Hospitality Technology

This new study details the transformation of technology and the ever changing social values of the next generation of travelers. In this article it summarizes the next generation of experience, automatic transit, payment with memory, intellegient recommendation, among others. I agree with the article as travelers are already savy when it comes to searching for hotel and flights, now they will want the entire experience to become less stressful and more seamless. When this article refers to the study that explains using mobile devices and biometric technology to facilitate faster check in process, it details by country that is more comfortable using this technology. Intelligent recommendation is already being used for locals, and it will be more accessible to tourists to toughly enjoy the city's true offering. As the demographics of travelers change so will their desire for what is a pleasurable experience.

One of the biggest complains received from travelers or hotel guests in New York is paying for Wi-Fi and not being able to get cellular data service. While wired and wireless service was available, the lack of cell phone signal for downloads and data service caused travelers to become frustrated. To help out, the Mandarin Oriental, New York decided to deploy a converged IP network and install the Ruckus Wi-Fi wall switches in every room to help with cellular and wireless capacity and coverage. Since installing the Ruckus Smart Wi-Fi system, Mandarin Oriental, New York has seen user capacity more than triple and wireless traffic eclipse traffic on the wired network, while customer wireless complaints have dropped by more than 85%.(But the benefit isn't just for the guests. According to the hotel, the new wall-switch Wi-Fi "dramatically reduces the cost and complexity of installing and managing wired and wireless network services."

This is awesome, especially in New York where the wi-fi traffic is crazy busy all the time. It is true that most guests do complain about having to pay for the wi-fi. I work at a hotel and that is one of the most complaints that I get. Even though in the article they say that the guests still have to pay for the wifi, it does allow the guest to have the confidence that they will receive a strong signal and that the internet will work.

This article was divided into five parts to introduce the computer networks. The first part is why do we need computer networks. I guess there are a lot of reasons ,but the most important one is to share information from others,everyone can visit information which is provided by other users,also they can simply access the same server machine. The second part is types of computer networks. It can divided by three different types 1.LAN when a certain number of computers within an organization are connected with the use of data transfer cables, it is called Local Area Network. 2.WLAN the goal of LAN and WLAN is same ,that is connect computers with networks.But cables are not used for forming the network. 3.WAN it can connect computers all over the world. The third part is computer network connections 1.Bus network .It is the easiest setup technology which is also easier to make mistakes 2 Star network. It is also a common setup technology 3.Mesh network. This is one of the primitive ways of forming a computer network The fifth part is information transformation . Using this technology, the data is broken into small pieces called packets of data. Every packet of data, has a head and in some cases a tail. The head contains various information, like the destination address, the checking bits. The final part is the definition of protocol. The computer protocol is a set of rules ,information travel from one to another. These set of rules will define, when to send a packet of data, when an acknowledgment signal should be given.The most common protocol, that we must have heard and which is used over in the largest network

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!

Microsoft is releasing in October 2012 the new version of the most popular computer operating system Windows 8. This new feature is not only for laptops or desktops, it is mainly focusing on touch screen devices. Lenovo also unveiled their Lenovo Yoga hybrid. This computer allows you to tuck the keyboard flat behind the screen and transform the device into a tablet shape, it can rotate 360 degrees. Windows 8 allows you to put your favorite app such as Facebook or Twitter into the start screen, you can add more apps, customize them and it refreshes constantly so the information stays current.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is an advanced technology. It is the use of a wireless non-contact radio system to transfer data from a tag attached to an object, for the purposes of automatic identification and tracking. Tags do not need battery and they used radio waves to read them. The tag has electronically stored information, so it can use far distance. Unlike a bar code, the tag is not as same as bar code. Line of sight of the reader is not necessary. Radio frequency identification is used in different area. A lot of entertainment use tags as tickets. Some theme parks used tags for gaming, eating and lodging. I think in the future the hospitality industry really needs this technology. More and more new program join in hotel such as rock climbing, spa, casino and so on. These different programs need convenient tickets for guests. Because of this technology used in hotel, the ID card will not just for opening the door. It will include many functions. And the guests do not need any other card or cash in hotel.

