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Mobile users are not just playing Angry Birds or checking the local weather, 38% have used their mobile devices to plan a trip and 60% of respondents said they have downloaded travel apps on their mobile devices, according to a TripAdvisor survey. While travelling, 62% of travelers said they use their mobile devices to research restaurants. 51% check their flight status and 46% research attraction, 28% have checked in to a restaurant, hotel or attraction using their mobile device while on a trip, according to TripAdvisor. (travelmole, May 2011). A research conducted by PhoCusWright shows that 75% of frequent business travelers (those making at least five trips a year) are smartphone owners. About half of frequent leisure travelers have smartphones. There's more than enough evidence for the hospitality industry to use mobile apps, and some hotels have already started and are successfully doing it.

Technology absolutely plays important role to facilitate meetings and conference running smoothly. The Audience-response systems (ARS) ease the communication between attendees and speaker, which encourages the engagement from participants. As one big goal of meeting and convention is to bring people together and let them know each other, technology like ARS is essential for a successful meeting. According to most planners' experience, it's really annoying to pass around the microphone when somebody wants to ask question. The new microphone function is also added into ARS so that attendees can ask question without waiting for passing the microphone. In addition, ARS can track attendance for crediting purpose. As long as WiFi is available, surveys can be sent by laptops, iPads and iPod touches.

Two former restaurant servers have developed software that provides an end-to-end point-of-sale (POS) system that allows taking and submitting orders, printing kitchen slips, customer receipts and processing payments-all using an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. Ambur does not require a computer on the back end. Instead the hand-held device is the hub. The program can be loaded up by any iOS device and run on a wireless network. Waiters can easily fulfill customer requests right at the table. One drawback is that some customers have complained because they thought the waiter was texting on their iPhone.

From this article, I can get some information that the new technology bring convenience both hotel and customers. The customers just press the simple button to control everyting in the hotel room that is a good experience difference from home. And the hotel can utilize the high technology to satisfied the customers and thus improving the competitiveness in the industry. However, high technology means high cost. The hotel that adopt the high technoloty should has the ability to maintain and update which will become a huge cost. So keeping up with the development of technology is the biggest difficulty problem in the hotel industry.

The latest technology gives hotels an opportunity to provide new products and services to guests but also the challenges . The biggest difficulty is the speed at which technology is evolving which makes it impossible for hotels to keep up with the latest developments. On the other hand there are many hotels are embracing the new technologies. Such as guest's smartphone, which will allow for interactive channel guides to appear on the handheld and can store guest preferences that travelers can take from one hotel to another. And the Plaza provide iPads in every guest room. which provide an easy way for customers to make reservation checking airline schedules and printing boarding passes.

The hospitality industry began to develop the mobile point-of-sale (POS) technology. Technology vendors brought POS capabilities to consumers' own devices. Hospitality Technology has scanned many of the latest releases in point-of-sale technology to help restaurants keep up-to-date on mobile solutions. For example, Tabbedout, a secure mobile payment solution, allows patrons to open, view and pay their tabs, for free, with an iPhone or Android smartphone. Another example is Micros Makes Memorable Menus. An interactive restaurant menu and marketing portal built for the Apple iPad that enables restaurants to showcase upcoming events, programs, food and beverage menus, and daily specials; as well as to facilitate tabletop ordering and payment processing.

Gipsee announced the new Interactive Allergy Software designed for the restaurant industry especially for non sit-down dining sector in the industry. Most sit-down dining places often maintain eight or more allergy-specific menus.Customers with restrictions have to manually search for items which will be safe for them to eat. This newest offering eliminates the need for restaurants to produce multiple allergy-specific menus and replaces them with an "on-demand" capability based on dynamic user requests. The basic working process is the restaurant staff select and enter food allergies or ingredient restrictions that a customer may have into the software and then instantly produce customized menu choices for the customer. Customer have the flexibility of selecting from hundreds of ingredients and thousands of combinations of restrictions representing a more pragmatic approach to food allergy occurrences. This new software offers advantages including cost-savings and reduces communication errors occurs particularly during busy time slots. Also this new software is available and increasingly used by restaurant such as iPad and other touch-screen display devices

This article discusses how new demand of customers within the hospitality industry is driving current point of sale systems such as micros to re-term their systems to focus more on customers. It includes several factors that are potentially driving POS systems to be revolutionized. The possibility of POS systems becoming more "from the palm of your hand" is growing each day as more POS systems are converging with wireless devices. As other outside factors influence hoteliers to emerge and update their POS systems, the development and progress of having the most profitable POS systems requires close examination of what works best for each company. One example the article touched on was the change from regular cashier systems to IPad based interactive systems and interactive kiosks. In addition, the enhancements of POS systems overall seem to be increasing F&B profit-a section of the financial statement that was historically less profitable. As with all technology, It is best to refrain from making a large capital investment into emerging systems, starting slow and monitoring how the bottom line is increasing and specific areas such as Room revenue or F&B revenue is the ideal choice.

