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He adds that companies should also monitor for leaks of the data.

a dark web monitoring specialist, says this kind of incident can be avoided by regularly checking who has access to cloud-based servers:

“confident that no financial, payment card or password data was involved in this matter."

“This incident also highlights the importance of speed when mitigating digital risk; watermarking data with unique synthetic identities can enable organizations to detect these threats immediately and be the first to find out if their data is available online, before someone else does. Setting up email listeners for these watermark identities can detect a breach before the data is shared online, if the hacker is testing for valid addresses.”

advises that the same security levels for data on premise need to be in place for what is stored in the cloud.

It’s a near-universal challenge for enterprises: the move to hybrid environments and more complex, fragmented networks makes it even harder to keep control. Without consistent policies you can pretty soon have a tangle of security gaps and compliance violation

n one case, [at a conference education session], a number of people were saying that they weren't clear on a specific topic. We were able to send that speaker back out onto the stage to clarify that point

makes event planning and ticketing as hassle-free as possible. Once you’ve signed up, you can create an event page where tickets can be bought and guest details can be collected.

You can create a seating chart for your chosen venue so guests can select their seats before purchasing their tickets. Moreover, you can offer multiple levels of pricing and easily adjust prices as needed.

There are tools for event registration, listing design, ticketing, promotion, fundraising, payments, and more.

You can even use social media sites, such as Facebook, for your campaign. Progress can be tracked in real-time, so you’re always updated about the event’s attendees and financial details.

Cvent is a comprehensive solution that is resilient to the needs of organizers by industry, role, and even as third-party planners. It has a unique tool, among others, for searching the most cost-effective venue for your event.

it offers a mobile app that allows them to send inquiries, book events anytime through the booking widget, or plan events

Gather is a cloud-hosted event management platform that works well for businesses of all sizes that are looking to organize any event

For freelance planners, this ability lends to them a professional look that justifies higher consultation fees.

There’s an analytical feature as well to provide you with deep insights into how your event has fared.

Bizzabo comes with a mobile app as well to ensure that managers and staff members can do their jobs on the go.

Still, it has an international edition for US and UK events and practically anywhere in the world where there is an internet connection. It has a free app for free events like networking nights.

It’s a separate offer that lets you sort people by profession, age, region, and other metrics.

Eventzilla excels in pre- and on-site registration and ticketing and deserves a rank in our best 10 event management software list for its downright intuitive yet straightforward functionality.

Eventzilla also integrates with top-tiered secure payment channels PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, and Authorize.net. And there’s a post-event survey tool to help you measure your success rate, to improve recurring events continuously.

You can also customize the UI to your branding, link it to a payment processor including PayPal and major credit cards, and generate e-tickets that can be scanned on-site.

analytics, discount codes, mobile access, and multi-currency, and multi-lingual support.

Erba Collective, a Los Angeles cannabis dispensary, installed self-service kiosks that accepted cashless payments to reduce wait times and increase customer turnover.

It’s the right solution for today’s consumers: Consumers value their time, and waiting in line can destroy an otherwise great customer experience.

It’s the right solution for today’s businesses: Merchants are facing mounting challenges ranging from rising labor costs to new competition. Self-service kiosks can help businesses do more with the same staff, minimizing the labor required for order taking or checkout.

o provide unattended POS solutions, you will need to speak with your vendors or find new partners that offer the types of hardware you need. It’s also vital that you work with a payments partner with expertise in managing unattended POS transactions.

EMV chip technology will help prevent card fraud.

part of their omnichannel strategies

If your goal is to be a total solutions provider and meet all of your customers’ needs

one-stop shop.”

Proximity marketing—also sometimes called hyperlocal marketing—uses cellular technology to send marketing messages to mobile-device users who are in close proximity to a business.

While the audience is limited to those in the proximity of the business and those using its Wi-fi or Bluetooth signal, the message is very user friendly and reaches those most likely to visit a store. Who employs Proximity Marketing?

Major retailers, such as Ikea or Macy’s, can send store maps and coupons or offers to apply for their credit card or to enroll in their loyalty or rewards programs. Hotels can inform guests about on-site events and promotions or can offer to enroll them in loyalty or rewards programs. Restaurants can send special menus/daily specials, coupons, offers for loyalty programs, or perhaps send trivia questions or other games to help them pass the time while they wait for their table to be ready. Shopping malls can offer a proximity marketing benefit to their tenants by putting together a package of coupons or offer a discount at any mall retailer. Travel hubs such as airports and public transportation centers can provide maps or display ads that can be sold to local tourist destinations. General information about a product or service can be delivered through proximity marketing even if the fixed location of the business or service agency changes

This makes just about every consumer with a smart phone potentially susceptible to a proximity marketing campaign, particularly younger, tech-savvy shoppers who are more likely to own smartphone and use them while shopping.

