Hospitality Technology

This article explains how the restaurant business has adapted new technologies to overcome changes that came after COVID-19. The usage of these technologies allow the restaurants to minimize the contact points during the experience while also giving the option to the patrons to customize their experience as they want. It also talks about how technology is not a replacement for server or bartenders because the human contact is still part of the hospitality business

The relationship with OTAs should be about finding the right balance (or mix of business) for your specific hotel. A commonly held point of view is that OTA commissions are exorbitant (in dollars, or as a % of revenue), but shouldn't we be glad if they sold a room we were not going to sell otherwise?

The major hotel chains are influencing legislation and also now requiring employee safety devices (ESDs) to make the workplace safer for employees (i.e. room service attendants or housekeepers) who find themselves alone in guest rooms with ill-intentioned guests. ESDs can also be appropriate for large resorts with beach personnel, activities personnel, or other positions that find themselves in enclosed, or remote areas with less security. Not every hotel has a security department that can constantly monitor cameras and ESDs. Will these devices present more strain on hotel wireless networks? That depends. Hoteliers need to consider whether these devices will be provided by or monitored through their keylock vendor, through their guest room entertainment vendor, or through a wireless provider. Could there be a benefit to an ESD interface with the PMS? I'm not finding an obvious answer. Hotels, varying in room count, are providing ESDs that range from whistles to wireless to BLE or RFID enabled. Hotel owners and management companies have the responsibility to research the most appropriate solution for their hotel without undermining the safety and privacy of their employees and their hotel networks.

The origins of SABRE in the industry

As the need for a one-stop-shopping experience increase does the demand from the lodging industry for a system that can simplify the process for marketing, reservations, check in, check out and just follow up. The Property Management System (PMS) is designed to do just that, simply the management, administration, reservation and booking. This article speaks about a cloud-based system called Cloudbeds that provides, among other things, Property Management Software for the lodging industry.This PMS is advertised as a way to simplify the reservation process as well as maintaining correct room inventory, rates and availability, housekeeping room status, and ease of retaining guest preferences. The PMS system also sends real-time availability to all online channels. Cloudbeds promise is to "Reduce errors and save time by automatically updating room inventory across all distribution channels with a click". According their website, "Cloudbeds PMS helps you deliver an exceptional guest experience while avoiding costly errors by automating repetitive, manual tasks." The PMS offers: -A Calendar - Reservations tool for direct bookings - Rates and availability Matrix - Reports

I found this article about cloud computing and the hospitality industry on the website eHotelier. The article focuses on the hospitality industry's unique relationship with technology. Technology has helped the hospitality industry grow throughout the years. With technology, the hospitality industry can offer better services to its customers, and technology also helps develop the tourism industry. The hospitality industry has included technology innovation as it continues evolving with better technology. For example, hotels can now handle information on internal servers and record customer visits through bookings and in-house data systems. Nowadays, hotels are now using cloud computing because it is inexpensive, provides an accessible service, offers faster service and stronger security, and reduces service and cost because it can be flexible when it comes to business demands. Cloud computing in the hospitality industry is very helpful because the services are faster and more efficient. It decreases wait times, which is valuable for offering customer services and customer satisfaction. Customers can have a more personalized service upon arrival or when checking out. The hotel staff also be aware of guests' room preferences, food, activities, and everything the guest likes before arriving on the premises. Hotels can also partner with travel agencies through the cloud because it offers the opportunity to share applications of data-sharing services. In addition, the cloud also has the benefit of reducing workforce and administration tasks.

The airline sector will continue to rely on automation to deliver service to travellers. Critical challenges will be focused around passenger experience, forecasting, privacy, and data security. One of the main areas for opportunity is enhancing the checkin experience. Cloud computing and technology in general will be at the forefront of the industry's development, and will allow for improved cost efficiency, more streamline operations, scalability, passenger and crew safety, as well as continued industry transformation.