This is an informative article on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. I found an article talks about RFID in cruise ship last week and got impressed with the advancement of technology in hospitality industry. Hopefully, we will see many hospitality properties equipped with RFID soon. This technology just reminds me of Korean style sauna called "Jjimjil bang" and many of the saunas in Korea are equipped with RFID. A wristband with a sensor inside is given to people when they chenk in and people just need to wear the wristband to pay in the sauna.

Ipads changing our life is absolute. In fact, if there is no ipad, something electronic products can also bring revolution in hotel Wi-Fi networks. To tell the truth, free hotel Wi-Fi is too slow.....last year, I had a internship in Holiday Inn Central Plaza Beijing. There had two kinds of Wi-Fi networks. Free network was cover the whole hotel but the speed was slow. The other that must be paid was faster. Some people had video session prefered the faster one. In addtion, hotels should upload their Wi-Fi networks. It can be an attraction of the hotels.

For a hotel the WiFi system is really important because guests prefer the hotel with WiFi system. The guests even willing to pay a small premium to stay at a WiFi equipped lodgings. As the rise of smart phones and ultra-lightweight laptops case the bandwidth problems. I think the hotel can deal with this problems by create various account levels for guests, stuff and visitors. The hotel can allow the visitors to use free WiFi and provide high level account to overnight guests.

I personally prefer to use WIFI in my own room when I visit a hotel because I have more privacy. Some hotels they may offer free/complimentary WIFI in the public area, for example, the lobby, the lounge, etc. At the same time, to limit the overuse of public WIFI, the WIFI in the guests' room are charged by different time period and the length of using the WIFI. It seems to be not fair to those business people who require internet all day long. However, it lowers the expense of the WIFI service and improves the guests' satisfaction of the internet service.

The basis of this article is to show the advanced and applications that proper networking can have on the hospitality industry. Cisco systems, a very well known networking company, along with hotel 1000 have begun taking leaps towards the future of the hospitality industry. Cisco's new Connected Hotel idea is being implemented at Hotel 1000 and consists of a system which stores client information and can also be customized to each guest. Other applications and features include group calling, improved voice quality, one touch valet service,  and many more. This article is just one look at how networking can help hotels to expand and grow into the coming age.

In this Article: "The Best Restaurant Marketing In the World" resiliently describes the marketing world and the amounts of money restaurants spend obsessively to bring in more customers. Instead of focusing on all the new technologies for new ways to advertise and spending thousands of dollars there are other things to consider such as bringing in more customers over the quality of the food, excellence in the service, cleanliness of the place, and having an agreeable unique dining experience. If all these requirements are not met that's when marketing comes in to place. There are many ways possible to improve your business such as changing or simplifying the menus, training the staff properly, making sure the restaurant is spotless, creating a nice ambiance and lastly making sure you have total commitment to all of these basic necessities. These requirements are essential when it comes to exceeding your customer expectations and important for your business in order to succeed. . With all of these categories fulfilled you will bring in a happier, lively and contented crowd; therefore, bringing in more regulars.

The Availpro organization is the hospitality industry leader in online distribution. Its mission is to provide hotel owners with the most effective online sales platform. Using the tagline, 'The World is your hotel Marketplace,' Availpro has helped thousands of hotels worldwide sell over ten million rooms by utilizing a highly developed extranet channel. Availpro's extranet channels provide two-way connectivity to over one hundred distribution websites. With a larger scope of distribution the hotels using Availpro increase their sales and become more efficient. In addition, Availpro's management of these extranet channels saves hotels valuable time. However the reason Availpro is the leader in online distribution is not just its booking capabilities but rather its recent developments that together provide their clients an online distribution extranet solution. The booking engines that made Availpro successful expanded to include mobile applications and social booking with Facebook. Availpro also introduced important decision-making tools such as the Smart Channel Manager, Rate Screener and Guest Satisfaction. I was curious about the 'Rate Screener' so I read Availpro's article "Availpro rate screener allows Hotel owners to sell their rooms at best rate," published on October 17th 2011 (http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news//4053349.html). This tool was developed with user input and tested in real life rate decision scenarios. The all-in-one solution allows managers to see their rates, inventory and competitor rates on a central distribution schedule. By analyzing their competition in real time managers are able to optimize their rates. Long gone are the days when managers used to call the local competition and pretend to be walk-in guests to find out fire sale rates. This most recent article, published on the third of January 2012, discusses Availpro's growing partnership with Premier Hotels of the World™. By incorporating Availpro's ex

