasearch platform for properties, prices and availability across all six companies, including their sub-brands and affiliates. Users can browse rates across every property, read independent reviews, compare prices and share information around their various social networks. Some same type search sites were lanuched before Room Key was lanuched. However, most of them were failed. Fortunately, Room Key is in a very different era in hotel distribution and marketing, with more channels than ever before and the emergence of big and potentially very influential players, such as Google.

IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) is the first hotel company to launch apps for both Kindle Fire and Google TV. Last year, IHG alos launched apps for Iphone and Ipad. The investment of new technologies will bring over $130 million in revenue for IHG from mobile bookings in 2011. Recent year, more and more travel supplier, such as airline, or hotel, developed direct booking system on website or mobile phone in order to get rid of over dependency of GDS (global distribution systems). As new technology developing, such as wifi, there will be more and more hotels groups lanuch direct booking apps on mobile phone in the future.

Expedia hopes bloggers can serve as an important plank in its effort to re-engineer the way people shop for hotel and airplane tickets by incorporating those transactions into a marketplace driven by social networks. A senior director for travel research firm PhoCusWright, believes Expedia's plan is a viable one. Expedia's goal is to make planning the entire trip - from flights to hotel to transportation, with even restaurant selections and amusement park tickets - an integrated shopping experience. For example: your family is planning a spring break trip to Orlando. After booking flights, your hotel search would incorporate friends' views on particular properties. There's already some evidence that social networks spur sales in the travel industry. Expedia's plan could pose a threat to the largest source of online hotel reviews, TripAdvisor. Both company and bloggers say they aren't concerned that readers may be turned off by commercial relationships between the travel agent and writers.