Companies that are looking to make their contact centers more efficient and cost effective, or companies that are looking to consolidate multiple property reservation offices into one efficient and cost effective operation need to upgrade now.

With the market slowly dissolving due to the everyday economic challenges (doom and gloom) being broadcast by the media, the timing could not be any better than now to upgrade operations to handle all multi-media customer interactions in a very cost effective way.

The multi-media customer interactions are 800 number voice calls, local voice calls, inter-property calls, Internet text chat, Internet voice call back, email, electronic fax and booking pages for the mobile world.

Taking the chance of a customer staying at a competitor because that customer could not communicate with or access your company in a timely manner using the media of their choice is unacceptable in today’s business world.  There is definitely no excuse for it.

The use of proper technology has opened up a whole new world of communications within the Hospitality Industry but the way we acquire and keep loyal customers remains the same.

1. All doors into the business should always remain open for customer contact.
         a.  There are more doors available to today’s customers as there was in the past.  It is important to keep all of them open and staffed with competent employees and high touch systems.

2. All customers want to be treated as loyal customers.
         a.  A customer is a sale and a sale is made directly by a person or through a sophisticated high touch system that works.  In other words it is people selling to people either directly or indirectly through a system.

Using the following protocols will enhance the performance for hotel sales, contact centers, customer service centers, help desks and even Internet booking engines.

    1. “V”irtualization refers to a working environment which retains the characteristics of a physical resource without being directly tied to it.  Technological changes are occurring in networks, routers and switches that control data movement, but others have to do with the way servers are managed and how their processing power can be acquired.  With the convergence of voice and data and the increasing intelligence of the network, the next generation network is becoming a distributed computing architecture that is enabling new kinds of collaborations, applications and businesses to flourish.  New technology can securely partition machines so that multiple applications can share a single server.  These partitioning tools allow servers to be allocated in creative ways.  This minimizes expenses while providing flexibility in implementation and scalability of resources.
     
    2. “V”irtual Private Network (VPN) is a network that uses a public telecommunication infrastructure such as the Internet to provide remote offices or users with secure access to their organizations network.  The VPN first came about in contrast to leased and owned lines.  VPNs have been able to provide organizations with the same capabilities at a much lower cost.  A VPN maintains an organization’s privacy by using security procedures and tunneling protocols.  By encrypting data at the sending end and decrypting it at the receiving end so that the tunnel that the encrypted data enters cannot be entered by data that is not properly encrypted.  There are also additional security measures that can be used for network addresses.
     
    3. “V”oice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or any other IP-based network.  VoIP carries telephony signals as digital audio encapsulated in a data packet stream.  It has the ability to transmit more than one telephone call down the same broadband-connected telephone line.  It is not location dependent.  Hotels, Call Centers and Help Desks using VoIP phones can work from anywhere with a sufficiently fast and stable Internet connection.  VoIP phones can integrate with other services such as video conversations, message handling, or data file exchange in parallel with the audio conversations.  In guest room marketing via VoIP guest phones opens a whole new way of marketing personally to the guest staying at the hotel or resort.
     
    4. “M”ulti-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) VPN adds speed and features to standard VPNs that an organization might otherwise not have.  Data packets enter the MPLS network through an ingress router, also know as a tag router and pass through an egress router to leave.  The data packets traverse the network routed by tag switches or label switch routers.  This is all similar to VPN tunneling except instead of encrypting the data packets the MPLS adds a 32 bit tag to the data packets headers.  The ingress router examines the desired destination address of the data packet and creates a tag that chooses the virtual label switch path for that data packet.  The ingress router will also assign quality of service requirements to the tag.  From that point on the tag switches look only at the tags and not the data to determine how to forward the packet.  This all makes the processing of the relatively small tags much faster than having to deal with larger headers at each router.  The MPLS network is also designed to provide more bandwidth and or shorter latency paths for voice packets in a “V”oice over Internet protocol (VoIP).
     
    5. “H”osted Service Provider (HSP) is a business that delivers a combination of infrastructure, applications (software as a service) security, monitoring, storage etc over the Internet.  This approach enables organizations to consolidate and outsource some of their IT needs for a predictable recurring fee.  Hosted Service Providers benefit from economies of scale and operate on a one to many business model, delivering the same software and services to many organizations at once.

The time is now especially for those companies that are not using these protocols.  Once in place the complete world of sales will be open to the company.  Mega companies have some of these protocols in place but it takes them a long time to make a change.  If your company is medium to small size, with multiple properties, with multiple flags, the time is now to invest in the technology that will professionally open up all your business doors to all customer interactions.  There are too many benefits to mention.  As they would say many years ago back in the world of “Trusthouse Forte Hotels and Resorts”, “It’s a bloody good show”.

William D. Peters is the Vice President Reservation Services and Market Development for Outrigger Enterprises Group in Denver, Colorado This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

© Hospitality Upgrade, 2008. No reproduction or transmission without written permission.

Contact:

Geneva Rinehart
Managing Editor
Hospitality Upgrade magazine
and the Hospitality Upgrade.com website
http://www.hospitalityupgrade.com/
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Data security has always been an important issue for hoteliers.

As technology evolves and marketplace dynamics continue to change, information is becoming…to coin a phrase…priceless.

As the value of information rises, so do the associated costs of data loss. There are different types of threats to your hotel information, including data theft (outside parties trying to steal data or employees stealing or misusing customer information) or lost data due to hardware problems, human error, corrupt files, computer viruses or natural disasters.

But what are some of the potential consequences of lost data? Some of the negative effects of hotel data loss could include:

A reported decision by Delta Air Lines to block "inappropriate" Web sites from its planned in-flight Wi-Fi service could be just the tip of the iceberg for airlines' control of Internet use.

Delta, which plans to offer Wi-Fi on some planes later this year and on its whole domestic fleet in 2009, has decided to prevent passengers from accessing inappropriate content, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article. Delta said it had considered turning to its flight attendants to handle the problem but decided to adopt technical means instead.

In-flight Wi-Fi is starting to emerge on a few airlines outside the U.S. and was launched by American Airlines on a limited basis in August. Both companies will block VoIP (voice over Internet protocol), avoiding the uproar over annoying in-flight cell phone calls. But the prospect of passengers surfing the open Web at their seats has raised some concerns about children and other passengers being subjected to objectionable material, such as online pornography, while stuck in their seats. Flight attendants for American reportedly raised the issue earlier this year.

Technology-addicted professionals around the world are never disconnected to the office, work harder than they did five years ago and can't go more than one hour without checking e-mail, according to a new work-life study from Sheraton Hotels & Resorts. Despite feeling connected to the office 24/7, most people say they love their PDA, and new technology helps them enjoy life more and spend more quality time with family and friends.

The global study was conducted in five countries, including the United States, the United Kingdom,China, Germany and Australia. Globally, 70% of executives say that because of new technology they work more now than they did five years ago, and three-quarters (75%) feel compelled to be connected to work matters 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This is especially true for professionals in the U.S., where 85% of respondents say they need to be connected 24/7. This is less so for UK and Australian execs, where just 64% and 65%, respectively, say they work more now than they did five years ago.