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KingSmart is a popular and successful HPMS because of its automatic, flexible, and customised. Similar with most HPMSs, it can be installed in any types of hospitality establishements. At the same time, it can help each departments within the hotel finish their work more efficiently. It can cover all aspects of daily operation in a hotel such as reservation & registration, group handling, yeild management, sale & marketing, housekeeping modules, revenue management, and so on. Among these aspects, I think some of its applications are more necessary in modern hospitality environment. First of all, KingSmart allows us to run a hotel in its maximum capacity through its powerful, comprehensive, and flexible tools. In addition, managers can increase the profit without any other efforts except using this smart system. KingSmart can force the operaton toward the most profitable rate depending on some marketing strategies installed by managers before. All of the other works are processed by KingSmart automatically. Another automatic application of this system is that it can assign and check in of multiple rooms by one touch of button. In my opinion, it is more important for group reservation of different preferences and behaviors. At last, it establishes a connection between the hotel and customers. Through sending some emails or messages, the hotel can target and keep some loyal groups easier. In a word, KingSmart has so many common benefits with similar softwares and some of its own advantages. It is a good choice for hotels, resorts, and other hospitality properties.

As the technology develops so fast, this kind of software will be more and more popular through people who want to travel. And this kind of software really brings lots of profits for the firm. What is more, Apple is really a strong company! : )

In this article, Salsarita's Restaurant installed Digital Menu Board(DMB) techonology in more the third of its locations, on the purpose of generating customer's attention and sales. Being a fan of its reputation for its creative products, Salsarita's Restaurant chosen WAND Corporation as the exclusive supplier of their Digital Menu Boards(DMBS). With this advanced DMB system, Salsarita's Restaurant will be able to add new items to its digital menu by WAND Creative Servise using WAND TRM and synchronise with store, market or chain-wide immediately. The DMB system is also going to help Salsarita's Restaurant generate sales by gaining more customers' attention. it can analysis customers' purchase record and find out the most popular items and lest popular ones, then the restaurant can adjust its menu based on the analysis. Our society is stepping into its electronic age, techonology innovates day by day.One thing stands out to me ‌ this article is that to be a good manager, to generate more salse and profit, you should always keep customers experience"fresh and engaging". To approach that goal, you should always keep your techonology updated.

Cloud computing is becoming more and more popular in today's business world. What are the main advantages that cloud computing can bring to Hospitality industry? Through the article I found the answer which are also the concerns of hoteliers that are a lower cost and a higher security environment. For instance hotel companies can be access to the latest version of what they are using without paying too much to buy related software. Secondly since the cloud is being used by federal government and financial institution which have higher level of regulatory requirements than most hotels, hotel companies can feel more safety in applying this high-tech in their business. But nothing is perfect. The author mentioned in this article that before we choose cloud service, we should get to know some information about the hospitality software suppliers. As for me I concerned about whether they have an offline mode which can continue the business activities for a while when the internet disconnection happens. For example how could hotels make sure the check-in, check-out, and reservation activities go on successfully when something wrong with the internet. The second concern for me is how could I get my data back if I discontinue my service in certain provider. Hoteliers should have ways to protect their data and other business activities. Cloud computing is developing very quickly and it will benefit us a lot only when we get to know the right way to use it. 

According to this article, e-commerce such as online activities has been changing how retailers develop their global expansion strategies. As e-commerce is growing so fast, online booking, online shopping and online reservation are more popular than old days. Being a retailer, he has to be adapt to this new e-commerce trend and start to build an  online presence in order to maximize potential advantages from e-commerce. This article also showed top 10 countries in the 2012 E-Commerce index in which China is decided being the leader of the pack. China has 513 million internet users and 164 million online shoppers, which means that China's potential online retail market is expected to develop faster and faster. What's more, there are three main reasons that people in China like shopping online. The first is that there are greater products selections comparing with shopping in some malls. The second reason is that online shopping make customers be able to compare the prices by vendors. The last reason is also the simplest because online shopping make daily life more convenient than before.

