Hotel Industry Problems

TECHNOLOGY

Despite a growing awareness of the value of modern, integrated systems, many properties still do not take advantage of them as fully as they might to maximize revenue opportunities.  Many also fail to support and secure them to the extent appropriate to the value of their data and to the legal consequences of that data becoming stolen or corrupted.  A significant factor restricting wider adoption is the challenge of improving the systems’ ease of use as they continue to grow in functionality, in both operational and guest-facing areas.  All of these issues support a trend to outsourcing the more complex operational functions and system security to expert, central staff, either corporate or third party.

The major factors involved are:

* the complexity of the hotel environment, which historically has required many different systems to interact with each other, 

* a lack of awareness of how much efficiency could be improved through the use of modern integrated systems, 

* a historic preference for investing funds in FF&E rather than in the systems themselves or in regular training for their users, and 

* the difficulty of providing comprehensive, expert technical support at the individual property level for the multiple systems used there. 

Hospitality management systems have evolved into sophisticated, well integrated, multi-discipline tools capable of helping properties of all types and sizes attract more guests, generate more revenue and reach much-improved levels of efficiency.  Years of development in expanding the capabilities of individual systems, together with improvements in both interface technology and vendor cooperation, have produced far more comprehensive and better-integrated systems that can now cover virtually all areas of even a complex resort property or a multi-property chain.  This brings obvious benefits from having more complete and accurate data, both operationally and in regard to guests’ profile and history...