and beverage, guestroom technologies, and kiosks for guest check-in and check-out (Cline and Warner, 2000, p.3). Most hospitality organizations have local area networks (LANs) within their hotels, and some have networks that connect them to their corporate offices. Many hotels are adding extranets, which connect the company to their suppliers or customers. About three-quarters of the hotels indicate that their company has a separate information technology department, while the smaller hotels outsource to a third party.
The focus on all this is, of course, getting customers to book and to ensure their comfort while they are in the hotel. Some technological features currently available include web pages for the hotels (simple pages with the prices and specials easy to see), Internet connections in the rooms, voice mail, and automatic checkout at the conclusion of the stay. Many hotels provide fax/copier/printers, interactive television with pay per view entertainment, cordless phones, and e-mail (Cline and Warner, 2000, p.4).
In terms of management, a central registration system that integrates the rooms inventory allows the hotel workers to see at a glance the complete and total status of reservations at a given time greatly increases efficiency and productivity. Sophisticated databases warehouse customer demographics and behavior, making it more possible to anticipate the needs and preferences of the most loyal customers. Hotels that integrate all these facets of their information systems spent from $1 million to $6 million (Cline and Warner, 2000, p.5). Determining who the customer is is always a challenge, a focus called yield management, which began in the airlines industry, allows the hotels to track which customers or which types of customers result in the most profits. All of these specialties within the area of technology for hospitality management require specialized education, and many higher education institutio...