The competencies were then built into the performance management system. One of the key challenges in implementing the performance management module was the number of different HR systems used by the 23 hotels in the group.

General managers, executive teams and department heads have already been trained in using the system. Next, about 3,000 junior department heads, managers and supervisors will be trained.

When they enter their room, guests need a comfortable room. Our sensor is capable of detecting the presence of the guest in the room and automatically switching on. The sensor is also able to detect a guest sleeping and stays on. When the guest is not in the room the air conditioning comes on intermittently to ensure the temperature in the rooms stays pleasant when the guest returns. Energex also offers a web based interface which allows hotels to control the temperature in a room.

Many independent hotels haven’t implemented any data analytics on their websites. Without even a basic implementation, hotel owners are missing out on important insights about their clientele. For example, most hotels offer some assortment of packages to their guests, but if hotels aren’t using analytics, they can’t know which packages are most and least popular with certain types of visitors. By tracking purchases only, they miss out on seeing how many guests viewed the package but chose not to purchase it.

Similarly, if the hotel offers services like banquet halls or catering, web analytics can shed light onto visitors’ level of interest and the best ways to market those services online. Are guests searching to sign up for loyalty membership? Do they want to book meetings or events in a particular city or region? Are they more or less price sensitive? Analytics enables hotel brands to gather data that can answer these questions. If utilized correctly, it can be a tremendous asset to improving a revenue management and building a customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Meeting apps for attendees. Think of these as "electronic event programs plus." These event-specific apps may be downloaded by attendees, nearly always for free, and can include all of the speaker, scheduling, seminar, keynote and attendee information, along with exhibit floor maps, that might be found in a printed program. Additional features could include everything from social-media platform links to attendee messaging or local restaurant listings.

Toronto-based 5Touch Solutions, which makes the EventMobi app, has seen 70 percent of attendees download the app at some tech shows, according to president and founder Bob Vaez, and an average 40 to 60 percent download rate overall. Those numbers have grown quickly, says Vaez; as they continue to grow, so too will opportunities to generate revenue from the apps through sponsorships and advertising.

Hotels that haven’t properly invested in updated technologies can find themselves under-prepared for the increased workload that comes with having to manually update rates according to information being received from multiple channels. In light of an increasingly technologically dependant operating environment, hotels that still manually alter room rates and various revenue strategies rather than having the right technology in place to do this for the, can find themselves lagging behind the competition - both in terms of meeting their revenue potential but also in their ability to deal with different periods of patronage.

Importantly, hoteliers also need to realize that the hospitality industry is constantly changing and a lack of up-to-date technology and older strategies will not always be applicable to new, unique situations.

As the hotel industry continues to move towards a more dynamic and inter-connected environment it is vital that the correct technology infrastructure is in place to meet this challenge. Technology must enable a seamless flow of process and procedure and decisions through all aspects of the business, thereby enabling a philosophy of managing by exception rather than on a day to day tactical basis.

When buying a call accounting system, hotel managers have three system choices: software, hardware, or web-based products. Web-based products tend to get quite expensive due to the monthly subscription fees which are based on the number of extensions and users. Software products are more flexible than hardware-based systems due to the added capabilities of the PC, but often require large amounts of memory to store and retrieve call data efficiently. Hardware or stand-alone systems appear to be the most popular form of call accounting systems in the hospitality industry due to the fact that the systems are quite small and can be stored in a closet or drawer. Stand-alone systems, like software and web-based products, will automatically post call records directly to the Property Management System for future retrieval.

If you’re an owner/manager of a new-build property, there’s a great deal in favor of having as comprehensive a system as you can get, even up to the ERP level of one system managing the complete operation.  If you’re the owner or manager of a franchised brand property you have no say in which PMS to use anyway, though you’ll get the best results if all your other management systems are as well-integrated as they can be amongst themselves as well as interfacing with the PMS.

The real world being what it is, properties seldom fall into one segment or the other. Commercial city center hotels often need sales and catering systems, and many have added spas or other guest activities. Pure PMS vendors therefore developed good interfaces to link up with the third-party vendors’ systems typically used to manage these areas. Conversely, properties in the independent and resort world often already had existing point solutions in specific areas, and so vendors typically made their systems very modular and developed interfaces to link to the other vendors’ products until such time as they could, perhaps, replace them with their own modules. 

Given the varied demands of the different market segments, there will always need to be a mix of vendor approaches, but whatever else it’s attached to, a well-designed, intuitive and well-interfaced PMS module is still the core of operational success at every property.

The arrival of the internet as a commercial device only accelerated the demise of the travel agency business. Of the nearly 40,000 independent travel agencies in existence, less than a third still exist today.

In 2001, the early years of our hospitality consultancy, general managers walked through our doors describing their online marketing strategy as “having a static online hotel brochure, email, and Expedia“.

The catchphrase “direct online distribution strategy” described the new world order in hospitality. Yet hotel managers were slow to embrace the idea that they would soon be entirely responsible for the marketing, sales, and distribution of their hotel inventory.

hotels locked themselves into OTA contracts that required steep discounts, ever-increasing inventory, and multi-year agreements. To this day OTAs resemble GDS-like oligopolistic behavior.

Identifying these squatters helps bring greater value to the company's managed program and increases share to their preferred properties

It operates one of the industry's largest Software-as-a-Service businesses, with its reservations and property management system, marketing and distribution software, and Internet marketing and e-business solutions used by more than 18,000 hotel properties around the world. Each year, it generates more than $5.85 billion in revenue for its customers.