QR codes usually contain the information of its items. Before the customers purchase the items, they can simply scan the code to find out the details of it. The city of Costa del Sol in Spain used this technology to their benefit for their tourism industry. These QR codes are placed in different locations around the region and tourists  can simply use their smartphone to scan them. The positive side of this technology is that it is inexpensive and easy to generate compared to the traditional sign. On the other hand, there is a possibility that tourists might not have smartphone or internet access. If that is the case, each location needs to provide both QR codes and the traditional sign which makes generating QR codes meaningless. I believe that this technology will become very popular especially in certain countries that already provide wide internet connection.  

Most future trends for Customer Relationship Management are predicted to be online marketing and competition. However, companies realized they are losing touch with customers, which brings up attention on customer service. So more and more companies are trying to mix technology with customer service. For example, mobility is still coming on strong and a long way to go with Microsoft announcing strong mobile options in the last month. The customization of IT and the "Bring my own device" movement add new pressure to mobilize CRM. Social CRM is a long way to go here with increased investment in linking Social analysis into CRM via customer sentiment as well as networking and key decision matrices through connectors to LinkedIn becoming popular. However, all the apps or software designed for CRM solely emphasizes from management perspective, such as marketing, pricing and reading reviews, which lost reaction with consumers. Instead of only reading customer reviews, we should arrange more agents to respond to build two-way communication.

This news introduces that China is going to have GDS for tourism industry in October. This is a big progress in China's tourism industry. With the rapid development of China's tourism industry, GDS will play an important role in tourists' daily life. Since China is a big market for this industry, the establishment of GDS in China is a sign of GDS becoming more and more popular in worldwide.

This is a very interesting article. As a Chinese teenager, I can experience all the changes and development of Taobao and how it won Chinese market that the author mentioned in this article. eBay can be successful in an international market, while failed rapidly in Chinese market. Firstly we can see how competitive the online market is. After this we also want to ask why eBay was beaten in China? The author of this article listed four reasons: 1) Compared with eBay, Taobao has better marketing strategies in dealing with local market. At the beginning, Taobao promoted itself through TV ads and later used short messages, which were more popular than Internet in China. 2) Taobao has less limitations on buyers and sellers through the whole process. For instance Taobao charges no listing and transaction fees on its sellers and it's free to register as a user in Taobao 3) Products made in China gives Taobao more chances to sell goods in competitive price. 3)Taobao has better terms for its customers, which helps it o to earn a good reputation and also makes Taobao more flexible in customer service. 4) The way that Taobao lists its items are more customer centric and adaptable to Chinese customers' tastes. E-commerce can bring unlimited chances and is full of adventures. As for me, marketing skills, excellent customer service and high-tech are the same important for a company if it wants to increase the share of market and makes profit. Taobao can be set as a good example in e-commerce history.  

Here is something interesting for you Mac users. Did you knew that you are actually being charged more to use websites like Orbitz or Priceline? Don't believe me, well check it out. Over the last year or two Orbitz has been working on what they call "predictive analytics". Meaning they are able to predict where consumers will likely book their reservations based on what computer they are using. The article states that, Mac users are 40% more likely to book a four to five star hotel than PC users. Since companies like Orbitz (who took a 37 million dollar loss in 2011) are taking big hits from the lack of travelling thanks to the economy, they are trying to create any advantage they can in order to turn the market around. One thing to point out, is that Orbitz's competitors like Priceline and Expedia said that they do not base their sales on what computers the consumers are using, Apple had no comment. Orbitz said the effort to incorporate Mac vs. PC distinctions is still in its formative stages and isn't evident across the site. Other factors have more influence over results, Mr. Liew said, including a user's location and history on the site, as well as a hotel's overall popularity and promotions. Still, he said, use of a Mac can influence results.

