Hospitality Technology

To design a website hardware and software tools are needed. A computer with a large hard disk, Random Access Memory to store data, high processing speed and large storage capacity is necessary to be able to process large video files that you would need to put on these websites. with videos, its best to take them yourself so as to lessen the cost of production. Two servers are needed both hardware and software. Microsoft front page is a software needed before constructing the site because it is a website design and management tool that is used to add, rename, delete or move around files. It also contains web pages, graphics, documents and multimedia. A good anti-virus or software is important to have for web design to prevent external threats. Backing up the website should be done through emails, where it can be restored if any problems occur. With mobile web design and editing software you can edit your site from any location and it can be viewed on smart phones, PDAs etc. Some website require databases, for example Dynamic websites. This is prepared with fresh information and is easier to update with new contents for the webpage.

This is a kind of a new improved software for connecting to wi-fi and mobile broadband networks of Microsoft 8. The user need to be installed required drivers and software to connect to mobile broadband networks of Win7, while, Windows 8 has been designed to simplify the process of connecting to mobile broadband networks and of managing those connections, including monitoring data usage and controlling costs. Prior to Windows 8, you needed these applications to compensate for functionality not provided natively in Windows. This additional software confused and frustrated users by conflicting with the Windows connection manager, showing different networks, network status, and a separate user interface. Also, this software can read user`s action and reconnect more faster.

This article is talking about current situation of how green concepts influences hospitality industry. Become more and more green and sustainable is the goal of many hotels, they've tried to achieve the goal through many ways in recent years. The hospitality industry is recognizing the compelling need to adopt sustainable operating practices for the sake of efficiency, cost savings and green building requirements. And also they are considering whether green can drive greater returns. Corporate travel executives set the rewards to encourage sustainable purchasing by reward. In fact, different people have different opinions of "green". Mostly, hostels chose to become more sustainable through strategic selection of products and services. Such as they use the conserving energy coverlets, shower, window, toilet and so on. Besides, hospitality managers want a consistent guidelines and performance targets to be used by purchase influencers and decision makers to make solutions for cost saving more effective. Now there are more and more people realize this concept and there already has a preliminary guideline for prioritizing actionable, practical solutions to achieve long-term growth of having a "green forest in hospitality".

This article shares how ARAMARK, introduces new techonolgy using the iPad. This is occurring at the home of the NBA Cleveland Cavaliers. It allows luxury suite owners to not only order food and drinks, but gives the guest the ability to buy team logo merchandise, see and buy tickets for upcoming events at the arena, while serving as an electronic concierge. Smarttouch will allow the arena operators to see first hand what their guests like and want more of. By providing this type of service to its guests, it will build a stronger bond between the fan/guest and the team/arena owner. If indeed this does increase loyalty, the increase in spending will surely follow. I believe this is a very strategic move on behalf of Aramark and the arena, because those who spend the type of money to have box/suites in the arena, will spend in other areas. Business owners would support the organization, by entertaining their clients, through advertisements and via word of mouth of the latest and greatest experience they had at the arena. Additionally, revenues generated from the other service offerings, will help justify costs needed to upgrade the facility to support the type of infrastructure needed to operate the Smarttouch.

Geographic information systems (GIS) are powerful tools when married to data.It is useful to analysis the trend and patterns of hotel operation with RevPAR and other STR database. To divide segments in the whole hospitality market with different color is one of its special advantages to other hotel software

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. 

Hotels put their information on the search engines, such as the Google, for their potential guests getting the information about their hotels. When people search on the Internet, they will focus on the first page of the search results, and for the hotels, if they are being listed in the top pages, they have more chances for attracting guests. However, how to boost their visibility in the hotel space on Google, Bing and the other local search engines? This article gives us three steps. Firstly, claim your local listings. Claiming your local listings will help the hotels ensure the name, address and phone number being consistent across the Internet correctly, and also show that the hotel is an active business owner. Secondly, tweak your onsite location pages. Here contains two basic steps: the corporate umbrella website conundrum , which is suitable for a hotel management group; and single domain per location, refers to a smaller business with one location. Thirdly, get a little more technical. Do not ignore the small changes, such as repeating addresses and other location information, these small changes can strengthen your credibility and lead to increased visibility.