This article is about how network works for the hotel. TravelClick is a leading provider that designs and produces websites for hotels. Each hotel can have its own unique hyper-local online storefront with information. The Red Lion Hotel is one of the cooperators with the TravelClick. TravelClick designed a special web and mobile platform for the hotel. The guests of the hotel can find the information such as where to have the best breakfast and where is the good place to go. The hotel will excite them to go out and enjoy and encounter. This can give the guests special experience and let them have much fun. The hotel aims to use this way to make a differentiation from other hotels. In my opinion, the competition of the hotels likes the battle, the hotel must differentiates itself from others and let the customers to remember it. The network can help the hotel a lot. It not only has the traditional function of making introduction and reservation, it also can be used for marketing. For instance, TravelClick will serve as Red Lion's agency of record in all matters impacting search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) and display marketing. The resulting online experience will fuse mobile, social media and interactive map technologies. Make a good use of network can help the hotel manage itself well and attract more guests.

This article is about how network works for the hotel. TravelClick is a leading provider that designs and produces websites for hotels. Each hotel can have its own unique hyper-local online storefront with information. The Red Lion Hotel is one of the cooperators with the TravelClick. TravelClick designed a special web and mobile platform for the hotel. The guests of the hotel can find the information such as where to have the best breakfast and where is the good place to go. The hotel will excite them to go out and enjoy and encounter. This can give the guests special experience and let them have much fun. The hotel aims to use this way to make a differentiation from other hotels. In my opinion, the competition of the hotels likes the battle, the hotel must differentiates itself from others and let the customers to remember it. The network can help the hotel a lot. It not only has the traditional function of making introduction and reservation, it also can be used for marketing. For instance, TravelClick will serve as Red Lion's agency of record in all matters impacting search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) and display marketing. The resulting online experience will fuse mobile, social media and interactive map technologies. Make a good use of network can help the hotel manage itself well and attract more guests.

I agree with you. Hotels need to differentiate themselves among competitiors in order to attract more business. This online experience made by TravelClick could work as a competitive advantage for some hotels that need to make their name known in new markets.

This article identified some factors that happening in the market which drives a trend for increased bookings through non-GDS hotels. Business travel buyers are increasingly looking at newer opportunities to cut travel costs. Business travel slowdown imminent, The Global Business Travel Association forecasts that the business travel growth is expected to slow in 2012. And business-travel growth will outpace anticipated GDP growth, despite uncertainties in the economy. Rate negotiation process is getting increasingly tougher With a declining market demand, hotels try hard to remain profitable, and have toughened the rate negotiations with buyers. Many are exploring alternative strategies to generate savings from their hotel programs. Some buyers are considering alternative negotiating strategies to derive savings. Due to the demand for wider range of rates to aid policy compliance, corporates are looking for a better value proposition in using hotel aggregators. Hotel aggregation offers key value proposition The latest versions of HotelHub indicate that hotel aggregation offers a major advantage in corporate hotel reservation process. GDS firms and non-GDS are realizing the gap, and aggregation makes Travel Managers save lot of time and cost in servicing booking requests. This article identified some factors that happening in the market which drives a trend for increased bookings through non-GDS hotels. Business travel buyers are increasingly looking at newer opportunities to cut travel costs. Business travel slowdown imminent, The Global Business Travel Association forecasts that the business travel growth is expected to slow in 2012. And business-travel growth will outpace anticipated GDP growth, despite uncertainties in the economy. Rate negotiation process is getting increasingly tougher With a declining market demand, hotels try hard to remain profitable, and have toughened the rate negotiations with buyers. Many are exploring alternative strategies to gener

