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Property Management System- The Future of Hotel Industry

Property Management System- The Future of Hotel Industry

Property Management System- The Future of Hotel Industry

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

Central Reservation System: One of the greatest advantages of using an online hotel software is that you do not have any more headaches about reservations.

  Numerous Point of Sale: Keeping a check on the add-on services your hotel provides can easily be done with the help of the numerous points of sales.

Sales and Marketing Console: To help popularize your hotel and make it known to people from across the globe, many PMSs have a dedicated sales and marketing console.

Travel Agents and Corporate Clients:It is also important that you properly deal with travel agents and corporate clients as they play a very important role in bringing in more guests to the hotel.

Connected to 1000s of Travel Portals: These property management systems  help you get connected to many travel portals like Travelocity, Tripadvisor and Expedia helping you reach more people. 

Network computing has enormous implications for marketing to customers on a global basis, as well as hotel operations. Consider the potential for the industry to connect with vendors worldwide for electronic purchasing, potentially achieving economies of scale and leveraging not yet possible. World purchasing functions will allow companies to customize their own catalogs. Virtual channels of distribution using computer networking capabilities will also allow hotel companies to market products and services - some traditional to our industry, others not - to customers whether they are in the hotel, at work, or at home. This will require a migration from today's central reservation systems to tomorrow's customer information systems using network-centric solutions. Development of customer profiles and guest recognition will make it possible for hotel organizations to interact in entirely new ways with customers, regardless of their physical location. Clearly, the large hotel companies will need to be the first to address questions raised by global networking capabilities and what this will mean in terms of technology investment. But for many hospitality companies presently struggling with the high cost of technology and the confusing state of our industry's technology affairs, this will not be an easy task. And the decisions will ultimately become further complicated by the opportunity to outsource certain functions into subscription-based networks. It is unlikely that the hospitality industry will be forced to bear the entire burden for networking infrastructure. Strategic alliances with major technology companies will be the catalysts in building this capability as they become strategic providers of networking capabilities to hospitality and other industries. And as network-centric computing comes of age and a company's proprietary information is stored in cyberspace, security will become an ever-more important issue requiring solutions. Whether it is an e-mail gateway through an internal network or customer access via the Internet, network fire walls and encryption systems will be required to mitigate the concern many will have with system security.

Network computing has enormous implications for marketing to customers on a global basis, as well as hotel operations. Consider the potential for the industry to connect with vendors worldwide for electronic purchasing, potentially achieving economies of scale and leveraging not yet possible. World purchasing functions will allow companies to customize their own catalogs. Virtual channels of distribution using computer networking capabilities will also allow hotel companies to market products and services - some traditional to our industry, others not - to customers whether they are in the hotel, at work, or at home. This will require a migration from today's central reservation systems to tomorrow's customer information systems using network-centric solutions. Development of customer profiles and guest recognition will make it possible for hotel organizations to interact in entirely new ways with customers, regardless of their physical location. Clearly, the large hotel companies will need to be the first to address questions raised by global networking capabilities and what this will mean in terms of technology investment. But for many hospitality companies presently struggling with the high cost of technology and the confusing state of our industry's technology affairs, this will not be an easy task. And the decisions will ultimately become further complicated by the opportunity to outsource certain functions into subscription-based networks. It is unlikely that the hospitality industry will be forced to bear the entire burden for networking infrastructure. Strategic alliances with major technology companies will be the catalysts in building this capability as they become strategic providers of networking capabilities to hospitality and other industries. And as network-centric computing comes of age and a company's proprietary information is stored in cyberspace, security will become an ever-more important issue requiring solutions. Whether it is an e-mail gateway through an internal network or customer access via the Internet, network fire walls and encryption systems will be required to mitigate the concern many will have with system security. In the final analysis, networking solutions will drive down the cost of technology investment "on-property" where hotel real estate and business interests merge. The solutions that hotel organizations will be able to choose from in terms of networking should also be less expensive than the current profile of technology spending. And we can expect that change to occur sooner rather than later, given the present rate of investment in Internet-based technologies.

