The success of your search engine optimization efforts is heavily dependent on your hotel’s activity on social media. Google tends to favor social media accounts that frequently post and interact on different channels.

In 2016, we can expect more hotels using social media advertising to receive more engagement and interaction. Therefore, be sure your hotel is allotting a marketing budget for social media advertising.

It is important that in 2016 more than ever before, your hotel integrates a mobile strategy which must include a responsive website and a mobile compatible booking engine.

Organisations that aren't actively making use of technology trends will find themselves increasingly struggling to compete as their competitors capitalise on the advantages that technology offer, and new, more innovative players enter the space making technology core to the experience.

For hotels, we have already seen the ability to make room reservations from mobile devices become commonplace, but by 2017 PwC predicts that at least two-thirds of hotels will allow mobile check in. And from there, the sky's the limit.

But most importantly, when the user is making use of their mobile to interact with a hotel, they are providing that hotel with data on their preferences, for example, how they use the hotel's facilities. This information can then be used to personalise the experience – perhaps by offering discounts to favourite services or hotel restaurants, or providing the customer with a favourite drink ready-chilled in the bar fridge on their return visit. This personalised level of service is shown to resonate with customers and improve their experiences.

According to the 2015 Lodging Technology Study, 22% of hotels surveyed said that migrating their on-premises technology to the cloud this year is a top priority. The study shows a dip in on-premise PMS investment (from 17% in 2014 to 14% in 2015) as “more hotels move to a cloud-based PMS.” It is reported that PMS will see the greatest cloud adoption in the coming 18 months.

According to the 2015 Lodging Technology Study, 22% of hotels surveyed said that migrating their on-premises technology to the cloud this year is a top priority. The study shows a dip in on-premise PMS investment (from 17% in 2014 to 14% in 2015) as “more hotels move to a cloud-based PMS.” It is reported that PMS will see the greatest cloud adoption in the coming 18 months.

Save money

o reduce costs and further increase their bookings, airlines began installing computer terminals in the offices of their most productive travel agencies.  Airline managers understood it would be less expensive to have travel agents book the reservations directly into the airline systems than it would be to hire additional staff at airline reservation centers.  They also knew that travel agents were more likely to book reservations on the airline that supplied the GDS terminals.

Responding to the need for greater flexibility, hotel CRS managers expanded the inventory control capabilities of their systems to allow selling against an allocation of rooms.  Sales controls such as closed-to-arrival, minimum length of stay, and sell-through were also added.  More recently, many systems have been further enhanced to provide central reservation offices with full inventory data, with the central system having the same availability information as the hotel so that the CRO can sell down to the last available room without fear of overbooking.

GDS marketing automation gained its most recent, and possibly most powerful product presentation advance with the introduction of seamless connectivity

echnology is a tool to provide solutions, but regrettably, technology can also be a source of the problem due to factors like energy consumption and the environmental impacts when disposing of obsolete or broken technology (i.e., e-waste).

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1.    Using IT responsibly and effectively to reduce energy, water and paper consumption:

This brings a new dimension to customer service and marketing, as many industry insiders now consider it essential to have an online booking service, which also requires a well-designed, mobile-friendly website with a simple interface.

This brings a new dimension to customer service and marketing, as many industry insiders now consider it essential to have an online booking service, which also requires a well-designed, mobile-friendly website with a simple interface.

By integrating with CRM, inventory management and other tools, information on capacity, reservations, stock, loyalty programs and more is accessible at the touch of a button. In addition, cloud-based POS applications are becoming more common, which means that staff can process orders, bookings and payments directly from a tablet.