Hospitality Information Technology Strategy

1. Hotel utilise e- commerce very effectively for procurement purpose. They purchase essential products requisite for the daily running of the hotel via online meshworksites. I would standardised consider costa coffee Heathrow in my slip-up playing area as I am working there presently and it is very much suitable for this case study. The website which costa manipulations to purchase its essential products for daily running of the blood are * www. geometric-furniture. co. uk * www. kn-portal. com * www. caterwide. com * www. incorporatewear. com * www. coffeecreation. co. uk * www. bunzlcatering. o. uk geometrical furniture Geometric Furniture is a design led manufacturer of high quality signal furniture. Established altogether over 40 years ago, Geometric has become one of the UKs leading contract furniture suppliers. It supplies to physique of comp whatever like Odeon cinema, costa Coffee, Oxo Tower, The Warehouse, Ronald Mc Donald house. The best thing ab divulge thi s company is that they deliver they good by themselves, inform their client beforehand about its features. Delivered the product on time without fail and do understand the important of deadline and reliability.Kuehne + Nagel has got a new contract to manage the distribution of food supply on behalf of Whitbread plc, which is the UKs largest hotel and restaurant group. Costa has taken the decision to generousy outsource its food logistics activities to Kuehne + Nagel because they agreed to labour delivery of chilled and ambient products to over 700 Costa Coffee out al impressions seven days per week, and delivery of frozen, chilled and ambient products. The contract is for 5 years and in addition with that Kuehne + Nagel will operate a customer call nubble on behalf of Whitbread and manage the hallowing of products from designated suppliers.Caterwide As one of the UKs largest and fastest growing coffee shop brands, Costa Coffee has been using Torex Inn Touch POS and Caterwide for the past ten years to drive strategic initiatives mostwhat cash management, suggested ordering, stock control, labour management and reporting and subscriber line processes. One of the chance on advantages of the Torex solution is that it integrates with Costa Coffees loyalty programme, the Costa Coffee Club, whereby customers depose collect points when they buy food and drink which layabout be redeemed against future purchases.Incorporatewear Incorporatewear, the UKs premier corporate clothing provider, has been percolating a piece of new crease over the past 12 months and is now delighted to pour out the details of its recently write contract to supply Costa Coffee. Incorporatewear only work with the highest quality materials and the Costa range is no antithetical with shirts and aprons being manufactured from premium poly/cotton fabrics and provides the uniforms for 16,000 Baristas and staff. There are two companies of Whitbread plc which are under the umbrella of incorporatewear that Costa coffee and premier inn.The benefits of it are, advanced call centre telephone system, dedicated client get hold of number, instant query resolution, experienced police squad. Bunzl catering supply is the upcoming leading distributor of non- food consumable to hospitality and catering sector in the UK, it got 10 branches all over the UK provide a antiphonary and a flexible local servicing. at each branch they got dedicated customer service team which has good understanding of local business need and provide outstanding customer care from points of order by delivery.We can place order through telephone, fax, email and online as well which include an two-base hit catalogue, fast orders, regular buys, and continued basket. when the order has been placed the following information is readily available to them full customer details including delivery address prior purchase history authorised product angle real time stock availability pack sizes and prod uct descriptions Coffee creation (prima coffee service ltd) has been supplying high quality coffee product from more than 12 years with a indignation for quality and attention to details.Its very easy to place an order with coffee creation it takes you through each step, finding the item you would like to buy, add the item to your shopping basket, proceeding to checkout, sigh in, inaugurate your details, check and submit your order, provide payment information, get email as the confirmation, tracking down the order. sometimes they send product for sampling if requested and the customer of coffee creation are cafe Nero, Costa coffee, coffee republic. 2. Critically evaluate your organisations website. Discuss its strong and weak points. How user prosperous is it?Is it functionality adequate? Put yourself In place of someone who is unfamiliar with the organization. Does it enhance the reputation and encourage save contact? Webpage are the most inexpensive and the most effective wa y to promote any business especially in coffee shops concourse are looking for new shops in their neighbourhood and sequence travelling often start their search on internet. More than half of the marketing job is make if completely describing your cafe on webpage. The website of Costa coffee is quite eye appealing and attractive to customers.It matches the analogous colours and fonts on their web site as they do in their cafe. By using still the 2,3 colours, consistent fonts and easy navigation it stimulates the cafe itself. Some basic thing which a webpage must wealthy person it are, location, opening hours, photo gallery, about the business, menu, and press release. Out of all this Costa coffee explains its business, update press release, latest picture of the product, location of all the stores with opening and closing hours, address 5. What is neighborly media? Identify triple different types of friendly media how they can be of benefit for hotel industry.Social Media i s the use of internet-based programs to make interaction with friends, family, classmates, customers and clients. It can be done for neighborly purposes, business purposes or both. The appropriate way to define sociable media is to split it into two parts, social and media. Media is a tool of communication, like a newspaper or a radio, so social media would be a social tool of communication. This social tool of communication doesnt just agree