New York Fiesah is an online marketplace that connect NYC event planners and all kinds of vendors in a much easier manner. The event planner signs into Fiestah"s dashboard, they input the items they need and then vendors place bids to fill in those needs. Fiestah generates revenue by taking a 10 percent cut of each transaction. Another thing Fiestah provides for both parties is that the payment is held in escrow until the vendor completesits task, meaning both sides need to get what they want first. This will make sure both parties can get what they want. Testah team has been hard at work building out the marketplace, introducing themselves to lots of NYC business, and trying to get traction. The next thins on the company's long to -do list is to create full merchant profiles with the ability to rate vendors some time in the next few months. Also Fiestah plans to bring its market place to a next city - San Francisco.

Prince Hotels and Resorts partners with FastBooking for website creation and related services and e-marking. FasBooking, one of the world"s leading e-mearking and online technology solutions providers for the hospitality, drives more visitors to hotel websites and convert these visitors to direct bookings. FastBooking iCRS increases the hotel's net revenue  by maximizing highly profitable direct website bookings and by retionalizeing inventory and pricing across all online sales channels. Prince Hotels and Resorts will benefit from traffic building activities designed to channel visitors to the hotels' official websites. In addition to e-marketing campaigns, the hotel will be visible on FastBooking distribution websites, FastBooking parter websites as well as the major international tourism and travel websites. This emarketing will help Prince hotels to ensure their success and maximize net revenue through direct booking.

Ibiza hotel has rolled out the PayTouch System which is the biometric payment system to increase guest experience and improve the payments security. PayTouch is a fingerprints payment system. When guests arrive at the hotel there are kiosks to let them register their name to hotel system as well as their card detail along with biometric data of right index and middle fingers. All of the facilities in the hotel have been equipped with fingerprint recognition devices. Security is increased due to the unique nature of fingerprints and guests do not need to carry the card. Guests can easy track their transactions online and no extra costs related to register with the new payment system.

This article discussed about the advantages the technology bring to hospitality industry and why it is important for hotelier to make investment in IT. Technology life cycle provides a model for companies to assess when to adopt new technology. The best balance between the investment costs and benefits are the leaders who invest less then pioneers and incur reduced risks. Hotel technology investment is critical today for the following areas, improve guest experience and improve operating efficiencies. Then the article continue to discuss the development of technology in the last and what the new technology investment brought to the hospitality industry. For example the client server technology brought the integration in the 1990s, more advanced and well-integrated system for on-stop guest services and database marketing. Technology advances have the potential to generate benefits critical to remaining competitive and ultimately driving expanded market share and profitability. The barriers to increase investment in technology by hotel owners and operators include general resistance to change, lack of available funds or manpower to invest in technology and perceived inability to quantify benefits. As a result, investments in technologies and effective application of these technologies in hotel operation and services will become one of the most decisive factors differentiating successful hotel organizations globally in the years ahead.

Starbucks invested $25 million to develop movie payment system with partnership with Square. The mobile payment integration with the point of sale solution will be available in November. The point of sale solution mobile app will make customers purchase using their phones through a digital Starbucks card and square will processing all of the Starbuck's credit card - based payments. Meanwhile, Starbucks also revealed its IOS app's integration with Passbook. When you approach a Starbucks location, a Passbook notification will appear on the screen of iPhone and you can then select the starbucks card and swipe your phone to make the purchase. Later Starbucks will integrate Squar's GPS- based point of sale system which should make purchases a breeze and speed up the lines during coffee rush hours. This allow you to select the item with Square app and simply say you name to the cashier to confirm the payment.  An image of your face will present from the profile photo to prevent theft or misuse. Since January 2011 starbucks first mobile payment app has host over 70 million transactions and the partnership with Square has been a mutually beneficial on for both sides. Starbucks will significantly expand Square's scale and accelerate the benefits to business on the platform in the future.

Northwind, provider of a cloud based PMS and reservation software solutions announced that independent operators and hotel groups seeking cloud based PMS. Maestro Suite is the cloud based PMS which Northwind provide its' service. The system is have 20 integrated modules to give operators a guest-centric and 360-degree view of all guests.It makes the operators be free from system support duties, maintain the property's modules and provide a secure environment for property data. This benefits the operators that they can focus their attention on guest service and revenue generating instead of concerning their data security. Also new staff can also learn the system more quickly because they can train from their browser from any location. A major advantage of cloud-based PMS is the lower labor cost. The IT person will no longer need on staff. Plus, this system will have no impact about the power outages. Independent multi-property host the system from their corporate offices to support their hotel groups. Cloud based PMS enables them to cross sell all their hotels and oversee operations for their entire enterprise. Another major advantage to cloud-based PMS us the ability of managers to monitor property performance remotely. Operators can remotely track all the performance data to help manage operations. Also the system does not require a property-based server so that the hardware cost is reduced. In a word, the cloud based PMS like Maestro benefits the independent operators and hotel groups with free up staff, provides PCI compliant secure environment, reduces hardware expenses and drives profitability.

