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Omni Hotels & Resorts is the latest partner to take advantage of Expedia's package solution. "Omni Hotels & Resorts is excited to further leverage our marketing partnership with Expedia to bring our guests the option to book their total vacation experiences directly with us," said Peter Strebel, chief marketing officer and senior vice president of sales for Omni Hotels & Resorts.

Partner Loyalty Enrollment: Initially tested with Red Lion Hotels Corporation last fall, the technology has advanced to now allow hotel partners to enlist and sign up users from Expedia sites for their brand loyalty programs. This program has grown to include three other chains.

MICE Booking Technology: The MICE solution is the first tool that truly automates the booking process for meeting organizers and hotels in real time, making RFPs (requests for proposals) a thing of the past. Hotels can increase MICE sales efficiency by integrating the MICE online booking engine on their website, allowing customers to configure and directly book their meeting, including group lodging, online. This technology further enables hoteliers to yield prices for meetings and groups, based on multiple dynamic criteria to increase revenue. The MICE solution is currently live with Best Western Central Europe and the NH Hotel Group in Germany with promising results. A global rollout will begin soon.

Combining today’s recognizable technology, such as touchscreen and virtual reality, with concepts that are beyond our time, these are some of the notable features hotels in the future will have.

As one of the strongest drivers for change in the event industry, technology plays a prominent role in the planning and management of events

This includes robot butlers, entertainment, greeters and business services which for planning events can be more cost effective and reduce human error, streamlining the process of communicating with the systems to get exactly what you want.

That night at home, you get an email from the department store. “Still thinking about those shoes?” it asks. “Buy them now!”

proximity marketing is delivered via beacons placed strategically throughout a store that use Bluetooth to communicate with smartphones in their range

stores can catch up by providing some of the perks of online shopping in person,

We accepted driverless trains very easily – London’s DLR, for example, has been trundling around without drivers since 1987. Driverless cars we’ve been more sceptical about, but seem to have made peace with their inevitability (aids for human drivers like lane assist are pretty much standard in every new car). But if either of those concepts blows your mind and/or has you feeling a little uneasy in the pant department, just wait until you board a pilotless aeroplane! That’ll feel completely fine, right? But it will almost certainly happen – it kind of does now, to an extent

The Vdara Hotel & Spa in Las Vegas uses two robot ‘butlers’ to deliver room service. This Chinese company claims to have created an AI receptionist. Even hotel mega-giants Hilton experimented with a Watson-powered robot concierge called Connie

an omnipresent army of artificially intelligent travel agents who can find the perfect holiday for you, powered by deep learning and a vast collective knowledge of everything travel-related except what it feels like to get sunburnt

savings come at the cost of customer satisfaction.

disadvantage is that employees can wind up feeling as if they're on call 24/7.

Technology advances in one field frequently spill out and affect others.

Technology has been a key driver of growth for the hospitality sector over the last decade. New technologies for jobs like real-time inventory access, seamless exchange of operational information and collation of key performance data, have transformed the hotel and restaurant business. And the biggest positive from this process has been the enhanced customer experience, leading to higher loyalty. Thus, technology has increased profits for restaurants and hotels, and also helped in reining in costs on a long-term basis by reducing manpower and improving the quality of service.

Key technologies used Currently the most popular technologies being used are accounting systems for back office needs and the Internet, along with POS solutions for front office solutions. These systems are found in over 90 per cent of the establishments in the industry.   K Ramakrishnan, president, Marketing, Café Coffee Day, says “The two key technologies we use are POS for our café operations and ‘SAP IS Retail’ for the back-end warehouse supply chain requirements. Besides, our Cafés are Wi-Fi enabled. We also use Facebook and Twitter to understand and listen to what our consumers have to  say. It serves as an excellent tool to receive reviews on what we do and how we can make the café space more fun and exciting. We use these inputs to refresh our menu, look and overall feel,” he adds.

