Outlook 2001: The power of IT
Information is potentially one of the most valuable resources available to the business world. As HTA looks ahead at advancing technology for 2001, it is apparent that the hospitality industry is seizing upon technology efforts that will harness this resource and transform it into translatable and actionable business tools.
The technology advancement that will bring information to the fingertips of hospitality professionals is increasing broadband and moving information quickly and effectively across networks. Broadband, or high-speed connectivity, can be used to connect two points or more points directly or via the Web, such as a corporate office to a hotel/hotels. The connection is made via DSLs, cable modems or wireless connections, and certain wireless technologies can reach speeds of up to 100 megabytes per second.
Increased broadband will help hotels realize a variety of different benefits by centralizing hotel information and resources in one place. One of the benefits of pooling information across departments or across locations is that hotels will be able to produce reports that truly reflect the organization's state of business. Says Gary McCallum, manager of hospitality services for CynterCon Technology Advisors, "You will be able to send data to a corporate location, and the corporate office will actually be able to go into your system and run a report. If they wanted a 90-day report out of a PMS, they could actually go into that hotel through a link with PC Anywhere or a similar product and run the report."
In addition, increased broadband will allow organizations to centralize support, offering opportunities for smoother upgrades, Webbased training and more. "You can do centralized support from the corporate office," says McCallum, "and do everything from rate changes to building new rooms. You don't have to have an expert on site to be able to do those kinds of things."
Once all of the organization's information has been connected, it will become possible to harness that information with software and manipulate it into a variety of different reports, allowing all levels of management to access and analyze highly actionable information.
One group of products with huge potential in the upcoming year is guest information software. By pooling customer information, hotels widen their knowledge of their customer base and open a myriad of marketing and guest satisfaction opportunities.
Another application that is predicted to experience a resurgence this year is Executive Information Systems (EIS) software. EISs take information from major systems within the organization and distribute it in a customized fashion to different functional points within an organization. Regional managers get information pertinent to their region, sales and catering managers get information pertinent to there arena, and so on.
Says Mark Hamilton, director of the Technology Research and Education Center at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management at the University of Houston, "Executive information systems consolidate data from a cross-functional perspective, so you're not looking at silos of information. They allow you to provide interactivity between data and between department functions, so you can plot different factors against each other which you normally wouldn't be able to, such as sales and catering and call accounting." In addition, Hamilton states that the systems allow a holistic approach to revenue management and help pin-point incremental revenue associated with particular clientele.
Rick Stanfield, owner of Stanfield Hospitality Consultants L.L.C., says that another technology which may come to the fore this year is the second-day ASP model of processing information. The second-day ASP model is one in which a hotel sends information to a third party via an Internet connection for overnight processing. Once the information has been translated into something useable by the hotel, it is sent back over the broadband connection to the appropriate person for action.
Stanfield cited a phone-based comment card as an example of the technology. Through the system, guests are able to make complaints or compliments through the phone system. Guest comments are sent automatically to a third party for processing, and are then delivered back the next day to the individual most capable of responding to the guest. "What's happening today is that a lot of products and programs do not require real-time data management," says Stanfield. For these, second day ASPs will become increasingly favored this year.
HTA
Copyright © 2001 Cynterpubs
ISSN 1520-975X
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