This article talks about the new tool for the hotels to reach out to their customers, an interaction with their guests only through mobile phones. and this shows that the future of hotel marketing is going to evolve even further. One of the reasons why this would be helpful is because of the way everyone communicates today. of all the mobile phones used today, 95% of them have bluetooth, and another interesting statistics is that 98% of guests switch on the television within five minutes of entering their room. hotels customers are primed for information and offers. Proximity marketing enables guest engagement, it offers what the guests want the most. This type of marketing has a tremendous potential of generating revenue, by establishing stronger roots of connection with their customers. So basically it provides instant connection, manage campaigns and transactions in real time, advertise smarter, no delivery fee and no privacy issues. all this along with growing customer acceptance of location based services will open new opportunities for the for proximity marketing, not only for hospitality but for others too.

This article from sabre hospitality talks about the top 3 trends for 2012 to enhance the hotel's marketing and distribution. with constant changes in the industry to lead the pack, the advent of new distribution channels have created more options to personalize strategies which suit the requirements of the respective properties. the number one trend is mobile for computing and communication reasons as it is more personal and user-customized. the second one is social media which has initiated conversations and established relationships with customers through different social media channels. And the third one is channel management, by managing channels, it can help the company to use third party relationships to to drive business for the company, by offering rate parity across channels, which will help the property to be optimized to convert and be the place where there will be more customers making reservations through these channels.

This article talks about the constantly evolving and upgrading technology requirements for the hotels. Since hotels are expanding, these technologies make it easier to operate from different geographical locations, and also enables decision making based on revenues, guest services, and other factors. So today, if you are a hotel with a PMS, then one should invest in the era of hotel ERP's and cloud based management solutions. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), is an excellent tool to increase performance, productivity, reducing operational expenses, etc. This will provide the operators with constant visibility to hotel operations with single database and can be accessed through all the departments. it could be a good investment tool as ERP allows for hotels to interact with single vendor, as there is a single solution for multiple operations, and the fixed costs become more manageable.

This article about the IDeas Revenue Solution Systems which will enable hotel managers to effectively manage pricing with just few clicks. It is the leading provider of the pricing and revenue management software for the hospitality industry. Now they have come up with its own pricing system which will enable the managers to seek revenue growth in their budget. This software is specifically designed for the clients who face tough competition from the dynamic service markets, with other brands deploying the revenue management systems, it has become difficult to compete. This software is scheduled to be released in the other half of this year and the benefits include, forecasting occupancy, set room rates and make competitive pricing decisions. It is a simplified system which requires minimum training and interaction to learn and operate. This will further help in increase in revenue, can be used by busy managers with just few clicks, it gives room for improvement to enhance guest satisfaction. On the other hand it has minimal upfront costs and with positive outcomes and very little risk. this will also help the limited service hotels to compete with the current and prospective hotel owners with this simplified pricing capability. It is interesting to see how IT has evolved into the hospitality industry by providing the best possible systems, software's to compete in this results driven industry, where a company can fall behind any minute with the pace at which the support systems have taken the reliability for lifting the revenue, in order to invest more and attract more customers.

Aptech Computer Systems, Inc., the leading provider of hospitality software for business intelligence and enterprise financial accounting, announced about four new hotel companies who have selected their hospitality solutions to improve their business intelligence, budgeting and forecasting, and accounting. M&R Hospitality Management in New York and San Ysidro Ranch in Santa Barbara, CA, are among the companies implementing Aptech's financial solutions. Excuvue is a web based hospitality Business Intelligence application which gathers and coordinates data from different hotel systems, including the Smith Travel Research report. This system can convert written online ratings, comments, and the guest satisfaction ratings into metrics. This basically helps in optimizing the revenues as they can match up with the customer's idea and with their current daily performance and also with their competitors. It is very essential to bring about changes in the department where your competitor is excelling at. This sort of information can help them make quick changes for profitability and customer satisfaction. The interesting part is that companies are looking outside to leverage financial solutions in order to better manage their standards and keep up the pace. and many more hotel companies are implementing this to streamline their back office processes.

This articles talks about the nature of the hotel industry, which is inherently wasteful. when we see from energy and water use to waste generation, the guests in the hotel consume more resources than they do at home. Unless and until the hotels don't take steps to reduce waste and over-consumption of resources, this industry will have a large environmental impact on the world. the hotels which have green lodging standards reduce the impact of their operations and the bad part is that majority of the hotels have not even adopted these standards. the reasons could be either the management doesn't know the impact on the environment, or they believe the process is costly and time consuming, or the person who holds the responsibility is not doing his/her job right. Just like the law of science says "every action has equal and opposite reaction". similarly we can say, that managers and their managing practices can make a big difference in climate changes of the environment. Most of the hotel rooms say to recycle our towels, is it to recycle or to save their costs ? There could also be a possibility of having a wrong manager at the wrong position, who is not willing to widen his/her scope and learn about green initiatives, because in the end, these investments will generate benefits, financial, social and environmental.

This is a very interesting article about the hotel room control systems, which are expected to be more of a mainstream feature with the 2-wire bus push button modules. these units can be installed in any hotel build or refurbishment, and suitable for standardized rooms and also boutique hotel settings. such kind of modules are often found in luxury hotels than sub-five star hotels. also due to the expense and complexity of the system. But with this 2-wire bus push button, hotels can offer their customers centralized switching/dimming of lights, curtain/blind controls and do not disturb indicators in a single wall mount unit, without the cost or disruption of installing a full control system. This will allow middle market hotel operators to deliver that wow factor to their customers in a simpler and a cost effective way. they are also available in range of designs to complement the hotel rooms interiors. and even multiple units can be installed in one room, for example near the bed, near the door with the same assigned controls.

Choice hotels have deployed their cloud based hotel property management system choiceADVANTAGE, to its 5000th hotel, which is the Comfort Hotel De L'Europe of Saint -Nazaire, France, and is one of the lodging industry's most widely distributed web-based proprietary systems. This is a very user-friendly system and according to the chief technology officer of the Choice Hotels, the software also has an integrated solution to manage guest interaction at every stage. some of its features are efficient guest servicing, sophisticated revenue management, groups functionality, remote access and integration with company's programs. one of their main reasons to do this was to reduce their cost of purchasing, storing, and maintaining the costly infrastructure and hardware associated with the previous management systems. The hotel group also installed the Rate Center management tool, which will allow them to manage their pricing and inventory.

This article talks about the full integration between Hotel Concepts' Integrated Distribution Property Management System (IDPMS), the Brilliant PMPRO property management platform and the 3CX Hotel Module, a comprehensive PBX telephony system designed specifically for the global hotel industry. The 3CX is an add on that turns the 3CX phone system into a full featured hotel PBX, and with this new integration, it can directly interface with hotel concepts 'IDPMS or Brilliant PMPRO. this is one of the inexpensive ways/means to carry out property operations when compared to other PBX providers who charge high premiums, making it very affordable along with the VoIP technology. since the hotel and travel market is on an upward trend , integrated technology solutions like these can make those operations cost-efficient, as making calls all over the world is so expensive, and along with this, also streamline the operations by combining the extensive telephony experience with the knowledge of the global hotel industry, which will also set new standards in hotel management and communication.