Touch screen POS: Point of sale systems now have a touch screen  display to allow cashiers and servers to input orders. It automatically sends the order to the kitchen without the need for a call or a manual dining ticket. The latest POSs can even send separate dining tickets for different food preparations, for an order. Stock and time clock management: These two components can be directly integrated in the latest POS terminals, allowing employees to clock in and out of any POS. The central computer keeps tab of the hours worked. It also allows computers to keep track of food and dry stock, based on the orders that are coming back through the POS system. It alerts the server, if a particular ingredient is out of stock. Technology also helps accurately measure the exact amount that goes into a fryer basket or in portions/ servings. This helps in maintaining the same standards each time an order is placed. Modern financial control tools allow managers to make balance sheets, statements of cash flow and income. There are advanced softwares available, which help the management get a clear view of the finances involved in the day-to-day running of the restaurant. Future technologies Many new technologies are also knocking at the door of the Indian hospitality industry. Internationally, these tools are already in use to improve efficiency. For instance, client server technologies (CST) offer great advantages to mid and large sized multi-property hospitality chains. They allow owners to effectively integrate disparate systems like multiple computer platforms or software, accumulated over the years. They simplify report generation and MIS (management information system) support, making these functions more efficient. Players that are in expansion mode and are trying to overhaul their IT infrastructure can use these solutions to reduce their IT costs and improve staff productivity. Software as a service (SaaS) or pay as-you-go services (where software such as ERP solutions are made available on demand over the Internet and users are required to pay a monthly rental based on the time and nature of use) have also emerged as another cost effective way of handling data and processes over the Internet. Here, companies can reap big dividends by effectively cutting down on their system maintenance costs. Green technology is another option, players can look at. It helps improve sustainability in areas like energy efficiency through the use of solar power for cooking or water heating. Solid waste management, plastic and paper recycling machines, rain water harvesting, and water efficient technologies, are other green technologies. If deployed in earnest, restaurants and hotels can reap long term benefits,besides scoring high on environment friendliness and brand image improvement, among customers.

More than 44 percent of firms currently use Web analytics to evaluate customer behavior, researchers found.

Companies personalizing home pages and delivering targeted content are the ones realizing the most value from their analytical evaluations, the report suggests.

59 percent of industry-leading retailers list keeping pace with competitors as a top driver for their online initiatives.

Firstly, upfront investment is lower with the cloud as there are no initial hardware costs or associated expenses such as full time, in-house IT staff to maintain the system. Secondly, hotels like the idea of taking the headache and distractions of IT off their site, leaving them free to focus on the day-to-day business of looking after their guests.

tablets and smartphones revolutionise the way we interact with technology.

City Nites accesses its hotel management system on Apple iPads to eliminate old-fashioned, manual registration desk processes. This enables hotel team members to 'meet and greet' their guests at any location, improving the personalisation of the check-in experience and reducing the costs associated with static reception desks and all their technology at each location.

data is under attack

the most afflicted industry was accommodation/foodservice

use a combination of hacking and malware (61 percent).

Total worldwide hotel bookings through global distribution systems in March fell 7.5 percent lower from 2011 levels, although the average daily rates paid with those bookings increased 4.5 percent, according to Pegasus Solutions.

Most rate growth is occurring in large international cities that are home to corporate headquarters and/or host large conventions and conferences.

corporate travel remains the “bedrock of recovery,” according to Pegasus.

They work completely on the web and are based on the cloud.

It is the age of the Internet, the age when many businesses solely run on the Internet. From marketing to reaching new people, there is a lot that can be done with the help of this medium.

one of the major boons of Internet on the hotel industry has been the web based property management systems. Unlike previous applications which would burn a hole on the pockets, these online hotel software are user-friendly and do not need any additional hardware or software expenses. They work completely on the web and are based on the cloud.

ìCRM is one of the most dramatic, fundamental changes in the history of business.î High-Yield Marketingís Dick Lee agreed: ìCRM is fundamentally the expression of the customer-centric business philosophy. Itís how you respond to the fact that customers are now the drivers in our economy.

ìThere are different types of customers, different types of business models and selling strategies, and over time there will be different CRM software to support these different models.î Dickie agrees

CRM customers are also demanding more and more knowledge management functionality

many of these types of acquisition tactics failed at generating true brand loyalty.

Meetings are all about business:  they develop relationships, generate leads, close deals, and create new customers.  More than that, meetings impact local economies.

anyone that works at a convention venue (anyone, in any capacity); anyone in the hospitality business that caters to conventioneers (staffs at hotels, restaurants, and night clubs); taxi drivers; meeting planners; meeting suppliers; transportation companies; exhibit designers and builders; association and show managers; corporate exhibit managers …

Trade shows and meetings create an enormous economic impact.

more than 70 percent of the respondents indicated that they would be increasing their IT investment in the coming year

Most organizations realize that in order to grow their companies and revenues they need to invest in technology and systems that will create operational efficiencies, improve the customer’s experience, and help generate sales.

Fewer than 10 percent of the companies surveyed reported that that they would be reducing their IT spend.

Commercial real estate investments are subject to shifts in supply and demand that can have a notable impact on net operating income, profitability and yield

hotels have the ability to mark rents to market on a daily basis. The upside of that flexibility is that hotels can quickly react to heightened demand and improving economic conditions and raise room rates as much and as fast as the market will bear.

The flip side of this fluidity is that hotels are more susceptible to operating fluctuations when compared to other asset classes.