by Kris Burnett
June 23, 2011
What
a fantastic week so far at HITEC in Austin, Texas. Yesterday
(Wednesday) proved
to have as much traffic if not more than day one. The floor was abuzz
with
updates, upgrades and innovative new solutions, including a few focused
on
bandwidth management – one of the biggest concerns in the industry
currently as
more and more guests bring their many electronic devices with them.
Wednesday afternoon’s session, “What Keeps You Up at Night,”
by Hospitality Upgrade Publisher
Richard Siegel and moderated by RockIT Group’s Jeremy Rock, proved one
of the
most interactive with a panel including MGM MIRAGE’s Scot Campbell, La
Quinta’s
Vivek Shaiva, White Lodging’s Ken Barnes and Hyatt Global’s Mike
Blake, and
also turned to the bandwidth issue. Barnes said it all when he pointed
out, “We
are beginning to think of bandwidth as a utility, not an amenity.”
During
the iBAHN press briefing, CEO and President David
Garrison made an interesting point as well, noting, “Bandwidth is
becoming a
discriminating dissatisfier,” with 61 percent of guests having a bad
experience
with Internet access in a hotel, and 50 percent of those who did, not
returning
in the future. Bandwidth is definitely at the forefront of
hospitality’s
biggest challenges.
After a few days of several announcements, educational
sessions, social events and our staff members attending press briefings
including
the latest from Verve Living Systems, Four Winds Interactive, Passkey,
Pegasus,
EZYield, Libra OnDemand, LodgeNet, Intelity, TravelShark, LG, Agilysys,
PAR Springer-Miller, MTech, Libra OnDemand, ResortSuite, VingCard,
Motorola,
Intelity, Hotel Concepts/Brilliant, Datavision, Aptech, Data Plus,
Venza Group,
NEC, Guest-tek, LodgeNet, Rubicon, Superclick, Kaba Ilco Saflok, Enseo,
Xeta
Hospitality, MICROS, Infor/SoftBrands, Adaco, Thing5, Sabre,
Alcatel-Lucent,
ZDirect, WebRezPro, Shift4, runtriz, eRevMax, RateGain, Onity, MSI,
IQWare,
InvoTech, Intello, innroad, IDeaS, SAS, GuestWare, OpenWays, Hyphen,
guestLink,
Galaxy, FCS, Digital Alchemy, Datanamics, EasyRMS, Clear Sky, Culinary
Software, ChannelRUSH, Cendyn, Brandstand, Amadeus, Avaya, Ariane
Systems and
Linq360 with RedRock, Cenium, Symon, InnLink, SuiteLinq and Microsoft,
among many,
many others, the look and feel of the show pointed to a positive,
forward
momentum. |
Ron Dressin of RedRock Software and
Kris Burnett of Hospitality Upgrade
|
Kudos again to HFTP for another
great event; they keep
getting better and better.
Kris Burnett is Editor for
Hospitality Upgrade magazine.
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