In this article it discussed the main green technologies used for hotel chains and independent hotel owners. In a bid to reduce carbon emissions ahead of possible future legislation, many hotels are adopting strategies to comply with stringent energy guidelines. Large hotel chais are making sure they go extra miles to ensure their green credentials are noticed. Green consultants and architects are employed and eco-friendly strategy for sustainable technologies are rolled out at the entire hotel groups.  Hotel architecture transform to more new green hotel developments which more fit in  with the local landscape as well as energy reducing technology apply for the roofing and building materials. Bio fuel heating replace for diesel and recycled water being used to irrigate hotel grounds. Some hotels are using ozone instead of chlorine in the pools. Other green energy management systems has become increasingly common. Green gadgets are proving a cost effective choice and can also reduce the impact of heavy guest usage on resources.Many Chins are minimizing waste by avoiding over-paced products and asking to deliver minimal wrapping.  Further cost effective measures can be applied to guest activities. They promote local restaurants and attractions within walking distance or only a short care journey away. Bicycles are offered for guests or endorse local tour firms which save on multiple car journeys.  Eco-friendly measures and green technology as part of hotel's general philosophy are well accepted. It also helps to ensure future goodwill and increase occupancy rates. It worth adopting a green technology policy to suit a hotel budget.

This article gave us a five new online travel trends.Because travel is a hyper-competitive industry, the most pertinent emerging themes in onine travel are considered and experts insights and predictions are provided in the Las Vegas TDS North America event. First trend is the travel industry need be ready for a mobile-only world. Researches indicates that the mobile sales will increase extremely. Because it is expensive to develop mobile app, so traditional travel companies and online travel companies do not such into launching a mobile app in a short term. Convergence, commerce, content and how these impact customer behavior will be an ongoing theme. There is a risk of firms focus too much on one channel, Customers are using a range of different devices to plan, research, book and review their travel experiences.  Revenue management became essential for the business. It needs to integrate with sales, marketing, channel optimization, loyalty marketing , and operations. Think new markets and new customers like China, India, Brazil and Russia. Firms need to be actively targeting this market and make adjustment such as develop local website etc. Last trend is that there are lots of new development in the industry. Facebook start to monetize travel. Google and Apple are also developing their travel related products. This social travel planning tools become successful. Technology develops and standards emerge, mobile bookings may not just be for the last minute.

Cvent, the world's largest cloud-based provider of event management, venue selection and web survey solutions, operates the number one marketplace for group meeting business in the works and has driven $3.4 billion in meeting spend through the Cvent Supplier Network through the first half of 2012. The strong network provided by Cvent gather the international booking outside of North America and increase 42% meeting volume based on its strong network. Vice President of Sales for the Cvent said the network bring all market participants together and to improve the sourcing process and deliver value for everyone invloved. The value includes more than 200,000 hotels and special event venues worldwide, providing one-stop shopping for meetings buyers and sourcing professionals. The network also extends suppliers' reach to new customers helping hoes maximize their existing sales & marking resources and increasing their opportunities overall. Cvent also developed a platform hotels can use to help hotels develop response templates to provide faster answers to planners, allowing hotels to pre-populate RFPs with basic information and clone responses to common requests. It also proactively guides planners, helping them create better RFPs by, for example, sending a warning prompt when a venue cannot satisfy a request such as number of sleeping rooms.

Gipsee announced the new Interactive Allergy Software designed for the restaurant industry especially for non sit-down dining sector in the industry. Most sit-down dining places often maintain eight or more allergy-specific menus.Customers with restrictions have to manually search for items which will be safe for them to eat. This newest offering eliminates the need for restaurants to produce multiple allergy-specific menus and replaces them with an "on-demand" capability based on dynamic user requests. The basic working process is the restaurant staff select and enter food allergies or ingredient restrictions that a customer may have into the software and then instantly produce customized menu choices for the customer. Customer have the flexibility of selecting from hundreds of ingredients and thousands of combinations of restrictions representing a more pragmatic approach to food allergy occurrences. This new software offers advantages including cost-savings and reduces communication errors occurs particularly during busy time slots. Also this new software is available and increasingly used by restaurant such as iPad and other touch-screen display devices