Didn't believe me about my last post... Look at this!

Just came across this... thought you should see it.

I've highlighted the relevant

Amenities and technology key hotel differentiators for business travelers

November 15, 2010 | Hospitality Industry

Amenities and Technology Key Differentiators

The Deloitte survey found that the overall hotel experience is important to a majority of business travelers. Roughly two-thirds of respondents said they often work in their room (68 percent) and they also expect a lot more from a hotel than just a clean room and comfortable bed (65 percent). Further, almost four out of five respondents felt that high-speed Internet (79 percent) and free parking (77 percent) were important amenities to them when staying at a hotel for business. A core group of business travelers (30 percent) felt their favorite hotel brand was so important to them that they would stay at that hotel brand even if it were not in the most convenient location. This loyalty was highest among those earning $150,000 or more.

“Consumers are more value-conscious than ever and have been conditioned to expect more for their money after a steady diet of recession-era deals. The tipping point for hotels to differentiate their brand offering and strengthen loyalty among the post-recessionary business traveler will be providing additional complementary services and amenities tailored to their guests’ specific needs,” said Weissenberg. “Beyond traditional incentives, hotels are realizing the importance of developing their online presence, particularly with mobile platforms, to capitalize on a crucial touch point for brand communication.”

Roughly half, 48 percent, of survey respondents owned a web-enabled smartphone. However, business travelers who are 18 to 29 years old, or with an income of more than $150,000, were far more likely to own one (84 percent and 63 percent, respectively). Among smartphone owners, more than one-quarter (26 percent) have downloaded a hotel application and have used it primarily to book a room (54 percent).

Interestingly, general-purpose travel websites did not appear to be regularly used by business travelers for booking accommodations. Only 31 percent used such sites always/frequently, 31 percent used them occasionally, and a larger 38 percent stating they never use these sites for reserving a hotel room for business travel.

About the Survey

The survey was commissioned by Deloitte and conducted online by an independent research company between September 10 and September 14, 2010. The survey polled a nationally representative sample of 1,001 business travelers and has a margin of error of +/- three percentage points.

Related Link: Deloitte

http://www.hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/amenities_and_technology_key_hotel_differentiators_for_business_travelers/

Oracle announce MySQL 5.5 RC

Edward Screven, Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect, underlined Oracle’s investment in MySQL and demonstrated how Oracle is making MySQL better every day. He announced the immediate availability of the release candidate version of MySQL 5.5, which delivers major enhancements in performance & scalability, availability and usability.

Watch Edward’s presentation  http://medianetwork.oracle.com/media/show/15664?n=subCategory&nid=35 

Apparently Benchmarks showed up to 1,561% performance gains for Read/Write operations on Windows, and up to 364% performance gain in Read/Write operations on Linux!: Higher availability: New semi-synchronous replication and replication Heart Beat improve the reliability of data and the speed of fail-over for continuous application availability. Improved usability: Enhanced index and table partitioning, signal/re-signal support and diagnostics further improve the usability of MySQL 5.5. 
Learn More and Get Going with MySQL 5.5: Download > MySQL 5.5 RC http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/

uniCenta oPOS already works with early versions of MySQL and work is under-way preparing it to take advantage of the benefits of this Release Candidate.  So, keep an eye on events as this will provide a major boost to the performance of uniCenta oPOS in the enterprise.  

Could this be the way or I don't understand. Need help - Part II

Refresher: In my last post I questioned why hotels keep batting, in what is clearly a lost match, for them, against the fall and continuing fall of in-room telephone provision. It's an odd one this, isn't it.

We all know that an hotel's bread & butter trade weekdays is business traveller related one way or another - Many corporate. Many not so corporate - and yet I sometimes wonder whether or not most operators actually grasp the situation and understand what has happened; what is happening; and what is going to happen. I'm still referring to telephony here but it is equally applicable to the general IT estate in hotels. Of course some do grasp it, and they really do it rather well, yet the majority still don't.

There are some "early adopters" - thanks Severin for your input about the Hoxton example here in London - but in the main it seems to me that "early adopter", in hotel-speak, concerning technology is something like five years after it's gone mainstream.
In fact, in my time dealing with hotel and leisure operators it's often been the case that ICT systems are relegated to a stuffy little back room or are tucked under-the-stairs usually barely enough room to swing that proverbial cat. A pretty good indication of the perceived value of ICT in the thought-train there then.

