ICT brings the hotel experience to a whole new level by
· Integrating the hotel operation
· Reshaping the marketing function
· Improving total efficiency
· Providing tools for marketing research and partnership building
· Enhancing customer services while providing strategic opportunities.
Consumers increasingly expect ICT-enabled communications and interactions before, during, and after their visit. Thus, hotels will be unable to perform their operations profitably without using technology extensively.
Managing internal operations
Hotels need ICTs to manage their inventory. Hotel chains use group-wide systems to focus on the management for single properties as well as the distribution through a variety of electronic distribution channels.
Property Management System (PMS)
Most hotel properties around the world operate a property management system (PMS) that enables them to integrate their ‘back-office’ operations. As a result they can improve general administration, as well as specific functions such as accounting; marketing research and planning; yield management; payroll; personnel management; and purchasing.
These functions move on Intranet platforms, improving interfaces and allowing easier employee training.
Computer Reservation System (CRS)
The front office, sales, planning, and operation functions were facilitated by employing a computer reservation system (CRS) to administrate a database with all reservations, rates, occupancy, and cancellations.
PMSs and CRSs facilitate the following business functions:
· Improve capacity management and operations efficiency
· Facilitate central room inventory control
· Provide last room availability information
· Offer yield management capability
· Provide better database access for management purposes
· Support extensive marketing, sales, and operational reports
· Facilitate marketing research and planning
· Enable travel agency tracking and commission payment
· Enable tracking of frequent flyers and repeat hotel guests
· Allow direct marketing and personalized service for repeat hotel guests
· Enhance handling of group bookings and frequent individual travelers (FITs).
The proliferation of the Internet supported the development of a number of additional electronic distribution options. These include:
· Direct bookings to the hotel
· Hotel chains’ own reservation central offices
· Independent reservation agents
· Hotel representation and consortium groups
· Airline CRSs and GDSs
· Transaction Brokers (such as Hotels.com)
· Destination management systems.
Yield Management and Guest History
Hotels deliver “first-class” service to their guests best using two integral components,
namely yield management and guest history. Yield management assists hotels to
maximize both their occupancy and room rates contributing directly to their profitability.
It ensures that hotels optimize their revenue, by taking into consideration past and forecasted performance, as well as a wide range of additional factors. Complimenting this, guest history, which is churned from archives of CRM data comprises of data for past guests and other intermediaries. This provides the hotel with crucial information to allow for the personalization of the hotel.
namely yield management and guest history. Yield management assists hotels to
maximize both their occupancy and room rates contributing directly to their profitability.
It ensures that hotels optimize their revenue, by taking into consideration past and forecasted performance, as well as a wide range of additional factors. Complimenting this, guest history, which is churned from archives of CRM data comprises of data for past guests and other intermediaries. This provides the hotel with crucial information to allow for the personalization of the hotel.
Interconnecting partner systems
Hotels develop partnerships with a number of intermediaries to expand their distribution network. Hotels can now have central reservation offices with their sales agents. These agents would have access to the hotel’s property management systems as well.
Interconnectivity and interoperability between hotel CRSs and GDSs was a major problem, as each hotel and GDS has its own communication protocols and functions.
Switch companies such as WIZCOM, THISCO and Pegasus Solutions provide an interface between the various systems.
Interoperability of systems can support data and transaction exchanges to support hotels to expand their distribution network. Internet hotel bookings are projected to rise dramatically in the near future and the hospitality distribution channel becomes more complex as most intermediaries establish links with other players in the marketplace.
Business-to-business (B2B)
Business-to-business (B2B) is also growing very fast. These systems are managed through extranets that facilitate interorganizational communication, allowing partners to share information and processes.
Hotels are highly dependent on regular supplies of good quality and cost-efficient materials and ingredients. B2B networks could allow for the automation of ordering preset amounts of inventory when current stocks run low.
These require the implementation of a glitch-free inter-organizational communication platform. This platform is now made possible by switch companies such as Pegasus Solutions, which provides cost-efficient, simplified hotel solutions.
Conclusion
There are a lot of websites, today, from which consumers can book a hotel room. This is illustrative of a very expansive distribution network in existence in the hospitality industry. However, it is also imperative to note that there are a few new challenges associated with having a wide distribution channel. The challenges include rate integrity, brand perception, market segmentation, and value of customers. By using ICT-enabled processes to coordinate all services, especially, reservations, the hotel has unintentionally removed the personalized human touch to the customer. Thus, the hotel would have to take due care in analyzing the data collected by its systems to personalize its service accordingly to please its customers.
References