Lisa Falzone, co-founder and CEO of Revel System, explains that the platform is going after chains and restaurants that have at least $500,000 in yearly revenue.

Currently Revel is seeing around $80 million in processing business with major brands. Beautiful Brands International has just tapped the startup to power POS systems at its multiple franchised locations nationwide under the Beautiful Brands International umbrella, including Camille’s Sidewalk Café, Dixie Cream, FreshBerry Frozen Yogurt Cafe and Rex’s Chicken.

With the number of security breaches worldwide each year, it is no surprise that more and more people are aware of their data being given to anyone, and knowing it is sufficiently protected. Each person needs to be able to trust their hotel or the place that they’ve visited to keep their details private at all times.

Perhaps the hardest to recover from is the damage caused to customer trust, and brand reputation, which can be difficult to rebuild. The result of failure to comply can also include significant financial penalties and legal complications where affected parties are able to seek compensation for insufficient security measures being taken to protect them.

Most businesses will now store the majority of their secure information on computers, which means their IT infrastructure needs to be able to restrict unauthorised access and prevent breaches. Without implementing security measures, a breach can result in downtime for your customers, which can be both costly and time-consuming. You should ensure that there are restrictions to access different levels of information, and implement all basic security features within their IT infrastructure such as usernames and passwords.

Having a plan for your customers to manage all the data that they have is also important, and the most effective way of doing this is to create an Information Security Management System, or ISMS.

Experiencing a data breach could cost your hotel an excess of $5 million dollars.

These are three simple reasons why payment security should be a top concern at your hotel. There are ways to minimize, or even eliminate, the risk of data breaches. First, make payment security a priority for every department of your hotel, not just the IT department. Ensure that all employees understand the risks involved with improper handling of credit cards through training and education.

top five trends

IoT Drawbacks in Hospitality

cyber-attacks and security breaches

“a smart energy management system knows when a guest room is unoccupied and can automatically adjust the temperature to reduce energy consumption by as much as 20-45 percent,”

The Internet of Things is the network of physical objects embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity enabling these objects to collect and exchange data.

Guest-room Automation

Predictive Maintenance – Predictive maintenance takes preventive maintenance one-step further by using sensor data to recognize hazardous trends and alert the appropriate maintenance engineer before the issue escalates.

Mobile Engagement –

Hyper-Personalization

However, with more countries migrating to chip cards and EMV-compliant POS systems, attackers have shifted their focus to card-not-present fraud and are targeting industries where consumers are making their payments and reservations over the phone—such as hotel contact centers.

If guests aren’t convinced that the hotel is keeping their personal and financial data secure, they will take their business elsewhere. In order to protect their brand reputation and their business, hotels need to create a culture of security throughout their entire organization that focuses on protecting guests’ digital property in addition to their physical property. One of the best places to start is their contact center.

In an era of increasing cyberattacks, hotels can make themselves less of a target by adopting technology to ensure that payment card data and other personally identifiable information is kept secure and segregated from the contact center.

With such an approach, customers calling to make a reservation or order additional services discreetly type their card numbers into the telephone keypad, rather than reading them out loud to the agent on the phone line. The data is securely routed to the payment gateway or a more secure server so it is never shared with the agent and is not held in the contact center infrastructure. This ensures that there is no possible spillover of the data to the unsecured or unmonitored areas of the business. It also reduces the number of individuals with access to the sensitive data, and makes the hotel contact center a less attractive target for cybercriminals. As an added benefit, this approach makes it easier for the hotel to comply with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards by reducing the scope of compliance. By keeping payment card data out of the contact center, hotels can significantly reduce the high costs and extensive time associated with maintaining PCI DSS compliance.  