And yet, do you know what; it's refreshing to see there are more and more smart young (yes, I acknowledge you smart oldies too) operators whose familiarity and incorporation of ICT is setting the pace. For the "deniers" out there who think ICT begins and ends in the Back Office controlled by the FD and is not relevant to your hotel today, I just want to remind all of you poo-pooers of a) the Internet b) Wi-fi... I think that will do for the moment - and how you changed your mind (eventually) when you realised how much business was going to your competitors because you didn't provide.

Which conveniently brings me to the point of my post; How to exploit in-room guest telephone services.
Remember: you lost most of your call revenue to the mobile phone. Nero, Fiddle, Rome come to mind?
Can I ask. Do you want to start to get it some/all of it back? Get some more of that juicy secondary spend? Differentiate from your competition? Up your RevPar?
Well if you do; have you considered giving calls minutes away. I know some of you do that already. But, for how long and where? I know this too; usually up to an hour and when I'm a resident.

May be then you might want to consider extending your "reach" a wee bit.
May be then you could extend your reach and actually steal (legally of course) some of your competitors revenue without them even knowing about it.
Do you think this a tad too far-fetched? Hope you paused for thought here, and re-considered what I'm saying, because if I'm not wrong; isn't that what all the mobile phone operators did to you? Stole your in-room guest call revenue. Right from under your nose. Bet you didn't even bat an eye-lid, did you?

Consider this extract. Apologies to the original author as I can't remember where it came from;
Softphones are an ideal option for businesses with many mobile workers, because it allows travellers to take a laptop into a hotel room, log onto a Web portal and make and receive calls across the in-room high- speed Internet connection - just as if they were at their desk. Telecommuters can use the phones in a similar manner using their high-speed connections at home.
Now add - Anywhere to the above para'.

Can't be done? Wrong! Think again. Skype did it. So could you and there are plenty enough people out there who could help you do it...

uniCenta oPOS Point-Of-Sale | Download uniCenta oPOS Point-Of-Sale software for free at SourceForge.net

uniCenta oPOS Point-Of-Sale Download uniCenta oPOS Point-Of-Sale software for free at SourceForge.net

Toolkit - Getting British Business Online

Toolkit - Getting British Business Online

Great opportunity to get yourself a free, real, pukka web site.
We did. www.unicentaopos.co.uk

Don't understand. Need help...

What is it about hoteliers; not seeing the trees for the wood? (Yes. I know the vigilant amongst you will spot the debilerate deliberate mistake)

I'll come to the point and tell you what's bothered me for the last few years;
I've travelled quite a lot in Europe on business in my time, and have stayed in my fair share of hotels that's for sure, only to find the same-old out-moded telephone system and services wherever I stay.  If that wasn't enough, the astronomical per minute call rates continue to amaze.  
As a Guest though, I can take it or leave it... I'll leave it for now, thanks.  I've got my trusty mobile phone.

OK Mr Hotelier, you will catch a needy traveller, or two, and scrape up a bit more secondary spend every now and again.  You know very well that's the case.
You've done your costings as well; the revenue numbers in your worksheet have continued to shrink, and you have convinced yourself that it's no longer worthwhile even providing an in-room Guest telephone.

So, what if I told you you are missing a trick here.  Missing a way of restoring an area of your business to profit you currently regard as a liability.  A way of generating secondary spend that's just gagging to be exploited.  Yes.  Exploited.
Offended by the word, exploited?  Look what the dictionary says;

ex·ploit (eksploit, ek-sploit) n.
An act or deed, especially a brilliant or heroic one.
tr.v. (ek-sploit, eksploit) ex·ploit·ed, ex·ploit·ing, ex·ploits
1. To employ to the greatest possible advantage: exploit one's talents.
2. To advertise; promote.

Would you exploit, Mr Hotelier?  Of course you would. 
You did it back in the days when mobile phones were a rarity.  It's in your blood.  So, why not do it again?  You have the opportunity.  You could exploit and you should exploit.
The equipment's already installed; you're more than likely signed up to a provider giving you insanely low local and international tariffs; you've even installed VoIP... now all you need to do is encourage Guests to use your phones instead of their mobiles. 

Great.  All ready and rarin' to go then!