With mobile devices becoming a staple of modern society and the preferred way of accessing digital content, today’s successful marketing professionals will need to understand how to connect successfully with mobile consumers.

One of the key benefits of proximity marketing is that its messages reach a high percentage of potential customers who are in the area.

The main purpose of the proximity marketing plan is to connect with customers while they are near your business or service and spur them into action

In the case of mobile messaging, it’s important to consider adding an opt-in component to your campaign.

More and more, customers value control over the messages they receive and desire privacy from unwanted solicitations

Mobile devices are made for short messages and quick interaction, and there is intense competition for the attention and time of the mobile device user. Therefore, in developing a proximity marketing plan, messages must be sharpened and honed to be as clear, concise, and impactful as possible.

If the goal is to drive as much traffic as possible to the business and maximize sales that day, then an electronic coupon or special offer might be the best strategy. If the store has a high turnover rate, the goal may be to make a connection with customers by offering them incentives to return.

The digital and interactive nature of most proximity marketing campaigns provides the advantage of real-time data collection of response and success rates. If a message is failing to connect, it can be easily and quickly adjusted.

These burdens come into sharper focus when you consider the digital environment in which hotels are operating. Individual hotels are often connected to the organization’s national or international network, meaning only one hotel has to be breached before the entire company is at risk of hemorrhaging huge volumes of its data.

Today, the systems used for various functions in a hotel’s back and front operations are manned by employees who are not yet well-equipped to pick up on and counter large-scale cyber-attacks until it’s too late.

Mobile phones, tables and laptops connected to open networks become a hunting ground for hackers to harvest banking details through card payments. 

While financial services and the public sector have been forced to endure an endless stream of cybercrime, the hospitality industry has also become a prime contender for hackers in the wake of its rich data-base. 

No matter the size of the business, inefficient cyber support diverts crucial time from business activities and relationships with customers.

With global business fighting relentlessly to survive against the chaotic threat of the Coronavirus, all industries are exposed to criminal cyber-threats, and so the security of highly sensitive data must be handled appropriately.

British Airways and Marriott International are two major hospitality companies to be victims of high-profile breaches in recent memory. They serve as a stark reminder of the heavy costs faced when the safety of customers’ data is compromised. 

Making packages and inclusions will help up-sell services.

The main focus is to make lasting connections that enhance guest satisfaction, boast an efficiency of staff and operational workers and grow revenue opportunities with automated engagement.

Restrictions can be set up to restrict users to perform critical actions like night audit.

On-premise or installed deployment feature is not available in the POS System.

You can easily promote your hotel through various channels with a variety of inclusive packages and rates.

This avoids the need to print multiple receipts and cause inconvenience to the guest.

This POS system caters to scheduling activities, food and beverage and more.

It also expedites the traditional check-in and out experience which mostly causes dissatisfaction.

It protects the guest’s payment data and reduces the risks, costs, and compliance by tokenizing each transaction with point-to-point encryption (P2PE).

The customer service staff is not always able to solve your issue at once, but their team can submit a ticket and get any errors fixed within a reasonable timeframe.

Allow customers to pay their entire bill and room costs at checkoutVerify that the billing is accurate by putting all charges on one billCombine bar, restaurant, and room service charges for any roomMatch specific menus to any display device to any area in your hotel

You can connect and share data in real-time with this POS system.

Assign special permissions to managers or cashiers, giving them the ability to view sales numbers or simply manage inventory.

The interface also allows for seamless billing for any and all room service requests.

You can track products easily and see if they are near the minimum or maximum level.

If you own multiple businesses, you can use Bepoz to keep track of all of your businesses.

Bepoz does not provide installation or an on-premise option.

LS Retail provides a holistic solution to all your worries by giving you a transparent and enhanced view of your hotel’s entire business operations.

With LS intelligent analytics tools, businesses can track and study their customer’s past interactions and preferences to make their guest profiles more meaningful.

LS Central for hotels gives an option where it can be deployed solely in the cloud, on the hotel premises, or both at the same time – whichever way suits your business profile in the best way.

It gives a complete overview of your hotel’s current occupancy, its housekeeping, along with all the extensive analysis required by the management to make necessary decisions.

