It's good to tech
While hospitality remains at heart a "people" industry, it is also increasingly becoming a leading player in the practical use of technology, and Hospitality Week will be a focal point for everyone involved in this area.
As at last year's Hotelympia in London, technology will feature as a show within a show at Hospitality Week, which runs from 20 to 23 January at the NEC in Birmingham. The event is being organised jointly by Accuvia Events, Fresh RM and the International Hotel and Restaurant Association (IH&RA), and will again be called Hostec-EurHotec.
While most aspects of Hospitality Week are organised by Fresh RM, the complex nature of a joint technology exhibition and conference needs specialist input, hence the coming together of organisational expertise.
Accuvia Events is a global technology consulting and information business specialising in hospitality. Its headquarters are in the USA, but it has a UK-based division. Its expertise has been gained organising technology conferences and exhibitions such as FS/TEC, one of the world's leading hospitality conferences, focused on the food service industry. Though this is held in the USA, it attracts an international attendance.
The IH&RA, with its headquarters in Paris, has members in 150 countries and represents 750,000 hospitality businesses, including all the major international hotel chains.
In the exhibition hall of Hostec-EurHotec, there will be close to 70 technology companies showing new products. While many of them will be specialist businesses offering niche software packages and IT-based hotel and restaurant equipment, several of the global names in hospitality IT will also be there, including Micros-Fidelio, Panasonic, Siemens, 3M, Guestline and Aloha.
The exhibition side of the event is where the IT products for the future will be on show, but the other big draw for all those involved in hospitality IT will be the impressive range of seminars at the conference side of Hostec-EurHotec. The seminars, sponsored by IBM, will be split into two categories. General seminars will be aimed at those who use hospitality IT in a mostly practical, non-technical manner. Power seminars will be aimed at those with more advanced technology skills who are looking for in-depth information on what is currently happening and about to happen in hospitality IT.
Central to Hostec in 2003 will be the opportunity to glimpse how the Disney organisation manages to deliver its consistently high service to its customers and guests. The customer ethos and business management skills of Disney are universally admired for the way they fulfil both staff and customer expectations. While Disney's front of house is all about hand-shaking and fun-making, the Disney Corporation has some of the most advanced hospitality IT systems in the world.
Keynote speaker at the Hostec-EurHotec conference will be Bruno Brocheton, vice-president of information systems at Euro Disney, now publicly known as the Magic of Disneyland Resort Paris. Brocheton is to explain how IT underpins the business management of a hospitality and entertainment centre as large as the Paris operation, and why it is central to financial and customer management.
Other seminar topics will include access security, data consolidation, cashless vending payment, and guest room technology. The seminars will last from one to two hours and run from mid-morning to late afternoon, from Monday 20 to Wednesday 22 January. Every seminar has a separate ticket price, allowing attendees to tailor their own conference packages. Individual prices are £50 for a general seminar, £80 for a power seminar.
More details of the seminars and a booking form can be found online at www.hostec-eurhotec.com. Alternatively, call 0870 429 4342.
Who's who
The visitor breakdown from last year's Hotelympia show gives a good indication of the management level we can expect of visitors to Hostec-EurHotec. Of the 7,000 managers who visited the IT show, 1,696 registered as chief executives, chairmen or managing directors, 69 were finance directors and 333 were IT managers.
Last year's show was also an important event for independent hoteliers, who formed the biggest section of the visitors.
New tech at Hostec
Almost 70 exhibitors will be showcasing new products and services at Hostec-EurHotec, among them Bartech Automatic Systems, which is one the world's leading suppliers of IT-linked hotel bedroom mini-bar systems.
One of the features it will be showing is a concept described as the intelligent guest room. For example, an information flash on the TV screen can tell a guest that the interactive minibar has just begun a "happy-hour" of discounted drinks.
HIT Solutions will be showing an integrated EPoS system that allows staff to manage customer bills using touchscreen technology. There is full menu information and item breakdown, even to the point of indicating possible food allergy dangers a customer might need to know.
Guestline will be using the show to promote its Windows-based conference and banqueting management system, which is already installed in more than 100 hotels, conference centres and clubs in the UK. The software program has a wide range of functions, among them the ability to manage room-blocking and master billing for conferences.
Active-2 from VDA Multimedia is promoted as the ideal welcome for a guest entering a hotel bedroom after check-in. With this, the television is already switched on to give a personal greeting, while the remote control unit offers Internet access as well as entertainment and hotel information channels. Active-2 also offers on-demand games, satellite download of films, e-mail and e-commerce.
High-speed communications access in hotels usually means the installation of new cabling to each guest room, with installation costing many thousands of pounds per room. However, Teledex will be showing a system that is said to be able to use existing wiring systems to enable both small and large hotels to offer high-speed communications links for business travellers.
Another in-room IT facility which many business travellers want is the ability to print work generated on a laptop computer. Using the PrintMe system of Internet linkage between a guestroom laptop and the hotel reception or office area, where a hotel printer will be located, a guest can click "print" on an Internet-connected laptop, then walk down to reception and collect the printed documents. The system will be shown on the EFI stand.
Rendezvous from software company NFS Hospitality is a new browser-based system for conference and business meetings, which uses Microsoft Outlook. It is said to be able to manage all aspects of conference and banqueting business, including meeting room layout, menu planning, room availability, guest room and restaurant booking, and all aspects of single and group billing.
With any hospitality chain, hotel or restaurant, it is important to benchmark units against each other as part of management control. On Change's stand will be Scorecard, a software system which, using intranet links, can show how individual units are performing against the company forecast and other units.
SoftBrands Hospitality is a prominent supplier of hotel IT management systems in Africa and the Middle East as well as in the UK, and it will be using Hostec-EurHotec to show Portfolio, its all-embracing IT management system, which includes a central reservations system, a property management system and an Internet booking facility.
Touch-screen technology has many advantages over keyboard inputting of guest information in hotels and restaurants, and 3M Touch Systems will be showing its latest flat-screen M150 Touch Monitor, which is claimed to have been developed with an understanding of the IT needs of the hospitality industry.