Software as a Service is becoming an essential part of the healthcare community. The time saved researching information about a patient, searching for medications or treatments could be valuable time needed for saving a life. It is project that "the number of businesses using cloud-based apps is expected to increase by 19.6%." With the increase in the use of cloud-based applications, there is a stronger need for the attention given to data security. Especially when it comes to patient information. Multiple cloud based options may initially be utilized before phasing into singular sources over time. This will alleviate some of the pressure needing to have the increased security for two platform rather than one.

This article explains the hardware (i.e. failover routers, dual-WAN routers) that are the key to internet redundancy when large business can not afford to have an outage. As businesses rely more and more on cloud-based computing, it is becoming more and more costly to have an internet outage. While the article might sell a good story, I don't feel like things are quite as good as advertised when trying to apply this in a hotel setting where oftentimes franchisor IT requirements only allow one static IP address and these routers require multiple IP addresses. I've personally experienced failures in the "last mile" of infrastructure (i.e. construction cuts a line or gophers chew fiberoptic cable) that even if the hotel has a failover router with multiple ISPs, the hotel would have experienced a complete outage due to the fact that both carriers were physically sharing the last mile. Maybe wireless network failover routers have more of a chance to thwart gophers and construction equipment? Conduct proper research to make sure your franchisor could accommodate a failover router.

This article describes the various cloud computing trends in travel and tourism and how they could be beneficial for all travel companies to adopt. It further goes into detail on how cloud computing is becoming utilized by approximately 81% of the travel & tourism companies and how it creates a positive impact on the industry. It mentions the advantages that cloud computing brings to the table like a personalized experience for users as it facilitates data synchronization between channels, is more reliable than holding one singular framework so it lessens the security risks, is being more widely utilized on a global scale, provides scalability and flexibility throughout the peak season and low seasons, saves the company potential expenses that would have otherwise been spent on other infrastructures, software, systems, etc., and benefits tourism on a socio-economic degree which helps fight environmental degradation.

" It is a reasonable argument that the only reason millions of workers have been able to successfully work remotely over the past year is because cloud computing has reached a level of maturity that now makes working without the cloud unthinkable. Microsoft 365 is arguably the most widely used. Cloud computing is no longer a choice, but rather the default position of any organization that wants to remain competitive. The number of ShareGate desktop users performing on-premises SharePoint upgrades decreased by 19.7 percent in 2020. On-premises operations decreased by 60.63 percent. Operations to migrate from on-premises to the cloud increased by 37.2 percent. Cloud-based operations jumped by 50.1 percent. Cloud-to-cloud migrations increased by 67.9 percent and included the transfer of 144 percent more terabytes of data in 2020 versus 2019. Microsoft also made significant investments in industry specific certifications in financial services, energy, health and manufacturing to meet the stringent requirements of these heavily regulated environments, making it an even more attractive option for enterprise clients. He pointed out that companies that need extreme low-latency transactions, have geographical proximity restrictions or highly secure data handling needs should consider traditional methods as well as the cloud While security is improving, some old and new attack vectors remain for cloud-based applications. That threat landscape will continue to grow as the market for cloud and SaaS networks and platforms expands and bad actors follow the money. The cloud service providers are asking businesses to trade off convenience for control. That will never happen. Further, there is only one cross-cloud provider standard, K8. The other area in need of standardization is security notification. Every cloud provider reports security events to customers separately, with different languages and syntax. Cloud consumption is linear but cloud security notification is exponential.

This article talks about a situation the Radisson Hotels had on 2018, they confirmed a data of breach that exposed personal details of small percentage of members rewards. It was first reported by a Business Traveller after receving an email that his details has been compromised. Radisson took incident and did an extensive investigation to prevent future breach of data happening to their customer.

Technology as with anything has the pros and cons. Whatever we put on the world wide web is at risk to be hacked, this is the harsh truth. By simply purchasing online or self check out, we are vulnerable. The sad thing is that hotels worldwide has the traffic of visitors and stores a wealth of information, a field day for hackers. As technology increases so is the need to employ cyber security and perhaps inventing high tech robots to guard information should be coming more to the forefront. Daily there are people developing codes to break in.

