HippoFM is a facility maintenance software program that provides preventative maintenance schedules, work orders, CAD graphics, capital planning features, and handheld mobile devices to help ensure hotels provide timely service to guests and provide tools to make the maintenance department more effective. The article states that this system can reduce maintenance costs, increase work-order closing speed and use handheld devices to access the system where ever you go. For any large hotel or restaurant chain I believe that a maintenance management software system is important. The company I worked for ran many restaurants in several hotels and when we implemented this type of system it made tracking and fixing equipment a breeze and managers became less disgusted with the maintenance department.

This article is about how technology affects world tourism. Technology plays a major role in tourism and travel and can help to reduce labor costs and bad customer service. On the other hand, because our industry is driven by human interaction too much or misuse of technology can truly hinder service. The article also stated that "technology's growth has allowed worldwide terrorism to to attack the tourism industry". Cell phones can be used to blow up bombs, air conditions, and destroy planes. As leaders in the industry we must decide how far to go with the use technology.

This article is five hotel groups streamlining their management accounting process by using Aptech's intelligence and financial products. The systems were selected because of their ability to interface with several property management systems, level of accuracy, and reporting capabilities. The systems are internet based and be used for single or multi-property companies. I find this article to be interesting because at the end, it speaks about Aptech Computer Systems, Inc. as a leader in the hospitality industry. It approach to creating state of the art products is attributed to "leveraging change by valuing human relationships and applying technology to solve business problems for people". I think that is a great premise for a company to build on.

/This article was interesting because it talk about how the Regal Hotels Group was able to connect their custom built PMS to the world via Room Distribution Exchange, a direct connectivity platform. This new technology helped Regal Hotels to gain two-way access to the world's leading booking sites. Regal did not have to change its existing PMS system which could have been costly. RDX gives hotels with traditional PMS the opportunity to reach the world.

This article talks how about how far CRSs have evolved, from providing basic information to the "cornerstone of worldwide electronic distribution networks. Just like we read in the GDS article, CRSs have move from individual users to worldwide users offering a wide variety of information - availability, rates, departed guest information and much more. CRSs have also moved from one-way communication to two-way links. CRSs are now being tapped to provide sales information hotel company websites. They have definitely changed to meet the present needs of the industry.

As our natural resources are being depleted rapidly and technology is changing faster than ever resulting in mountains of "e-waste", I believe the IT industry should focus a vast amount of their efforts in the area of sustainability or going green. In the hospitality and tourism industry maintaining natural resources and cutting down on the consumption of water, energy and paper is an IT issues that we can all support. The focus of this article was about revealing opportunities where IT can go green. Sustainability is good for the environment, the viability of the hospitality industry, the guests, and the bottom line. According to the article, IT leadership needs to take "a leadership role in helping their organization to adopt sustainable practices". Some of the areas where IT can look at going green are as follows (information taken directly from the article): * Using IT responsibly and effectively to reduce energy, water and paper consumption * Deploying effective technology practices such as Energy Star compliance to power down computers automatically after periods of inactivity and server virtualization * Tackling e-waste and deploying recycling technologies to reduce environmental waste and impacts * Digital marketing practices * Marketing strategies to report and promote green practices A commitment of time, money, and resources will be required from all levels of leadership in order for green IT projects to work. Companies have to educate their employees and guests to create awareness, implement practices such as energy audits, device shut downs to force people to use media, and give rewards to get the buy in. Even though the payback of green initiatives may take a long time, the upside is that you are being environmentally conscious and doing the right thing.

This article was very enlightening on the recent advances of POS technology in the hospitality industry and the new developments that keep evolving. The article presents areas were recent advances have helped to improve the "effectiveness of a business and relationship with their customers". As stated in the article with the use of "cloud-based systems, the latest i-trends and the growth of Near Field Communications", the hospitality industry POS technology will move very far. Three key areas were discussed; "Point of Sale on the move" which referred to using a browser on any mobile device to obtain necessary information while you are on the move or away from the business. The second area was using a POS system on a tablet or smartphone that would be able to provide more useful information than tradition POS systems in a lightweight manner with more flexibility. I can attest to the real need for this advancement because working in an establishment that has the traditional POS systems has proven when there is a problem trouble shooting can be very difficult. A process as simple as getting your technical support team to make changes in your POS system can be a nightmare, when your system does not have updated software. We experienced that issue this week, when technical support attempted to access the system and could not locate the license agreement after hours of searching for a key we found a device that was attached to the printer cable in the back of the CPU. All of the unnecessary time spent on that one event could have been eliminated if some of this new technology was in place. The last area the article referred to is "Marrying POS and NFC". This new development is hoping to eliminate the need for carrying money or credit/debit cards and enable consumers to use mobile devices to process all transactions. I believe this would be very beneficial in the hospitality industry not only from the point credit card fraud but also it eliminate