From my personal experience I will choose the search result on the top page. So this article is very useful for the hotels to increase the website visit. The high website visit means more potential customers.

Yeah, put information of hotels on search engines is a great idea as a advertisement promotion. But it takes lots of money, and more expensive with the more popular search-engine. How to spend lowest money to have most benefit? Anyway, this is another problem, this article is good to summarize a guidance for hotels.

Summary of the article Contactless payment is a new technology being used in the UK. Compare to the previous quarter, in the last month of 2011, cardholders using this system to pay for food has been increased. The contactless system allow customers to make a payment over 15 Europe dollar by scanning their credit card over the machine, it can reduce waiting time, especially in some popular branches. Although this machine has been available in the UK for 2 years, Visa card still limits its acceptance level to prevent those who may become a every-day habit. However, according to Mark Austin, he believes, especially in London, the Olympics could bring more people in using contactless payment as long as they get a chance to use it once, they will know how the convenience is. Based on the Visa card research, experts believe that contactless payment technology will become wildly used in the coming year than cash. For example, more and more retailers such as Subway, Burger King offer this system currently and Starbucks will offer the service soon.

Google Transit, which uses data from over 500 global markets' transportation systems, is partnering up with Google Hotel Finder to make tourists' stays more time efficient. Google Hotel Finder added a new filter that shows consumers the maximum travel time from any point of interest to their hotel. It has placed a 20 minute default distance from point to point. Tourists can type a specific attraction, like Buckingham Palace, and it will show you hotels within 20 minutes of it. Google also allows you to choose the transit time; the smaller the time the smaller number of hotels within the range. Moreover, Google Hotel Finder can also search for hotels in selected areas for popular city locations. Prior to this, Google had Google Calendar, which allowed business consumers to choose hotels based on travel distance to their business meetings. Overall, Google's Hotel Finder targets both the leisure and business consumers. As a consumer searching for hotels in unfamiliar areas, this feature would be really beneficial because it allows me to plan my stay more accordingly. Usually, consumers choose a hotel based on travel time from the main points of interests, whether they are attractions or business meetings. Google Hotel Finder will now share this information with consumers before they actually even choose a hotel. I have a strong inclination that this type of consumer technology will drive hotels to use travel times as advertising tools when they use Google as an advertising medium.

This article discusses the new web site Roomkey.com, which is currently in beta mode. The site which was created by Hilton, Marriott, Choice Hotels, Hyatt Hotels, InterContinental, and Wyndham Aims to cut out third party online travel sites like Travelocity, and Expedia. Room key allows users to search for hotels by the city name, ZIP code, address and airport code, which then allows the user to filter search results by price, star rating, distance, and hotel name. Once the user finds a hotel, they can click on it to see photos, amenities and even a map, and if the user wants to book the hotel it takes them directly to the hotels website to book a room.

"Groupon has evolved quite bit since we launched three years ago. We started off with a single 'deal of the day' in each city, and today we often offer dozens of deals in numerous cities, across many categories (travel, goods, etc.). We think of it more as a curated deal marketplace then a daily deal site now." With all the deals being presented to the American public on a daily basis, it is interesting to see how many people are employed by Groupon outside the US. While outsourcing may seem like a good idea for businesses since people don't need to be paid as much, this is ruining the job market within. The founder of Groupon, however, is very smart, considering his age. I like to call Groupon "Food Stamps for the middle class", and Andrew Mason really hit the nail on the head.

The definition of connectivity can simply perceive as connecting two system together--a distribution system and a hotel reservation system. But anybody who have experience of connectivity will tell you it is not as simple as connection. It is much more complicated.With push and pull system, both of them have advantages and disadvantages. So as a distributor who have to consider how to obtain ARI which refers to availability, rate, inventory for their customers. The complexities with connectivity and a great amount thought and careful planning incurred by ARI system create a environment of opportunity of third-parties.