It is a single platform that minimizes costs because it reduces the number of vendors and other systems that are otherwise needed for resolving all hotel-related business issues.

There is nothing more important than booking guests. Using a hotel POS system can help this process become quick and easy.

The average consumer is more likely to go for a package deal, given that they are getting good value for their money.

If the client makes an online reservation, the information will be distributed in real-time.

You can print these reports and give a detailed review such as payment balancing totals, customers served, average customer and much more.

Rewards deals can often increase sales.

Our recommendation is to consider Hotelogix or Agilysys, as they are user-friendly and have effective loyalty and sales tools.

The features are very comprehensive and fit for both large and small hotels.

The most effective place to start is with your employee onboarding and training practices.

When employees first join your company, you have an excellent opportunity to set your expectations around employee theft and make clear that it’s not acceptable behavior.

Unfortunately, preventative strategies will only lower employee theft; they won’t eliminate it. That’s where your third and final strategy comes into play: regular reporting and monitoring of your point-of-sale (POS) system and any integratedthird-party systems, like guest loyalty and engagement software.

At one point or another, any staff member could give in to the desire to make more money by committing employee theft. That’s why your restaurant leadership team needs to look out for these behaviors and put policies and practices in place that make it as difficult as possible to steal from the restaurant, thereby removing the opportunity from staff members who are tempted.

Experts warn other hackers, like those working for a nation-state, could exploit hospitality breaches like Marriott’s to acquire details on the travel and spending habits of espionage targets, like CEOs and diplomats.

However, industry specific challenges like high employee turnover continue to expose the sector.[6] Additionally, even by adopting cutting-edge cybersecurity technologies, the important question of strategic implementation remains.

Traditional cybersecurity approaches are focused on reporting about intrusions after the fact, in what is known as an “incident response.” What this means is that an adversary—commonly referred to as a “hacker”—finds some way to gain access to a target and compromises it. The target can be accessed through vulnerabilities in web frameworks, internet browsers, or internet infrastructure such as routers and modems. Regardless of how they gain access, once an attacker is discovered, the forensics about the attack, including basic information known as Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) like IP addresses, domain names, or malware hashes, are shared across the cybersecurity community. These IOCs are then used broadly to thwart future attacks.

Rather than rely solely on the incident response and recovery methods that have been used for many years, a more proactive, sophisticated approach is needed. It will need to be designed to successfully recognize adversary methodology (and all the manners in which an adversary attempts to obfuscate their methodology) before attacks occur and at a meaningful scale. This kind of approach, when paired with incident response tactics, could provide true security to vulnerable, critical networks.

A TTP-based cybersecurity tool would work in concert with existing incident response, internally-focused cybersecurity efforts, adding a layer of prevention over the top of this vital but flawed process.

Fraudulent Bookings: As the booking is not engaging the end user, some hotels may be the victim of unscrupulous visitors booking long-term stays (20 days or more) just to feed their Visa's demands for example

widened the form of payment accepted.

59%* of them will book somewhere again if they are able to pay quickly the first time.

D-EDGE and PayPal have partnered to enable hoteliers to accept payments quickly on their hotel website, from almost anywhere around the world, in a secure manner.

The account creation process is very fast and hoteliers can then start accepting payment instantly on their booking engine from almost anywhere around the world.

267 million active PayPal users around the world and offer them a simple way to pay i

rate can increase up to 87.5%** thanks to PayPal solution for mobile.

It would be an interesting capability should timeclocks have the ability to take a temperature either through some biometric means as part of the clocking in process, with the ability to alert the manager should anyone clock in with a high temperature.

t has been clearly established that germs can exist on plastic surfaces for several days, and the newly educated customer base will be sensitive to the notion of being handed a menu that could easily be cycled a dozen or so times during this period. Restaurants should look to providing an option for a guest to pull up the menu on their own device as well as look to leverage digital menu board technology wherever possible. In some cases this may mean an alteration in the current serving model or perhaps new hardware to be developed that allows a server to bring a large digital menu to a table for ordering, but the intention is to avoid another concern that P-C19 customer will certainly have.

Organizations that do not embrace and promote a contactless payment environment will find themselves suddenly behind the operations-technology curve.