Excellent Article! POS systems are becoming more user friendly than before. The systems allow companies to track revenue and inventory at the same time. The Walt Disney World Resort tested a POS system that allowed hotel guests to simply flash their room key and the charges would go directly into the POS system then PMS. Hotels have added POS systems to spas, recreation locations and retail stores...(http://www.restaurant.org/nra_news_blog/2012/04/pos-systems-must-accommodate-new-secure-payment-technology.cfm).

Theodore your article proves a great point on the benefits of POS technology. Having a POS system adds more value that will cover its initial cost. Handles greater product volumes. Makes complex business logic possible. Provides more management possibilities of your daily operations such as sales tracking, refunds, time clocks, menus, pricing, revenue maximization, etc.Provides advanced functionalities such as reservation and table management for restaurants, hotels, bars, and any business in the food service industry. Realizes enhanced savings with greater efficiency. Delivers better workflow for staff. Improves customer service and increases customer through-put. Easily manage large numbers of customers and groups. Allows restaurant businesses to combine multiple services into a single invoice (hotel room, meals, events, services). Graphical management of store assets such as table, rooms, bar, etc. Delivers superior reporting and analysis features. Streamlines inventory management. Back Office integration. The purpose of POS system is to accommodate your employees and your customers. If you have happy employees this results in customers having a smile. You have to spend money (POS SYSTEM) in order to make money.

Picture this: you walk into a store and there are no cash registers to be found. You wonder where you can go to actually pay for your items. What looks to be regular customers are actually sales associates, wearing backpacks. What's in the backpacks? iPads. Why? These are their point-of-sale units to ring up customers. This company, Breadcrumb, created this very set up so that clients can become more mobile with their customers. My story is a very true story. JC Penny actually uses this system in their young men department. I discovered this while shopping for my son one day. I think it is the coolest thing to have. The sales associates are able to move around more freely to help the customers out. No longer are they tied to the cash register. Erica

This article is describing a new reservation system program which is going to support Sceptre Hospitality Resources' hotels.  This system allows users to make reservation using social media. it also allows managers to control hotel activities on their iPhones and iPads.  This program is going to maximize hotel's revenues, but upgrading users after the selection is made. 

Facts show that when your product is more expensive than competition it limits sales and as the article shows it aided ipad to have higher sale rates Intels atom processor and Microsoft's Windows 7 Starter Edition operating system found a way to tender a distinguished product that could justify lower expenses to help create further market share. If Microsoft and Intel learned from their occurrence with net book, the prospect of lower costs could let them compete based on price. Microsoft still has the possibility of succeeding along side Windows 8 tablets and that is by leaving Intel out, and instead run on ARM based hardware which is less expensive.

Overall some ways that Microsoft can win against Ipad besides prices is functionality. If Windows 8 desktop or intel tablet improved by ensure ample app offerings, watched quality control, and figuring out how users with a full version of Microsoft Office are able to work together with users packing ARM-powered tablets and their less-capable Microsoft's productivity tools.

Great article, Craig! I agree that this is a great app for hotel managers to integrate into their company because although they may need to invest money to create these apps, the incoming revenue produced from the app will be well worth it. Tourists usually go on leisurely vacations to relax and be pampered. This app is just another guest service tool that allows the customer to do what they'd like from the comfort of their bed or tanning chair.

This article introduced the new website of the Four Seasons Hotel, what the new functions are added to the new website, and how the new website help the hotel attract new customers. There are some differences between the old hotel website and the new one. Six key features of the new website can respect the strengths of the new website which are Ease of booking, On the go, Access to review, Every property has a story, Location and Personalization. Four Seasons Hotel also unveils its Four Seasons Luxury Trend Report. Some of the insights from the report include: Luxury is back, Branding moves to the social sphere, E-commerce is king, The rise of the iPad. Nowadays, most customers choose to use website to get to know a hotel, so the website has a great meaning for the hotel. The website not only needs to have enough information, images, but some unique functions to attract customers and provide better service through the internet. Like the Four Seasons Hotel's new website, it allows for multi-destination, multi-hotel, and multi-person reservations, it will paint an authentic picture of the local culture, and it will collect guests' personal interests, related content and recommendations, this information will become available on a guest's next visit and over time, delivering a completely personalized experience. Four Seasons Hotel notices that E-commerce is the king, as Seventy-eight percent of the affluent participate in social networking sites, with more than half using social media to connect with a brand. The luxury consumer is increasingly going online to research and make purchases. It is important for the hotel the keep up with the latest technology such as the iPad. According to the Four Seasons Luxury Trend Report, One-third of wealthy consumers own a tablet or e-Reader. Four Seasons revenue generated from the iPad and other tablets has grown 200 percent from 2010 to 2011. The new technology has a close relationship with the hotel and the e-business.