CHECK THIS OUT MAC USERS

The best part of the article is how it states a good POS system is one that doesn't let you waste time with the POS. Instead your attention can be turned to your customers and staff. The system will do everything for you just by a touch of buttons from the screen. All you would have to do is print out the information and it will tell you everything you need to run a sucessfull establishment.

Surface interactive table is very popular in recently years. It is a technology that through glass capacitive touch screen. The technology is used to capture guests touch on acrylic surface. This kind of interactive table could be included games, internet and communication to offer a complete interactive experience. Guests can pass by, touch or approach the screen to activate the system and the content will start immediately when guests use finger to point the device. The technology has a lot of methods to use. The screen not only can click, double-click but also rollover, multi-touch. Because some users are use the same screen for meeting, playing game and organizing, the interactive table has a lot of ways to use even to perform activities which use two hands in parallel. If the hotel has this technology, it is really a surprise. The businessmen will use it for meeting and communication. The children use it to play games together and the travelers are likely to design maps, mark destination and organize their tourism.

In the hotel that I used to work in Down Town Miami they have two surface interactive tables. Guests love them! As you mentioned before they play games such as chess, Chinese checkers, and you can play the piano too. You can also check for directions, listen music, and look for information. I know there is a restaurant in Orlando that have Surface interactive tables too, it would be nice to check it out.

That is a great idea that Paris is putting into practice. For only 199 Euros which is around $256 dollars you can get a room like that, I will totally do it! Comparing rooms here in South Beach that are much more expensive and do not have The Eiffel Tower as the view, that is a great deal. And, they are just testing this concept for 3 months and if they see that the demand is high enough they will keep it for longer. This, at the end will result with higher profit and product differentiation. Customers will love it!

The most popular hotel review website, TripAdvisor, finally introduced the new dashboard for the hotel managers. With this management dashboard, hotel managers can know their online booking competitors, and also their customer profiles. Before, the TripAdvisor is just for the customer, it offers a board for customer comments and ratings score for each hotel, and there are millions of people searching hotels through this website. On the other hand, this is a great value data resource for the hotel. If hotels can get and analyze that information, it can help the hotel management team make their decisions, and that is what the TripAdvisor does today. It not only offers competitors' page views but also some analyzed customer profile pages, I think this new function will be widely used and become much more popular soon.

What a great tool for hotel owners and managers to measure how well their doing in the market and what customers think about the business and compare the ratings among competitors. Not to mention it is free for companies that are registered with TripAdvisor!

Nowadays, cloud-based technology is becoming widely popular. The cloud has several benefits such as removes hardware off property which save lots of cost for hotel, less people manage it which can yield saving. This new technology is also very efficient and increase productivity at the same time. Some hotel brand get interested to this web-based central reservation system like Choice Hotels International. It is so true that hotel is not the ideal place to run complicates systems. Cloud-based technology to some extent can help hotel solve this problem. As we all know, labor cost is a big expense for hotel. Cloud can do things faster by taking the burden off IT hotel staff. Also, the front desk can focus more on guest. Those kinds of changes can eliminate the number of staff. However, some bad things about cloud-based technology also exist. For example, Internet is not always can rely on. Hotels need to have backup plans in case some unexpected things occur. Overall, this new technology has a higher quality overall service.

This article discusses what travel agents think about the enhanced ability of both corporate and leisure based travel agencies to sell airline ancillaries because of improved Global Distribution Systems' technologies. Ancillaries are products and services that airlines sell to gain additional revenue on top of your ticket price. Ancillaries have become increasingly popular in the airline industry because of the sky rocketing price of jet fuel. To keep ticket prices down airlines are "unbundling" items from the overall experience. This presents them with an opportunity to turn a profit by charging fees for bags (carry on, checked, additional), on board food and drink, credit card purchases, headphones. It seems like everything you encounter from when you arrive at the airport to when you disembark the plane has a fee. This phenomenon is especially present in Low cost carriers such as Spirit, Air Tran, Jet Blue, etc. However there are consumers who disagree with this additional costs as is apparent in Southwest's continuous marketing campaign. I'm sure everyone has seen the commercials with Southwest representatives 'flagging' down unnecessary fees in order to promote their 'bags fly free' campaign. Anyhow the reason I am explaining ancillary revenue is because travel agents are now starting to sell more ancillary products such as hotel accommodations, travel insurance, rental cars because of GDS technologies. They can track the sale of fees through EMD (Electronic miscellaneous Documents) which is the current industry standard. In the article some agents state that the EMDs are hard to understand and use. I believe until the EMDs become "seamless and easy to use" there will exist some hesitation to sell airline ancillaries. However on the other hand the article states that Travelport is working towards a simple and uniform platform called Travelport Universal API/Desktop. Once this comeplete perhaps more agents will feel comfortable selling ancillaries. This is a goo