This article discusses the importance of having wifi available in hotels. Based on a survey completed by hotels.com, a prominent site for booking travel accomodations, travelers highly base their hotel decision on whether wifi is available and if its free to guests. The internet is an important part of traveling, whether it's used for business, researching local attractions or connecting with family and friends. I agree that wifi should be offered for free to hotel guests, perhaps provide a passcode for it to be used; however, from a manager's point of view, I understand why they charge. Guests will pay whatever it takes to get connected which in turn results in revenue for the hotel.

Touristlink is new online network that has been created as a means to connect tourists with other tourists as well as experts in the travel and tourism field. This type of network allows users to access the entire website by connecting them with travel agents, hoteliers, tour guides and many other people from all over the world. I personally believe that the Touristlink network facilitates planning a vacation because it centralizes all of the travelers questions and concerns to one particular location. It also puts the traveler in contact with the right people for planning a vacation.

In the late eighteen-century, customers use postal service to reserve lodging. After that telegraph became effective way to book and reserve. Until 1940s, airlines build a relationship with travel agents and their hotels, an original network was formed. In the end of the 1970s, the airlines provide electronic system for travel agencies to checking availability and reserving airline seats which we called GDS. It offers efficient and costless booking channel. On the other hand, the hotel suffer three commission costs for a single booking which are travel agent, switching company and GDS proprietor. In 1994, Hyatt developed internet distribution system (IDS) which reduce some costs but add intermediary cost. In the last century, the OTAs became a new channel. Customers booking is variables and each channel have its own attendant costs. The hotel should flexible when dealing with the rate, meanwhile carefully monitored the cost of each channel. Therefore the automated channel management system become a trend. Softeware systems now can analyze real-time market data and adjust rate across all the channels 24 hours a day.

REPORT FROM THE U.S.-To say that social media sites such as Facebook are top of mind for hotel marketers might be an understatement. But during the first half of 2011, many companies began realizing real dollars by incorporating booking engines on their Facebook fan pages as a way to convert engaged customers. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Hilton Worldwide and Choice Hotels International , all of them are incorporating booking engines on their Facebook pages, and often with favorable results.

"TravelCLICK, Inc. the leading provider of emarketing solutions for the hotel industry. This results are from a three year old survey that demonstrates travel agents continue to increase their reliance on Global Distribution Systems (GDS) promotions for hotel bookings. Conducted for TravelCLICK by Phoenix Marketing International, the online, biannual survey included 500 travel agents from 30 countries, representing the four major GDS systems-Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre, and Worldspan. The study finds that 41 percent of travel agents worldwide are using their GDS platform more often than in the past, while 30 percent are using the GDS shopping displays more often. When asked about their awareness of GDS promotional messages, 55 percent of travel agents recalled seeing promotional messages in the past three months. Of this group, 52 percent made a booking at a hotel shown in the promotional message they saw, while 68 percent requested more information by looking at the click-through screen attached to the promotional message, and more than 70 percent looked inside the GDS systems for more information. "

Nowadays, M-commerce and mobile marketing provide great opportunities in the hospitality industry. Hotels can utilize mobile commerce to hold reservations, promote hotel events, and also can increase general awareness of their rates and services. Currently, mobile technology continues to expand throughout Africa. A large amount of people use smart phones and 2G phones of low cost that allow consumers to surf online. Therefore, an increasing amount of people in Africa are using mobile technology to book reservations and make transactions. Some hotel brands aim to control this market and increase profit. For example, France base hotel group Accor has yet to enter the mobile competition in Africa and start to make a difference. Actually, there are lots of advantages to promote mobile as a channel. On the one hand, it brings lots of convenience to the customer to access all the hotel information and make a reservation wherever and whenever they are. On the other hand, it brings benefit to hoteliers too. The mobile booking process in fact saves online travel agency commissions. Guests can directly book from the hotel instead of from a third party. It can help hotels gain more profit, reduce cost and allow for easy access to hotel reservation website.

This article emphasizes the shift in marketing from a "one-way marketing model" to a "two-way dialogue." This shift to digital marketing is also effective in providing marketers with much insight about their target markets that was not as readily available in the past. This article also discusses the importance of return on investment (ROI) when selecting an advertising campaign.