This article gives the general basis of why it is important to have a security department for your front office. The front office is the communication center for the hotel. Therefore it is an area that breeds a healthy amount of human interaction for which you must have a secure, safe plan in the event of an emergency. In my opinion, I agree that front office associates deal with a lot of people on their job and having the appropriate knowledge for the appropriate situation is important.

This article discusses how COVID-19 has highlighted the necessity of social media for hospitality industry players. As it is contactless and gets to virtually everybody's device, it is one of the best forms of advertising a business can use. There are various things a company must do in order to be successful in their social media use. This would be to figure out their target audience, their most preferred platform, and schedule specific and relatable content for your viewership. This form of advertising is extremely cost effective and is proven to work. In my opinion, social media has achieved more than its intended purpose. Platforms like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Instagram, etc have allowed for people all over the world to have access to information about restaurants, hotels, reviews, etc and it is extremely helpful.

Proximity marketing is a mode of location based marketing that uses the customers location to their advantage when distributing advertisements for their business. There are several different types of proximity marketing solutions that can and are currently being used by the most popular brands right now. There is wifi proximity marketing, radio frequency identification proximity marketing (RFID), near field communication proximity marketing (NFC), GPS based, beacon based, and QR codes. Using these methods of marketing hold benefits including enhanced customer experience, app utilization, cost effectiveness, and customer relation boost. There is an option for everyone in terms of cost and many industries are using them more and more, inclusive of the hospitality/tourism industry. In my opinion, the previous ways of advertising are becoming obsolete and the market for competition is growing and growing and growing. We all have likely encountered one or more forms of this type of marketing, and we likely will continue to in the future.

AI exists in all functions of our modern lives. It has fundamentally allowed for more processes to happen, while exhausting less human labor. It has created more efficiency and accuracy in the hospitality industry.

The article simply describes the ways in which AI is apart of our everyday lives and how it has not only impacted us as individuals but in the hospitality industry. Years ago, when we thought of AI we would think of big robots but now AI is as small as a chip in an iPhone, or as intangible as data on a software. AI has enabled a deeper level of personalization to guest experience as well as added close to maximum efficiency in the data and intelligence realm. It allows for multiple processes to be happening at the click of a button, lessening the potential exhaustion of our human resources in these businesses. In my opinion, AI has brought exponential convenience to our everyday lives and although sometimes intrusive, it makes life easier. Being able to rely on a piece of technology to remember certain patterns and trends is convenient and efficient.

Global distribution systems work by connecting travel companies (airlines, car rentals, cruise lines) to travel agencies (online or human) who then connect with the interested traveler. By this chain, the travel agent is able to offer real time availability from the companies to the traveller. The benefits of this system are the ability to deliver tons of information direct from the relevant companies, it is convenient for those that use them and easy to track travelling trends and interests. To me, it works like a mass marketing strategy. The content is generated by the owners and instead of enlisting their own man power, they utilize the efficiency and convenience of remote technology to mass distribute. The intended consumer receives the information without ever having to think where it's coming from, but inevitably trusts its reliability. The productivity of this system is something that those in the hospitality industry cannot ignore because this represents moments of the first interaction between the interested consumer and your operation. In order for the information to reach them in a convenient medium. In summary, GDS's help information get from the travel company to the consumer everyday in real time via global networks.

This article investigates the adoption of cloud computing in the hospitality industry across the world. While identifying the benefits and challenges of this system, the findings suggest that cloud computing is utilized in hotel groups today, more often than not. The article is not an opinion piece but rather an investigation searching for evidence to support the theory that cloud computing is growing in the hospitality industry. It bases its arguments from the observances that in order to operate a hotel group on todays scale, you have to be willing to fall in line with the trends of today- technology + convenience. It also is described how operating systems that streamline property management in terms of reservations, billing, ticketing, etc aren't exactly inventions of right now, but have been developed and corrected more and more as time has gone on and necessity has demanded of them. Four hotel groups, across 2-3 regions were involved in the study where participants were all senior IT directors and managers, across hotels with varying levels of rooms. What they ultimately found was that majority of the information systems used by these hotel groups were based on the cloud system. When the benefits and challenges were surveyed, it was found that the most common reason groups were utilizing this system was relieving the site from not having certain hardware to perform certain functions, and transferring security related risks to the system suppliers instead of the hotel. However, challenges noted was that operating expenses increased, the on site IT leaders don't have access to the environment the hardware lives in, and information security concerns. Working with a cloud computing system daily, I thoroughly understand and appreciate the benefits of having one streamlined services for guest logistics. It creates multiple levels of ease for all aspects of the organization as well as the wider hotel group. For operations that span across the globe, there probably i

Reflecting on the term "disruption", there are likely fewer recent events that come to mind than the COVID 19 pandemic. It ceased life as we know it and forced industries across the globe to adapt, create, and innovate like we haven't seen before. This article discusses how the once taboo term "automation" has had to become the hospitality industries close ally as we progress into post-COVID life. The hospitality industry traditionally being "human-centric" has had to accept innovation in every way due to proximity being a cause for caution in recent times. However, the innovation born of necessity has amounted in fundamental changes in the industry that have disrupted hospitality and tourism as we know it. As disruption holds a negative connotation, in this instance it represents significant and lasting change in the industry that now ironically serves the consumer better than it may ever have. Travel demands are high, and the industry is indeed rising to the challenge.