I still remember when most airlines used to include breakfast or dinner for their passengers including alcoholic beverages well that doesn't happen any more. I believe when Travelport Universal Desktop becomes available it would become more clear to travel agencies the transaction process and for the consumers what products and services they are ofering.

I too miss the days of free sodas and peanuts. "Sigh-" sometimes its the little things in life that bring the most joy. I agree I think the new Travelport Universal Desktop will be a valuable tool if utilized correctly.

In Amazon's last quarter, net income dropped by 57 percent from a year ago. Sales for the three months before December 31 came out to $17.4 billion, lower than Wall Street expected over the traditionally busy holidy season. It is predicted that for the next quarter outlook, there could be anywhere from a gain of $100 million to a loss of $200 million. While Amazon continues to profit in sales of its best selling Kindle devices, there were a variety of factors that contirbuted to its losses. The flooding in Thailand slowed down production for many tech companies. Third-party sellers (which give a 13% commission to Amazon as oppsoed to 100% commission when Amazon sells themselves) were used more than usual. Promotions such as the Amazon Prime program which allows the customer to pay a fixed rate and get umlimited two-day shipping hurt the retailer hard over the busy holiday season with shipping costs. Other reasons were lower demand for skimwords

This article talk about the Internet Tourism Marketing. The Internet has increasingly become a popular medium for marketing. This paper attempted to investigate the potential of the Internet for tourism marketing and the current constraints on the full realisation of such potential. Through an examination of the advantages of the Internet as a marketing tool and the characteristics of the tourism industry, the paper found that the Internet was ideal for marketing tourism. It then analysed the main Internet applications in tourism marketing and explored the key factors that were attributable to the current low level of travel sales an the Internet The paper concluded with a brief discussion of the major strategic issues in the implementation of Internet tourism marketing.

The Internet has increasingly become a popular medium for marketing. This paper attempted to investigate the potential of the Internet for tourism marketing and the current constraints on the full realisation of such potential. Through an examination of the advantages of the Internet as a marketing tool and the characteristics of the tourism industry, the paper found that the Internet was ideal for marketing tourism. It then analysed the main Internet applications in tourism marketing and explored the key factors that were attributable to the current low level of travel sales an the Internet The paper concluded with a brief discussion of the major strategic issues in the implementation of Internet tourism marketing.

This paper has so far examined some of the key issues related to the marketing of tourism on the Internet. In particular, it has highlighted the main features of the Internet as an effective and efficient communication medium, including its addressability, interactivity, flexibility and accessibility, and its role in improving customer service and reducing costs. It has also analysed the unique characteristics of tourism which make it perfect to be marketed on the Internet and further explored the main areas in tourism marketing where the Internet could play a significant role and provide substantial benefits for both the marketer and the consumer. In an investigation of the key forces which drive Internet commerce, it has found that a wide variety of factors, grouped conveniently in four broad categories demand, organisational, technological and governmental - could both enable and restrict the application of the Internet in tourism marketing.

Traveling has a lot of purposes. Some people travel regularly as it is the need of their business or profession while some travels occasionally to enjoy a. When you save sometimes from your busy schedule it allows you to enjoy all the entertaining vacation while exploring different parts of the world. Medical tourism is gaining popularity because of the many benefits that they offer, such as fun of traveling and meeting exotic people and visiting beautiful sites along with obtaining high quality medical treatment .