This article emphasizes the different methods and approaches cruise ships are taking to become more sustainable in the future. They are doing so by pursuing innovations like renewable resources, regenerative travel, providing energy solutions, and more. They are seeking to reduce carbon emissions by 40% by 2030. One of the methods described in the article is that cruise ships are now integrating liquified natural gas (LNG) fueled ships which produce zero sulfur emissions and reduce greenhouse gases by 20% when compared to regular ship fuel. Cruise lines have already started to introduce this kind of innovation to newer ships. Ports are also taking initiatives to become greener by having solar-powered terminals, smart waste separation, electric transportation, etc. Cruise lines are also working with organizations like the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) to make sure that culture, environment, and destination laws are enforced and protected.

The metaverse became more relevant to the travel industry during covid. This is a great way to discover new places, and can transform tourism marketing. Interactive virtual worlds can create excitement for a destination or attraction, and build interest for actual travel later on. Changes in consumer behavior must also be considered, as the culture of the new generation of travelers is currently being cultivated.

The Metaverse and what it means for the hotel industry. It is shifting the way hotels and events reach consumers. It is a new way in providing a different experience for customers in a way they could ever imagine. This article highlights this trend of the metaverse which is picking up and changing the way industries engage with consumers.Many companies are moving quickly to join the community of companies entering into the realm of the metaverse and what its impact has on costumer experience. The metaverse will drive workforce down and increase experience marketing tech touch for the consumer.

China is going to be selling a lot fewer alarm clocks to Marriott as travelers rely more and more on their mobile devices. Since this article was published in July 2021, Marriott has since made it official that alarm clocks are no longer required in guest rooms. The mobile phone has made the alarm clock requirement obsolete. The majority of travelers view this as a positive change as travelers complain about the cleanliness of the alarm clock, being awakened by the previous guest's set alarm that hotel staff does not cancel, needing space on the nightstand for their own mobile devices, and the glare of backlit numerals interfering with their sleep at night. Owners appreciate the cost savings, yet their hotels may experience an influx of wake-up call requests in the absence of the alarm clock; however, most phone systems allow guests to set their own wake-up call through the telephone without operator assistance.

This article is based on how we can improved e-wastes on doing little changes that will benefit on our future. Most of the e-waste is not recycle properly, we buy things after things and more after more, every time a new technology comes up there is the motivation on buying what is the lasted cool technology, and what about what we have , where does it go ? to the trash or recycle, but we do not know where that recycling goes, I believe learning more about it will help on our routine of how to recycle better and help with this process to proceed right.

We quickly move to 'next' as far as technology goes and rarely think about how to get rid of it when obsolete. In the Caribbean for example, there are not may recycling plants for e-waste, in fact, many rarely do recycling on a whole. In the Turks and Caicos, disposing of a television or a phone is as simple as throwing it in the trash among everything else. What happens next? It goes into the landfills and there they lie. Imagine the toxic waste from over 40,000 inhabitants on a small island. While moving with the crowd seems to be the way of the world, I believe government entities must act swiftly in ensuring e-waste is disposed of correctly to preserve this island and its inhabitants for generations to come. The technology should not outpace the disposal thereof.

This article speaks about the CTO and Airbnb joining forces to embrace the growing demand for Digital Nomads to work and travel, with the "Work from the Caribbean" campaign, a possible win for all involved. With Airbnb, it is a solution to embrace the flexibility of its clientele and the CTO, an opportunity to increase revenue in the Caribbean destination, diversifying the way they do business while offering the sun, sand, and sea. This disruptive innovation will undoubtedly change immigration policies in accepting longer than previously allowed visitor stays and could see reduced nightly rates and discounts. The flexibility of working remotely is an opportunity to increase the 'tourism dollar' in off-peak months, additionally bringing possible investment in real estate for the Caribbean. With the application of research through technology, both entities can devise innovative ways to market to this ever-changing industry.