Apple consumers could see the debut of both the new iPhone and an iPad Mini come September. Citing "sources who have proven accurate in the past," blog site iMore says that Apple will announce the two devices at a special event on Wednesday, September 12.

This article is really interesting because it incorporates two concepts that we have touched on in class, cloud systems and Points of Sale (POS) systems. Cloudtise, is a type of cloud advertising service that is part of the new online marketing trend that allows businesses use real time data for advertising to consumers. Its versatile form allows both users and consumers to instantly update and gather information. By partnering up with Revel System's cloud based Apple iPad POS system, it will help businesses obtain data about client trends. The coalition enables Cloudtise to mold their data based on the geographical area and use data to create ads in real time for specific areas. Using the POS system, Cloudtise will be able to give businesses information so that they can target ads to demographics in local and specific areas that are the most likely to buy the products. Businesses will be able to track inventory levels, customer characteristics, and details from local competitors that will boost their knowledge of what products sell best and to whom. The overall advantage will be providing information what advertising campaigns work and which do not. I think this is a great way for businesses to gain a competitive advantage in their market because consumers are moving toward an instant gratification plane, where they expect products and services immediately. Using cloud and POS systems as an advertising tool will enable users to specifically target consumers and adapt to them instantly.

This article talks about how Walt Disney World park-goers are able to enjoy a new app designed for iPhones, iPads and iPods that gives them real-time updates on park information and other services. The application allows guests to better plan their day with the ability to view wait times for shows and attractions; guests are also able to track what are the fastpass return times and the ability to book dining reservation around the parks and resorts. The application enables the guests to move through the theme parks flawlessly and helps maintain a neat order. It gives the guests the ability to view the maps and view what's happening right now at each of the parks. It is a great application that will help everyone be more organize as they enjoy the parks.

This article is about touch-screen use in restaurants.

Great idea but not new... Sakae Sushi Chain here in Singapore installed flat screen monitors with mouse on each table in their 36 outlets, and that's way before iPad came out. They have upgraded all to iPad now. http://www.iPadforums.net/chinese-dedicated-iPad-forum/46640-excuse-me-menu-please.html

The article introduces five ways to improve eco-friendly reputation for hotels. Recently, many tourists are interested in green and sustainability, and when they choose the hotel, the characteristic about sustainable business operation can be a big benefit tourist can consider. First, it is about eco-friendly heating and energy. The energy bill takes up a lot when considering the total expenditure, so it is necessary for hotels to manage the power effectively. By utilizing energy management system, hotel can track the energy consumption in the entire building and control the expense. Second, hotel can adopt waste reduction technology. Most wastes are coming from poor stock control. Thus, hotel should employ the tracking system to monitor the items that are being disposed of often, and use the record when they purchase the items. Third, sustainable laundry can be the way to operate the eco-friendly hotel. Eco-friendly polymer laundry beads can reduce the water usage and electricity expense. Also, an effective material can cut down the frequency for linen to be replaced. Fourth, lighting technology can be used. By applying the occupancy sensors, hotel can cut down the cost, and use energy more effectively. Lastly, it is iPad POS system. According to the article, they said iPad POS saves about 97% of power consumption compared to Window-based system. To sum up, these five ways can be adopted for sustainable hotel operation, and having the eco-friendly hotel brand will be a big advantage to increase millennial guests and advertise the hotel.

This article describes the ways to make the hotel greener and more appealing to the environmentally aware guests

This article is about the fast casual restaurant chain Vita Mojo and how they have incorporated software that has enabled them to provide a fully customizable meal service to their guests. With over 9 billion possible meal combinations, Vita Mojo uses iPads at their three locations to help customers create a fully customizable meal. The average lunch costs between $6.50 and $9.50 which is on average with most fast casual restaurants in London. Customer's are also able to create their meals based on the nutritional information of each ingredient and offering, and the average meal takes about 3 to 5 minutes to create. This software also enables Vita Mojo to track POS data and aids them with predicting future sales, reducing food waste, and staying on top of trends. Being a restaurant manager myself, I found this incorporation of softwares into the restaurant industry very fascinating. I can see how the POS tracking software would be extremely beneficial in menu planning and managing cost of goods, as well as continuously being able to adapt and stay on top of new dining trends. So much of what makes restaurants successful is the ability to evolve and adapt with consumer needs and expectations. Also, the ability to customize your own meal accompanied with nutritional information seems very appealing from a consumer's point of view. Our generation has become more interested in expressing themselves uniquely and creatively, while also being more health conscious, and Vita Mojo has found away to appeal to both senses. The incorporation of iPad ordering and the minimizing of labor costs has also enabled Vita Mojo to price itself competitively, while offering higher quality ingredients, while also providing their goods in a timely fashion.