Technology researcher, Greg Buzek is interviewed by Nation's Restaurant News about the future of Mobile POS among restaurants. He says that Mobile POS will be the fatsest penetration of any technology in the hospitality industry since the introduction of internet connectivity. We see that the fastest growing market for this technology are the smaller bussinesses such as food trucks and fast food restaurants where the speed of the transaction is critical, but eventually will find itself popular amongst larger restaurant chains. The appeal for smaller bussinesses is the price point, since it's cheaper than installing $2000.00 traditional POS.

Hospitality point of sales systems are computerized systems incorporating registers, computers and peripheral equipment, usually on a computer network. Like other point of sale systems, these systems keep track of sales, labor and payroll, and can generate records used in accounting and book keeping. They may be accessed remotely by restaurant corporate offices, troubleshooters and other authorized parties. Point of sales systems have revolutionized the restaurant industry, particularly in the fast food sector. In the most recent technologies, registers are computers, sometimes with touch screens. The registers connect to a server, often referred to as a "store controller" or a "central control unit." Printers and monitors are also found on the network. Additionally, remote servers can connect to store networks and monitor sales and other store data. Newer, more sophisticated, systems are getting away from the central database "file server" type system and going to what is called a "cluster database". This eliminates any crashing or system downtime that can be associated with the back office file server. This technology allows 100% of the information to not only be stored, but also pulled from the local terminal. Thus eliminating the need to rely on a separate server for the system to operate. The efficiency of such systems has decreased service times and increased efficiency of orders. Another innovation in technology for the restaurant industry is Wireless POS. Many restaurants with high volume use wireless handheld POS to collect orders which are sent to a server. The server sends required information to the kitchen in real time.

Nowadays, the Point of Sales system is very important not only in hotels but also in any kind of business. The popular reason is that the POS is convenient, fast and promptly. The POS could be changed neatly. It will make the cashier compute for the expenses and costs more efficiently. The data used by the POS has been applied connection through the Internet. The customers could register by their private computer quickly. The POS also connect many kinds of service aspects that include restaurant, housekeeping, receiption and so on. It will make the whole system operate more integrate.

This article reveals that Revel Systems is expanding its point-of-sale products with Beautiful Brand International. Revel Systems is well-known for creating the mobile point-of-sale system for Apple used by numerous restaurants and retails. Other popular restaurants currently partnered with Revel Systems are Camille's Sidewalk Café, Dixie Cream, FreshBerry Frozen Yogurt Cafe and Rex's Chicken. This POS system provides a quicker checkout option for customers and offers hotel/restaurant managers the option of powering the software using the cloud or an iPad application. This provides the company a cost efficient, easy to use program that has the ability to customize payroll, track inventory, email receipts and allow customers to make orders online. Most managers who invest in this program make it a requirement for all their companies to utilize in order to provide a systematic approach to maintaining their database and ensuring all locations are managed the same. This is such a popular and competitive tool that Revel is already making $80 million since its origin in August 2010. A major advantage of this system is that it provides the ease of accessing documents with its reliance on servers hosted in the cloud. These systems are quickly being adopted by restaurants mainly because customers are impressed with the style, speed and reliability. Revel Systems forces busineses to upgrade their POS systems in order to meet security standards. This will result in a $34 billion POS market by the end of 2012. Companies selling these systems make businesses believe they need POS systems in order to run their business efficiently. They explain that with servers hosted in the cloud, management is enabe to see data in real time from any location.

The article talk about a POS company that has developed a complete system for retail or restaurant stores that runs on the IPAD and the Cloud. It lowers the entry barrier by more than 75% compared to a regular MICROS POS system, they do this by not having a in house server and using standard hardware.  One of the advantages of using this system is that you can monitor your sales real time on any location that might be using the system.