Employees interact on a regular basis with POS hardware and other types of technology during the normal course of their business day. Many of these surfaces are plastic and allow germs to survive on them for an extended period of time. Surfaces like a POS touchscreen, a KDS expeditor, or a biometric thumb scanner can be used by dozens of people on any given day. It will be important for employers to look at solutions, such as anti-microbial POS screens, as well as improved cleaning habits, in order to avoid passing germs as well as to set their employees at ease. This may also be the kick-in-the-pants that the technologists need to further refine and perfect the voice ordering capabilities in order to virtually eliminate the need to use a POS touchscreen altogether. We have long spoken about the promise and potential of this technology only to see it expand rapidly in our personal lives with Google and Amazon and yet be almost non-existent in our commercial operations. Now would be a good time to step up development and implementation of this technology.

The software also prevents unauthorized use by automatically locking the system after each user’s order is complete.

Each user is provided an access code or employee swipe card, and all drinks prepared by that access code are stored and recorded in the on-board management screen.

The SmarTender will not replace a bartender who serves those customers seated at the bar; that is part of the relationship a proprietor has with a customer. There are many applications where a customer orders a drink and never sees it made by a bartender. In these cases, a service bar is utilized and a “service” bartender prepares drinks for servers. SmarTender can eliminate the need for that extra bartender, thereby affecting labor costs. The servers do not share their tips with a service bartender because there isn’t one – this makes the servers happy. The customer gets their drink faster (keeping the customer happy and more drinks sold) because the server is in control and not dependent on a service bartender.

Through direct integration with the POS, restaurant operators can extend their POS to create a truly secure and touchless environment. This option is available for several well-known and widely used POS systems such as Aloha, MICROS, Squirrel, Dinerware and Focus – and can be utilized without the hassle of having to re-program menu items and prices, or retrain waitstaff.  It can also help operators avoid any changes to merchant processing or pricing.  

By using a fully PCI and EMV compliant pay-at-the-table device that extends the POS to the table, restaurant guests are empowered to use their phone to facilitate the transaction. With the simple scan of a QR code, guests can immediately launch a payment process that’s both encrypted and entirely touchless. 

It also represents one of the largest investments for a restaurant operator, so it only makes sense to explore how the investment can be leveraged to provide additional value. 

Despite these conditions, the expectations placed on restaurant operators are greater than ever.  On top of the everyday commitment to prepare great food, provide stellar service, and maintain an inviting environment, restaurant operators have, in recent years, been challenged to meet higher standards for protecting customer payment information – and now to preserve public health and safety.  The responsibility is daunting, some may say overwhelming.

There have been many industries that have had to adjust to the new reality of COVID-19, but likely none have been more dramatically impacted than the restaurant industry.

While choosing the system, proper evaluation of the PMS has to be made. Evaluation must be in terms of User Friendliness, Menu Driven navigation, Key defined access, Lesser number of key strokes, Easy access to required data, Visual Impacts, Meaningful reports, various levels of security access, possibility of customization at the user level etc.

Today, computers do magic for the front end staff enabling them to devote more time in attending guest requirements in a pleasing way without compromising the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)

System requirement for each facility differs and it should preferably be a cost effective solution. It is not necessary that all hotels require most expensive computer systems. Small hotels needs a simpler systems than the big operations where complicated services, standards, data assimilation and decision making tools are required. Many big operations require various interfacing such as Telephones, Internet, Interactive Television, Door Locking system, Yield Management, Global Distribution System, Visa/Master Card etc.

While choosing PMS software for a property, one has to derive the guest needs in the front end on one side and needs of the management and the owner at the back end on the other side. Staff should be able to use the system comfortably in achieving both the ends. One has to set the right parameters in the system that can be used to create meaningful reports that helps in decision making easier and faster at all levels. This, as said before, requires expertise and knowledge of all three components of IT.

The GDS world leaders are Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre, Travelport and Worldspan.

Retail model This is the traditional model,

Whoever sells your room earns a standard commission. Your guest pays you, then you pay your agent.

This is the default model used upon connecting with a GDS.

Merchant model This model applies to third party service providers that connect you to retail travel agents (by integrating with a GDS) and online travel agents.

An OTA sells rooms on your behalf, allowing your guests to find and select your hotel, check your availability, and make a booking.

When you do create an agreement with them, the OTAs improve your listing, pay you directly (removing the hassle of credit card transactions), give you the guest’s contact information, and give you the option to run promotions with them.

Opaque model In this model, your guests don’t know they’re staying at your specific property until after they’ve made the booking.

Small accommodation providers can benefit greatly from using a GDS to connect to retail travel agents and corporate buyers.

The incident is the latest in a growing number of data breaches at travel companies, affecting high profile brands such as the 500 million accounts that were hack at Marriott/Starwood over four years and British Airways in 2018.

"The easyJet data breach further demonstrates that even well run companies are unable to protect our personal data.