Hospitality Information Technology Strategy

1. Hotel utilise e- commerce truly effectively for procurement purpose. They leveraging essential harvest-feasts necessary for the daily running of the hotel via online websites. I would like moot rib drinking chocolate Heathrow in my case study as I am working there presently and it is very much suitable for this case study. The website which Costa dos to purchase its essential products for daily running of the work are * www. geometric-furniture. co. uk * www. kn-portal. com * www. caterwide. com * www. incorporatewear. com * www. coffee groundwork. co. uk * www. bunzlcatering. o. uk Geometric furniture Geometric Furniture is a anatomy led manufacturer of high quality contain furniture. Established each over 40 years ago, Geometric has become star of the UKs track contract furniture suppliers. It supplies to number of comp whatsoever(prenominal) like Odeon cinema, Costa Coffee, Oxo Tower, The Warehouse, Ronald Mc Donald house. The outmatch thing about this company is that they deliver they divine returns by themselves, inform their client beforehand about its features. Delivered the product on clipping without fail and do understand the important of deadline and reli dexterity.Kuehne + Nagel has got a naked contract to manage the distri preciselyion of food supply on behalf of Whitbread plc, which is the UKs largest hotel and eatery group. Costa has taken the decision to fully outsource its food logistics activities to Kuehne + Nagel because they agree to undertake delivery of chilled and ambient products to over 700 Costa Coffee outlets vii days per week, and delivery of frozen, chilled and ambient products. The contract is for 5 years and in addition with that Kuehne + Nagel go forth operate a customer call warmheartedness on behalf of Whitbread and manage the ordering of products from designated suppliers.Caterwide As one of the UKs largest and fastest growth coffee shop brands, Costa Coffee has been using Torex Inn maculation P OS and Caterwide for the past ten years to drive strategic initiatives around bullion management, suggested ordering, stock control, labour management and reporting and backup processes. One of the nominate advantages of the Torex solution is that it integrates with Costa Coffees loyalty programme, the Costa Coffee Club, whereby customers drive out bundle up points when they buy food and drink which can be redeemed against prospective(a) purchases.Incorporatewear Incorporatewear, the UKs premier corporate clothing succeedr, has been percolating a piece of new business over the past 12 months and is now delighted to bourgeon out the details of its recently signed contract to supply Costa Coffee. Incorporatewear only work with the highest quality materials and the Costa range is no unlike with shirts and aprons creation manufactured from premium poly/cotton fabrics and translates the uniforms for 16,000 Baristas and staff. There are twain companies of Whitbread plc which are under the umbrella of incorporatewear that Costa coffee and premier inn.The benefits of it are, mature call centre telephone outline, dedicated client contact number, photoflash query resolution, experienced team. 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 responsive and a bendable local portion. at each branch they got dedicated customer serving team which has good understanding of local business need and provide outstanding customer care from points of order with delivery.We can function order by means of with(predicate) telephone, fax, email and online as well which include an attribute catalogue, fast orders, regular buys, and saved basket. when the order has been placed the following knowledge is readily available to them full customer details including delivery hail previous purchase history authorised product list documentary ti me stock availability pack sizes and product descriptions Coffee cosmea (prima coffee service ltd) has been supplying high quality coffee product from more than 12 years with a passion for quality and attention to details.Its very easy to place an order with coffee unveiling it takes you through each step, finding the relic you would like to buy, add the item to your shopping basket, proceeding to checkout, sigh in, enter your details, check and submit your order, provide payment information, get email as the confirmation, tracking down the order. more or lesstimes they send product for sampling if requested and the customer of coffee creation are coffee bar Nero, Costa coffee, coffee republic. 2. Critically evaluate your institutions website. Discuss its strong and weak points. How user friendly is it?Is it functionality decent? Put yourself In place of umteenone who is unfamiliar with the organization. Does it enhance the repute and encourage further contact? Webpage ar e the well-nigh inexpensive and the most effective musical mode to promote any business especially in coffee shops people are looking for new shops in their neighborhood and time travelling often start their search on internet. more than half of the marketing job is done 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 just the 2,3 colours, consistent fonts and easy navigation it stimulates the cafe itself. Some basic thing which a webpage must kick in it are, location, commencement 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 spring and closing hours, address 5. What is brotherly media? Identify three different types of companionable media how t hey can be of benefit for hotel industry.Social Media is the use of internet-based programs to make interaction with friends, family, classmates, customers and clients. It can be done for affable purposes, business purposes or both. The appropriate way to define social media is to split it into two parts, social and media. Media is a wight of dialogue, like a newspaper or a radio, so social media would be a social tool of communication. This social tool of communication doesnt just give the information but interact with you while giving that information.Interaction may be like asking you for to definition in any particular thing, or letting you vote on any article or asking you to rate any movie and so on 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 intera ction for absolve as long as they have internet connection. The best-selling(predicate) 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 break 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 course 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 public 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 various items or company or group. Hotels create their facebook page to add their customer, to target n ew market, they post photos of the some special make upt occurred 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. Example 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 profile page and delivered to the authors subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their great deal of friends or, by default, allow open access. Elmore 2010) Twitter also allows hotel employees to start conversations with guests even a tweet as simple as Hope youre enjoying your retard which give a personalized touch that some guests really appreciate that. Hyatt and Hilton hotels are using Twitter as a virtual concierge service to which guests can tweet queries and expect responses within the hour. (USA Today) Youtube A very popular and free video-sharingWeb sitethat allows registered users to upload and share their video 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, heart and share originally-created videos. It creates a group of people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the bollock and acts as a distribution platform. The Marriot Resort & Stellaris Casino in Puerto anti-racketeering law 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 defile Computing and explain how it can be used for the hospitality industry? The service provided on internet with the use of work out resources (hardware and software) are called as demoralise computing. All data that is being accessed are usually saved in servers, which are in social by any unauthorized user. This allows enterprise to maintain faster service and less maintenance from IT.Technology has advanced rapidly in the last fit of years that now it is possible for almost any device to speedily connect with a cloud service and access the information required. The cloud computing concept minimizes the upfront cost of infrastructure and allows the enterprise counsel on project, which will differentiate the business itself rather than the infrastructure which will be avoided. Many author have made the attempt to exposit it, Buyya et al. efined it as a cloud is a parallel and distributed computing system consisting of a collection of inter-connected and virtualis ed computer that are dynamically provisioned and presented as one 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) dissembling 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 delivery, the maintenance cost of cloud computing is very low. Some other benefits which a hotel can get from cloud computing includes low upfront costs, minimal IT infrastructures and easy access across manifold 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, consider 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 10th IEEE International Conference on High surgery Computing and Communications (HPCC 2008, I EEE CS Press, Los Alamitos, CA, USA), Dalian, China, September 2527, 2008. 5. Khan, K. M. , & Malluhi, Q. (2010). Establishing trust in cloud computing. IT Professional Magazine, 12(5), 20-27.