Restaurant And Hospitality IT News For VARs — August 12, 2014
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
In news this week, wearable technology has great potential for the restaurant industry. In hotel news, the focus is on content management, dynamic rate marketing, and migrating hotel systems to the cloud.
Wearable Technology Brings New Opportunities
In this piece from QSR, Bill Draper writes that “it’s only a matter of time before the restaurant industry benefits from the enormous potential of wearables, too. Restaurant owners are already moving away from the current crop of lumbering, out-of-date POS (point of sale) systems in favor of more nimble and innovative technologies. Wearables are poised to advance this inclination.” He concludes that wearable devices possess the potential to bring efficiency, intelligence and multi-tasking capabilities directly to the restaurant floor and to help team members work together more effectively, to create happier customers, while the sales stream continues to flow.
Hoteliers Can Boost Direct Online Revenues Through Dynamic Rate Marketing
Dynamic rate marketing (DRM) is a next-generation direct-response marketing category, enabling hotels to feature real-time availability and pricing in their marketing messages. It allows real-time hotel inventory availability and pricing to be featured in various marketing initiatives such as metasearch, banner advertising, retargeting, Google Adwords, and email marketing. Dynamic rate marketing dramatically increases campaign effectiveness, boosts conversion rates, and increases direct online bookings. By combining online advertising and marketing campaigns with real-time hotel inventory availability and pricing, hoteliers can satisfy travelers’ demands for instant and truthful hotel pricing information, as well as respond in real-time to changing market conditions and comp set behavior.
HTNG Takes On Challenges Of Migrating Hotel Systems To The Cloud
Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG) announced a new collaborative effort among hoteliers and vendors that will generate resources to guide the rapidly growing number of hoteliers and vendors who are moving technology systems above property. It will help hotel companies minimize risk by providing guidelines to benefit hotels, hotel brands, application providers, cloud service providers and others. The HTNG Above Property Systems Workgroup will create a framework document that hotels will be able to use to ensure more effective interoperability between cloud-based systems, at both business (relationship and contracting) and technical levels.
Restaurant And Hospitality IT Talking Points
The second quarter started off on the right track for the restaurant industry as same-store sales returned to positive growth in July, according to the latest Restaurant Industry Snapshot from TDn2K’s Black Box Intelligence and People Report. The sales growth creates high expectations; traffic trends indicate challenges ahead. Same-store sales grew by 0.5 percent in July, which represents a 0.6-percent increase over June’s results. This is also the first time since March that the industry’s year-over-year growth has improved over the previous months’ results.
For more news and insights, visit BSMinfo’s Hospitality Tech Center.