Er.  No.  What do you do?  You continue to charge insanely high Guest rate call charges - just like the good old days, eh - and yet still have difficulty understanding why that particular budget line refuses to nose upwards out of the red.  You thought by lowering call cost you'd make more money.  Well, yes.  I guess you do.  I can't argue with the equation; Sell High - Buy Cheap = More Profit.  It's a given. 
You really need to "get" this though;
Unless I have a pang of conscience about depriving you of a living or I've forgotten to pack my mobile phone... the handset in the room is just an ornament and will gather dust.   
Give me lower, realistic international call rates - which beat the mobile operators - and my money is all yours for the taking!
On the other hand, if I also have my trusty laptop me with me, you are going to need to compete with the likes of Skype.
 
But, how you do that... is for my next post.

See you then.

Dedicated uniCenta oPOS site

uniCenta oPOS now has a new dedicated uniCenta oPOS web site.  Still available on uniCenta's main web site and Sourceforge, the aim behind the new site is to dedicate it to just oPOS activity.
In the months since its launch on Sourceforge, oPOS is running steady at just shy of 200 downloads per week... which is amazing considering. 

Can the iPad really hack it?

Apple's iPad is stimulating a lot of interest in mobility across the hotel industry as a Guest centric self-serve information solution, and rightly so.  Touchscreen kiosk and info' displays are becoming more pervasive in hotels and help alleviate peak-time pressures on reception staff so, if it's possible to make some of these services go mobile, it makes absolute sense.  Why wouldn't you do it?
 
The iPad's durability and capability though in a commercial environment is questionable... surely some degree of "ruggedability" is paramount.  Total Cost of Ownership has to be a consideration too.  And then, there is "desirability" - we all know this exists, especially for the iPad, and it has to be accounted for.  Will it be the towel or the iPad that gets snucked away, I wonder.

I can hear all the nay-sayers right now postulating the failure of mobility in hospitality.  May be.  But all I would say is cast your mind back over the last ten years and see how far technology in hotels has moved on, and into, the Guest space. 
Apple's iPad has certainly raised awareness but it just might be too much of a lightweight...

I bet the Apple iPAD can't do this...

...successfully run uniCenta oPOS on a Partner Tech EM-200 pad and it's very, very slick - will get some video of posted soon.  But what's even better (for some) is that it was running on Ubuntu 10 (loaded Ubuntu 10 onto a USB stick and booted from there and preserved the original Windows 7 install).

Of course, with the EM-200 being designed for mobility it makes no sense to worry about kicking a Cashdrawer, unless the EM-200 is in its POS Base (docking station). Hooked it up to a Bluetooth printer too sitting across the other side of the room (already done the wireless network printer in a previous test).

Now things are really cooking!  Everything doesn't have to be crammed or limited to the usual PDA type small screen.
The uses for this pad are almost endless!

uniCenta oPOS v2.50

Decided to bring forward v2.50 - which now includes several more Sales and Customer reports, fix for a couple of minor glitches and more Bonus Pack pictures inc' euro, GBPound, USDollar currency images to help customize uniCenta oPOS even further.

Goto http://sourceforge.net/projects/unicentaopos/files/app/Windows/unicentaopos-2.50-windows-installer.exe/download to get version 2.50
Update: uniCenta oPOS testing is well underway for Ubuntu v10 platform; so far we have successfully run this on a couple of PC and importantly the brilliantly versatile Partner Tech' EM-200 pad (10.1" tablet pc).

Show & Tell coming for you soon.

uniCenta oPOS v2.40

uniCenta oPOS v2.40 is a natural, progressive release of v2.30 - our original branch of Openbravo's POS.
This latest version fixes, mainly, cosmetic stuff on some forms/panels that over-ran the 800x600 limits - thanks to everyone for the feedback.

We've also removed the default install Administrator PIN requirement (this was there originally because we had developed and tested on MySQL as well as some request for a default security install).

Goto http://sourceforge.net/projects/unicentaopos/files/app/Windows/unicentaopos-2.40-windows-installer.exe/download to get version 2.40

We're going to jump to v2.50 in around 30+/- days from now.  This release will add around 10 more enhanced reports and, if we complete in time; a MySQL out-of-the-box install... plus improved manuals.

Just to let you know; uniCenta oPOS is successfully running on Partner Tech' EM-200 pad (10.1" tablet pc) for a commercial customer.  We'll reveal more pretty soon and do a show & tell for you.

uniCenta oPOS Point-Of-Sale at SourceForge.net

Latest Release coming end of May '10

uniCenta oPOS Point-Of-Sale Get uniCenta oPOS Point-Of-Sale at SourceForge.net

SourceForge.net: Project Statistics for uniCenta oPOS Point-Of-Sale

SourceForge.net: Project Statistics for uniCenta oPOS Point-Of-Sale