the information but interact with you while giving that information.Interaction may be like asking you for to exposition in any particular thing, or letting you vote on any article or asking you to rate any movie etc. Social media is a new form of interacting people that allows anyone to become a source of information through new technologies that doesnt need any previous experience. It also allows the audience to be the author and author to be the audience. Anyone can experience the interaction for let go of as long as they have internet c onnection. The popular site of social media includes Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr and many others.These sites all allow users to post information that can then be commented on, followed or enjoyed by larger social groups and peers. Many Hotels are investing on its use to target market demographic groups or to dedicate through to new potential customers. Now Days mostly all the hotel have Facebook pages and are adding facebookers as friends in an effort to attract new customers and build brand loyalty. There are restaurants that are tweeting out daily specials and/or coupons to give as a gift to their followers.Facebook- one of the most popular of social networking sites which allows users to sign up and add friends and social groups, post information, comment on that information, post photos and become fans of dissimilar items or company or group. Hotels create their facebook page to add their customer, to target new market, they post photos of the some special event occurre d in hotel and tag their friends (customer), by tagging photo a friend of friends, who is known to the hotel can get to know about the hotel and his or her friend whereabouts.Through this hotel make new customer with the help of Facebook. utilisation some Marriott hotels use their Facebook pages to communicate with guests about local and hotel events. (USA Today) Twitter This is a free social networking and micro blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the authors indite page and delivered to the authors subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Elmore 2010) Twitter also allows hotel employees to start conversations with guests even a tweet as impartial as Hope youre enjoying your stay which give a personalized touch that some guests really evaluate that. Hyatt and Hilton h otels are using Twitter as a virtual concierge service to which guests can tweet queries and ask responses within the hour. (USA Today) Youtube A very popular and free pictorial matter-sharingWeb sitethat allows registered users to upload and share their television receiver clips online at the YouTube. om Web site. To view the videos you are not required to register but to upload the video you need to register with your email accounts. It allows billions of people to browse, watch and share originally-created videos. It creates a group of people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform. The Marriot Resort & Stellaris Casino in Puerto Rico uses YouTube to let guests record a 30-second video postcard to send to friends and family through the resorts YouTube channel.A hotel can use the youtube to promote their own website by sharing and uploading videos of own hotel. 6. What is taint Computing and explain how it can be used for t he hospitality industry? The service provided on internet with the use of reckoning resources (hardware and software) are called as cloud computing. All data that is being accessed are usually saved in servers, which are in accessible by any unauthorized user. This allows enterprise to maintain faster service and less tending from IT.Technology has advanced rapidly in the last couple of years that now it is possible for almost any device to quickly connect with a cloud service and access the information required. The cloud computing pattern minimizes the up face cost of infrastructure and allows the enterprise focus on project, which will differentiate the business itself rather than the infrastructure which will be avoided. Many author have made the attempt to force it, Buyya et al. efined it as a cloud is a parallel and distributed computing system consisting of a collection of inter-connected and virtualised ready reckoner that are dynamically provisioned and presented as on e or more unified computing resources based on a service level agreements established through negotiation between the service provider and consumer. The key characteristic of cloud computing are (1) illusion of non ending computing resources, (2) with the use cloud computers up- front commitment is eliminated, (3) ability to pay for use as needed, (4) self service interface and (5) resources that are virtualised.The concept of Cloud computing had benefited the hospitality industry in many ways, such as A hotel can eliminate the large upfront costs from acquiring computational assets and the typical time delay in building out and developing computer software app. By eliminating upfront cost hotel can save its precious capital to take future business decisions. It allows user to access system through web browser from anywhere at any time, user can access through any device, like pc, laptops, mobile etc. with the use of internet.It improve the business performance and the service deli very, the maintenance cost of cloud computing is very low. Some other benefits which a hotel can get from cloud computing includes low upfront costs, marginal IT infrastructures and easy access across multiple properties. Cloud has a pay-as-you-go service requires minimal investment and offers better technology at a lower cost. 1. Social media 2. 0 Successful social media programs that have value meld top technology and sales best practices By Gina LaVecchia Ragone 2. Social Media & the hospitality Industry by Forest Time, Demand Media . M. Miller, Cloud Computing Web-based applications that change the way you work and collaborate online, Que, 2008. 4. R. Buyya, C. S. Yeo, and S Venugopal, Market-oriented cloud computing Vision, hype, and reality for delivering IT services as computing utilities, in Proceedings of the tenth IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC 2008, IEEE CS Press, Los Alamitos, CA, USA), Dalian, China, September 2527 , 2008. 5. Khan, K. M. , & Malluhi, Q. (2010). Establishing sureness in cloud computing. IT Professional Magazine, 12(5), 20-27.