What does ICT represents?
ICT is an acronym that stands for Information Communications Tecnology. We can consider ICT to be all the uses of digital technology that already exist to help individuals, businesses and organisations to use information. It covers any product that will store, retrieve, manipulate, transmit or receive information electronically in a digital form. For example, personal computers, digital television, email, robots.
ICT and Hotels
With the blossoming of the telecommunications industry advancements in computer capabilities, and the development of sophisticated software to support delivery of services, technology has become a major factor in the operation of hospitality businesses. The convergence of technological applications places knowledge and information at the core of the competitive profile of tomorrow's hospitality enterprise.
Finding that balance in technology investment is critical today for hotel operations, given its importance in two areas:
· The desire of operators to improve the guest experience.
· The potential to improve operating efficiencies.
Network technology makes real-time transactions possible, giving consumers instantaneous, direct access to information about organizations and their product offerings. Hospitality enterprises will need to focus on providing customers with real-time access to rates, availability, and product information. Technology allows customers to demand rapid transaction turnaround. Information will be readily available to guests and employees, enabling faster delivery of services. With ever-decreasing cycle times and increasingly changeable markets, customers become intolerant of having to wait for service. Failure to respond promptly will result in lost opportunities.
Examples of how information technology influences changes:
The presence of internet-based commerce changes how hospitality services and amenities are delivered, changes hospitality firms' organizational structures, and radically alters the interaction of customer and service provider. Consumer can easily access information due to the speedy telecommunications, reliable networks, user-friendly interfaces and browsers, and realistic virtual reality work together. Moreover, filtering technologies can quickly wade through vast amounts of data, and smart agents can process tasks for consumers and service providers alike.
The use of technology-driven marketing (Database Marketing) is the ability to better target a hotel's customer base. A hotel's customer information file provides the opportunity to segment customers, develop profiles of frequent guests, target prospective customers and improve retention. Many finer hotels maintained a guest history system manually before the advent of affordable computer systems. However, these manual systems were limited in their ability to serve as the basis for a marketing program, and also did not permit the chain operator to identify the best individual customers who frequented multiple hotels within the chain. Client server technology now permits a hotel chain to maintain one single customer database which can be accessed by all of the properties connected to the server over the network. In addition, far more data can be collected about the customer and his spending, making the database much more powerful as a focused marketing tool.
The volume of guest information collected via electronic transactions is greater than humans can easily manage without the aid of technology. Data-warehousing and data-mining technologies are gaining in popularity as tools for analyzing customer information.
With the implementation of Video Check-In and Express Check-Out, guest can make use of the touch screens on free-standing terminals at kiosks to check in and checkout in less than 90 seconds without the need to use the traditional front desk. Touch-and-Go, the first system of its kind in the industry provides the guest who has an advance reservation and a credit card the option of avoiding the front desk at the beginning or end of the stay. The system on check-out allows a guest to approve expenses which appear on-screen, and then print a folio of charges. Touch-and-Go was successfully tested by Hyatt Hotels at two properties and is now being rolled out to between twenty and thirty of their properties.
Room Reservation
Other than this, ICT has made big improvement particularly in the room resevation processes. Before the boom of Internet, when we need to make room reservation for our holidays, telephone calls to individual hotels or travelling down to your desired travel agencies are needed. Nowadays, just by surfing the net, we can browse through different hotels' facilities, their latest promotions and even calculate how much we need to fork out in different types of rooms. With the introduction of online reservation, it makes things more convenient for the travellers.
Conclusion: Implementing technological advances promises the potential for greatly enhanced guest services to meet rising customer expectations, improved cost control, more effective marketing strategies and expanded opportunities for hotel companies and properties to achieve a competitive advantage. However, technology is only as good as its application by an organization, and therein lies the challenge for hospitality companies weighing how best to invest in technology, as well as train employees and explore opportunities for centralizing some functions while at the same time distributing other functions more widely.
Asia-travel
Asia-travel website is easy to navigate interface which consolidate together all the various services such as hotel reservations, booking of flights, tour packages into a single webpage acting as a one-stop travel reservation service provider. It has transformed from a niche hotel to a total hotel and travel reservation service provider worldwide by providing all information and necessary reservations for your business, or leisure travel at your fingertips.
Hotels and Airlines can be booked with Instant Availability and Instant Confirmation at the convenience of your home, office or even on the road. An email Confirmation Voucher can be obtained for all hotel reservations and an Electronic Ticket Voucher for all confirmed Flight reservations. Integration among different vendors will be transparent, such as a hospitality firm’s alliance partners might be interacting directly with the guests by providing peripheral services.
There’s a wide selection of hotel and resort accommodations in Asia, Pacific region, Middle East, USA and Europe. Besides providing the rate, discounts, graphics of rooms, sports or recreation facilities, the website also provides location and fact sheets for more detailed information to ensure you a comfortable and memorable stay. The website even offers multi lingual websites in English, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, French, Thai and Bahasa Indonesia catering to suit different countries user.
The website is classified into the different categories making it convenient for consumer to find what they are looking for.
Asia-travel even went to the extent of getting real reviews, the rating of the various hotels room from their very own customers.
In conclusion, with the help of information communication technology, such websites like Asia Travel has minimise the hassel that every traveller has to undergo from the planning stage till booking of air tickets and hotels. They had assist the promotion of properties to a wide range of insitutional and individual buyers around the world. ICTs are incresingly recognised as a means of achieving competitive advantage for the hospitality industry.
References:
http://www.asiatravel.com/index.html
http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/61649484_1.html
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