Technology in Hospitality
Fits, Frustration and Failures
By Michael L. Kasanava Ph.D
URL : http://www.hospitalityupgrade.com/_magazine/magazine_Detail.asp?ID=100
Summary
The author specified 12 main reasons why fits, frustration and failures happen in technology of hospitality industry
1. insufficient training – training sessions are normally conducted by the representatives of the vendors in different formats such as classroom, on site and online training which is very expensive.
2. Managerial apathy – lack of interest from the management participation in project planning, installation and implementation.
3. Resistance to change – employees who will oppose to the new tech due to the complexity of procedure and process
4. Data conversion – previous historical data’s are not installed properly when the new system is purchased and installed
5. Application difficulty – applications appear too complex to initialize (may create the management to operate without complete information)
6. Improper scalability – assumptions of linearity has lead failure to applications (application systems differ from sizes of the premises)
7. Interface complexities – hardware can be connected easily whereas interconnect components can not, especially while their trying to share data.
8. Insufficient budgeting – the budget for technology to maintain the property is insufficient
9. Product underbidding – just to win from the bidding, a salesperson from the vendor would give a product with less programming or less than the optimal amount of equipment
10. Lack of ongoing training – most of the properties do not have a ongoing training sessions after the time of installation.
11. Inadequate vendor relations –to have adequate support service from the vendor, it must have a good constant and continous relationship with the property.
12. Non existent benchmark – technology being falsely evaluated.
Reflection
I strongly agree with the author’s article very much. Technology has been used not only in hospitality industry but also through out our whole life. It had made it possible to us to do such things in a very convenient, fast and efficient way, when it is used in a proper way. By knowing and learning from the pass mistakes, as what the author mentioned specifically 12 main reasons from this article, we can avoid those same things in the future. For example, interface complexities. From my past experience, I worked in one of the Starwood hotel which used Opera PMS(Property Management System), where as all the other Starwood property in that region used Delphi PMS. It was hard to communicate with other properties since they were using a different system. It took a lot of hassle, time and effort just to convert a simple data from their system to our system. In addition, lack of continuous training was also big conflict that we faced and arose very much in our property. Whenever a new employee was hired, appropriate tech application training session did not take place in any of the training session. Obviously, working efficiency of the new employee automatically declined.
Therefore, it is crucial and important to know how to implement and consider when using tech applications from the very beginning and throughout the operation.
2 comments:
This artical gave us a very specific list of reasons of service failures caused by techonolgy. From my point of view, these 12 main reasons may seriously lead to all kinds of frustration or failures both for the customers and the employees. As Woojun mentioned about his previous experience in the Starwood hotel, data conversion from one system to another took a lot of hassle, time and effort, which happens all the time in the hotel data mining systems. In that way, we may concern some improvement of the PMS designment such as better compatibility among different brands. Another important point that Woojun mentioned is the issue of insufficient training. Lack of sufficient training may lead to serous service failure or conflict. Using technology such as computer-based training or e-learning may help managers to deliver better and more flexible training opportunity for the employees. Moreover, we should always keep in mind that no matter how developed technology is, service failure is still not 100% preventable. In that case, how to use technology to recover the holes is also crucial and important.
Nowadays, technology is widely applied in the every corner of the hospitality industry. However, technology cannot stand alone by itself. It involved in money, staff, managerial apathy, compatibility and so on. I totally agree with the author views about the reasons why fits, frustration and failures happen in the technology of hospitality industry. I think the primary consideration is money. The more you input, the better outcome you will have. Technology upgrade and maintenance cannot be neglected as well. Another important factor is the knowledge of employees. In order to operate smoothly, an ongoing training session is necessary. In fact, all these hardware and software have to support it in order to form a complete set.
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