With stronger security practices for handling guests’ sensitive data, the hotel industry as a whole can transform itself from being one of the most likely targets for data breaches to becoming a model for data security, thereby ensuring that fewer customers ever have to go through the experience

Guests can sleep peacefully knowing that their data is secure, and the hotel can rest assured that its name won’t be making headlines as victim of a costly data breach.

China now has its own annual Smart Home and Intelligent Building Expo. Certainly, much as other elements of our environment - from our personal devices to our home interiors and vehicles - are becoming more intuitive and automated, so can we expect the same from buildings

"while smart architecture is about making buildings cheaper and greener, it's important to recognise that it's also about making them better for their occupants"

Millennials (24- to 35-year-olds) believe they are most vulnerable to a cybersecurity breach when staying at a traditional hotel rather than when booking with Airbnb.

More than 25 million U.S. consumers self-reported that a restaurant visit has resulted in a data breach.

Earlier this year, Morphisec discovered FIN8, a cybercrime group most known for targeting the retail industry, was actively targeting POS systems within hospitality companies in the U.S. and abroad.

“Increasingly, attackers are targeting weakly defended point-of-sale systems as an entry point into the broader hospitality organization network. With many POS devices in the hospitality industry still running on Windows 7 or even Windows XP-based embedded operating systems, they are increasingly vulnerable to breaches, and cybercrime groups are taking notice.”

today’s connected consumer is accustomed to these risks and accepts them in exchange for the benefits offered by connectivity.

hardware remains the same across protocols – so the hardware currently in development will help drive adoption of home automation, no matter which protocols become standard.

The connected home market is still in the early-adopter phase, and many startup companies are jockeying for position and for consumer attention.

The commercial building automation space is different from home automation in many aspects.

The Cloud simplifies multi-building management and serves as a data aggregator for building managers responsible for multiple buildings without the need for a large IT staff to manage a dedicated system.

While both these systems initially emerged as hard-wired, they have been extended into wireless realms to provide connectivity in less accessible conditions.

facility maintenance personnel have a common system to maintain, control, and troubleshoot if needed, creating a strong brand alliance in the commercial controls space.

A centralized control system may take readings from multiple airflow sensors in a building and dynamically adjust airflow dampers to ensure equalized airflow and comfort throughout the building.

Hotels will also begin installing new check-in systems that accept chip-based credit cards and debit cards as a way to guarantee secure payment.

2. Wearable Tech

MagicBands, which operate off their MyMagic+ system,  allow guests to “[book] transportation to a hotel from the airport and choos[e] where to eat. The MagicBand also serves as a room key and ticket for attractions, replacing the need to carry around bulky key cards and folded papers, both of which are lost frequently.”

It’s more effective for learning customer preferences than just relying on online guest reviews.

3. Self-Service Check-in

And in a technological world where you can get just about anything at the touch of a button, your guests are going to start expecting the same immediate gratification from your hotel.

However, this technology can do more than just ease your guest experience. Using kiosks for self check-in can “sav[e] money on staffing, increas[e] its revenue[,] and increas[e] customer satisfaction,” says author Julie Weed.

4. Cloud Computing (Total or Hybrid)

You need to keep all your software tools in one, centralized location that everyone can access.

as hotels are expected to invest in newer technologies to stay ahead of the curve, they also need to find ways to cut costs, and cloud computing has the potential to cut 50% of operational costs.

many companies employ a hybrid cloud, which can quell fears of sensitive data breaches by only storing some (not all) information on the cloud.

5. Increased Presence on Social Media

it’s clear you need to be on social media to ensure users stay at your hotel rather than your competitors.

6. Native Mobile Apps

While social media can get your name out there, making a native mobile app is another emerging trend that taps into your guests’ affinity for technology and ease.

Not to mention, these mobile apps are a good replacement for key cards, and enable smartphones or smartwatches to act as more secure room keys.

7. Continued Industry Aversion to Tech

Technology has changed many industries, and in one that serves its guests face-to-face, it’s important to keep up with what those guests value. And a growing number of them value technology. It’s a part of their everyday lives.