The agency "Tourism Fiji" will be implementing a new global brand and accompanying communications style, which would take place in each of the Tourism Fiji's international and local markets. This decision was based in accordance of the destination marketing audit of 2011. "A key outcome of that analysis was that taking a global approach to brand communications would create a range of new opportunities and help to ensure Tourism Fiji a maximum return on its marketing investments." The Tourism Fiji agency have received great ideas and proposals of agencies that are very interested in working with them because it will give them an opportunity to make their name known in the industry. These agencies are required to make a full pitch encompassing a full creative and strategic proposal. Michael Meade, acting chief executive officer of Tourism Fiji, claims "the association had already had strong levels of interest from the industry, despite only announcing the pitch on 24 January." Thanks to its communication campaigns, marketing strategies and networking, Tourism Fiji will attract great interest in new markets which will bring a lot of businesses to the agency.

I thought this may be nice to share with everyone, even though we have known this for a while.

One of the major issue of cloud computing is encryption, which is the process of transforming information to make it unreadable to others users.  Encryption arises as a problem in cloud computing because not all the companies that are providing the service of cloud computing but not the encryption services which is very important for the safety on the data of the customers. When choosing to use cloud computing, it is important to find out al the services that the cloud offers because without the encryption services, the security of the data also decreased said Subra Kumaraswamy a senior security manager at Sun Microsystems INC.   Another issue when it comes to cloud computing is authorization because not all providers can control who can access their data, which make the data vulnerable to hackers.  In my opinion before someone decide to use the cloud computing it is important that the customers make researchers about the feature  and services that the cloud is using to make sure that is the best option for the company 

The CEO of the award-winning Sandals Resorts International gave top marks to LIME, the Caribbean division of Cable & Wireless Communications. He remarks the importance of having the best in communication services in the hospitality industry. The executive Vice President of the Bahamas Hotel Association also welcomed the hotel industry improvements in telecommunications.

This article introduced the computer network system such as LANs, WANs, and the differents of administrators or engineer`s responsibilitis for designing, maintaining and evaluating this system. For example, network and computer systems administrators may also research related products and make necessary hardware and software recommendations, maintain the system as well as address information security issues. And the Database administrators work with database management software and determine ways to store, organize, analyze, use, and present data. They identify user needs and set up new computer databases. And computer security specialists plan, coordinate, and maintain an organization's information security. A safe computer network system needs these important people to develop in spote of what kinds of organization network and database system.

The  first part of the article talks about how the cloud is being used in restaurants to monitor all transactions. Aloha POS systems has a add on that takes all the transactions to the cloud in 10 minutes intervals, after that they analyse the date to see if a employee has been doing to many voids or gets to much tips, they do this via algorithms in the cloud. Just another way that the cloud makes the life of a restaurant owner that much simpler. 

This article is starting from an agreement made between Travelclick which is a leading provider of profitable revenue generating solutions for hoteliers and Castle Resorts & Hotels on GDS connectivity and IDS distribution. The Castle Resorts will use Travelclick's central reservation system (CRS) to distribute inventory to thousands of travel agents on the Global Distribution System (GDS). Because of the alliance between the two organizations, Castle Resorts has become the largest iHotelier customer in Hawaii. The president of Castle Resorts believes that Teavelclick's GDS connectivity solutions will help them achieve a higher level of performance and allow them to connect with travel agents instantaneously and seamlessly to further potential guests. From this article, I fully realize how important the GDS system is and what it could do for hospitality industry. It is just like providing a closer link between hotels and potential guests by connecting with travel agents.