Hospitality Information Technology Association Seeks to Enhance the Guest Experience
LOS ANGELES, CA, June 22, 2005. At its 12 annual conference held this week, the Hospitality Information Technology Association (HITA) sought to advance the use of information technology to not only boost business profitability, but to enhance the guest experience. Mandarin-Oriental CTO/CIO Nick Price, a leader in the use of technology as a business strategy, was the Keynote speaker and shared Mandarin's success and approach in applying technology to enhance the customer experience.
Guests expectations for in-room technology changes as their home technology changes. Think of how the television set has changed over the past 10 years from 20 inch tubes to 40 inch plasma. "Hotels need to future-proof their infrastructure," said Price. This concept applies to the cabling hotels put in to perhaps moving to soft-refurbs so that the guest experience with technology devices at the hotel such as phones, video of all types, internet access and others, is at least as good, if not better than guests use in their own homes.
During the two-day conference, hospitality business leaders presented both academic research papers and information sessions. Research papers covered topics from "Electronic Distribution Effectiveness among Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises in the Hotel Sector" to "An Evolutionary Approach to Customer Relationship Management: A Case Study of Vail Resorts." Industry presentations ranged from "New Campus-New Thinking" to "Hotel Technology - The Pacific Rim Perspective."
The conference was held June 19-20, 2005 at the Millennium Biltmore in Los Angeles, CA.
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