Technology In The Hospitality Industry

The hospitality and leisure industry hug a variety of sectors and businesses across hotels, restaurants and restaurants, travel and tourism, gaming, sport and leisure. The sector is reliant on the consumer confidence and business sentiment and is facing rising pressure to deliver innovation, value and quality. Hospitality is that business that helps people to feel welcome, relaxed and to enjoy themselves. It is all about customer service and providing the best quality and experience possible for the customers. (Discover Hospitality, 2012)

Marriott is renowned for its elegant and comfortable hotels and resorts. The company caters to a targeted customer base, ranging from the frequent corporate business traveler to the family enjoying their occasional weekend get-away. Marriott has continued its rise in the lodging, contract services, and restaurant industries. The company continuously strives to meet the needs and wants of its customers while strategically maneuvering the rigors of today’s competitive and ever-evolving market of glamorous destinations and convenient services. In order to remain relevant in a highly-competitive environment, Marriott must strike that successful balance of minimizing costs, and gaining and effectively

There are a number of support functions used by large hospitality businesses with the aim to support and improve the overall efficiency of a business. The four support functions I will be looking at are finance, customer services, marketing and human resources.

Homestyle Hotels Inc is a result of merger of Lifestyle Resorts and Home Away Hotels. Each individual hotel operates in silos with no standardized process to capture client information. Initially, Ben Garrett (the IT director)’s mandate was to ‘consolidate the firm’s IT’, however with the said objective having been achieved, the higher management now wanted a more cohesive picture to enable better analysis and present a consistent picture to the outside world. The roadblocks to the integration are one too many- two different hotels, two different ways of working, vast geographical expanse. The question now was, of the two vendors who had come to present their software applications, which application would most suit the

The Hotel Monaco recognizes that 65 percent of their clients are business travelers and therefore accommodate this clientele’s stay with the appropriate amenities. They do this by providing three meeting rooms, each guest room has a two-line phone and a fax machine, they provide business services at the front desk, and have full audio/visual department. Where they go above and beyond is being the Hotel Monaco is of a boutique design with 192 rooms priced in a four-star range they provide the same quality and services of a luxury hotel but in an atmosphere of staying at a friend’s home. These adaptations in their operational organization to better suit the needs of customers within varying regions of operations have effectively proven to be profitable.

Innovations in technology can force a business to change just to keep up. Employees who have never used computers need to be trained to operate the new computer system. A business also can benefit by implementing a technological change. According to the Hotel Online website, the airlines

Homework: Homework will be assigned randomly. Late submission will result in a deduction of points.

3.1 For each hotel, what is the role of technology and the role of operations

Managers who doubt this financial IT investment should ask themselves if they can afford loosing a customer on the grounds of not satisfying his needs. Since the rare resource of a company is its capabilities that create value with the technology, while actively implementing the CRM technology, on top of all the current capabilities and expertise already employed by Wyndham, it would be beneficial to add additional supporting business processes such as Newsletters, that can be published weekly or monthly, making sure not to bore the reader with regular issues of nonsense, but highlight the special program services and the company’s new moves in the field, Regular follow up calls to identify with the customers and find out how they are doing and regular market/satisfaction surveys that can be sent by e-mail, post online and most important, reviewed regularly by the company. An online guest feedback system can be implemented to help track customer service levels. Believing that taking care of the hotel’s employees will result in them taking care of the guests, a natural extension would be to implement an online employee opinion system as well, where employees can complete an online survey to measure their satisfaction and provide an immediate feedback. A key driver of guest satisfaction is how well employees handle issues that arise during a guest`s stay. It

Hilton Hotels, one of the biggest worldwide corporations in the hospitality industry, adopted a Customer Really Matter (CRM) strategy to manage its diverse segments of hotels and to improve customer experience. The cornerstone of the CRM, the custom-built OnQ information system, built profiles of the guests, which could be used by the front desk employees and the reservations center to better serve the customers. The OnQ system did improved efficiency of call center operations, but the way of using it also reduced the flexibility of the customer service in the hotels. It could benefit or harm the service-profit chain depending on the specific situation. A few recommendations were made at the end of the case study to improve the system. In general, Hilton should implement big data analytics and give more control to the customers.

The most important thing to having a successful business is to have the most up to date information. If you have all the information at your fingertips it can help you to make the best possible decisions. What kind of information is available and how do we sort through it and use this information? In the hospitality industry the amount of information received everyday is overwhelming, and it isn’t possible for staff to be able to sort through it and organize it properly. In the hospitality industry the information technologies are the tools that the staff uses to sort and manage the information and the balanced score card is just one

There are numerous strategies hotels use to maximize capacity to increase profits all while keeping costs at a minimum. These strategies include price discrimination, overbooking, inventory control, and duration control. While companies such as the hotel chain, Ayres, may never achieve consistent full utilization, implementing such tactics as these aforementioned lets the Ayres achieve higher utilization rates that directly affect profit margins in the long run. Some tactics are highlighted more than others yet they all equally play a significant role in a hotels day to day front and back end operations. Hotels need to successfully implement all of these strategies and ones that are not mentioned to be a thriving profitable business. As electronic systems accompanying these strategies get more sophisticated as years pass, big hotel chains see larger profit margins and increased customer satisfaction.

It consumes a lot of time and sweat of the restaurateurs to ensure their presence but fortunately, technology can help with all quite elegantly. Mobile Point of Sale (mPOS) is an affordable technology in the restaurant industry is famous for its role speeding up operations, ensuring more personalized service, and streamlining the dining experience. Even more and more operational tasks are now being handled with the technology tools. But most importantly, these tools are assisting restaurants in managing the vast amounts of data collected by them on a daily basis and utilizing this information to track trends and project future moves thus ensuring more better and informed business decisions taking place.

The Hilton Hotel Corporation has universally established themselves as a principle hospitality brand. They have acquired this notable reputation in the lodging industry through various innovative expenditures, partnerships, and customer engagement practices. The Hilton Hotel takes pride in catering towards the needs of their guests, along with satisfying the demands of their employees. Their industrious nature has lead them to the development of a meticulous enterprise system known as OnQ, whose sole purpose is to deliver satisfactory customer service. For example, OnQ helps the office staff print high quality arrival reports, which aids in quick and efficient check in’s for the accommodated guests. This highly integrated technology serves as a key component in the hotel’s tactical expansion strategy. Next, the acquisition of Promus Hotel Corporation paved the way for the diversification of the Hilton name to reach global sectors of the hospitality industry. In 2005, the Hilton was set to establish a groundbreaking conquest of securing 3,000 properties in 78 different countries. Furthermore, the hotel’s rewards programs provide incentives for customer interactions. The benefits of attaining a Gold or Diamond level honors member

When opening a new restaurant it is important to consider technology options that will offer competitive advantage, enhance profit, and work efficiently for the establishment. Three systems that are generally purchased for restaurant use are inventory systems, point of sales systems, and reservation management systems. All of these systems should be researched and compared on their functionality so the most suitable technologies can be implemented into the daily activities of the restaurant.