IT in hotels travel lodge - Essay Example

IT in Hotels Travel Lodge Question Jurys Inn is a hotel a chain in UK, which is known for its best value for money. The company operates in 27 locations across the country (Jury Inn, 2015b). It offers the best service quality in its class and its wide spread operation allows it to cater to a large number of customer base. Jurys Inn ensures that customer satisfaction is on its forefront of its mission statement. This is achieved mostly by creating an effective and robust supply chain management (Jury Inn, 2015a). The company leverages the availability of e-Commerce and procures its raw necessary raw material online. This section covers the details of the e-Commerce websites that the company may use to procure raw materials. Bedding Items The company may procure its bedding items from http://www.soakandsleep.com/ . This is the official shopping website of Soak & Sleep. This company specializes in bedding items like pillows, bed mattress, bedspreads, towels etc (Soak & Sleep, 2015). This company is best known for its competitive pricing in the industry, which helps Jurys Inn to keep the operating cost low. Soak & Sleep also give discounts on bulk purchase, which is quite lucrative for business customers like Jurys Inn. Groceries Jurys Inn needs to ensure that its grocery inventory volume is always at the desired level to meet the customers’ needs. Moreover, the company needs to ensure that the quality of raw vegetable and other grocery items are of best available quality (Asda, 2015). The company may procure its groceries from http://groceries.asda.com/asda-webstore/landing/home.shtml . This is the official grocery shopping website of Asda. Asda is best known for its grocery items and its value for money. The company also offers “anytime delivery” pass to its customers at nominal costs. This allows Jurys Inn to procure its groceries at a lowest possible cost and high convenience. Asda offers delivery to all over UK, which is utilized by all the units of Jurys Inn. Catering items Catering items are quite crucial to running a hotel business (Rutherford and OFallon, 2007). Jurys Inn makes sure its catering items like plates, kitchen ware, cutlery sets, etc are of standardized quality to deliver the high value for the customers. The company may procure its catering items from http://www.cooksmill.co.uk/ . This is the official website for Cooksmill. The company manufactures the high quality catering items at a relatively lower price (Cooksmill, 2015). Jurys Inn also procures the clothing for its chefs and kitchen staffs from this website. Cooksmill is the most convenient place for Jurys Inn for buying catering items as Cooksmill offers a wide range of catering items at discounted price. Cleaning products Cleanliness and hygiene is imperative to hotel business. In order to increase brand equity and customer preference, the company makes sure that all the hotel branches use the good quality cleaning products (Rutherford and OFallon, 2007). Jurys Inn may procure its cleaning products from http://www.cifclean.co.uk/ . This is the official shopping website of Cif. The company is best known for high quality and large variety cleaning products. The company offers a wide range of products starting from spray cleaners for washrooms and kitchens to mousse and wipes (Cif, 2015). The company can procure all the cleaning products and equipment from one website. Uniforms Uniforms are quite essential hotel business; it helps the staff to be representable in front of the customers (Wood, 1997). The company procures its uniforms from http://www.dennys.co.uk/ . Denny brand specialize in making hotel and hospitality uniforms for all kinds of staff starting from receptions to cleaning staffs (Dennys Brand, 2015). Furniture The furniture of a hotel defines its aesthetics and dictates its brand image to the customers Rutherford and OFallon, 2007). So, Jurys Inn ensures that the furniture is of best possible design and quality. The company may purchase its furniture from http://www.pineapplecontracts.com/ . Pineapple is best known for its contract furnishing business at a competitive price in the industry (Pineapple, 2015). Question 2 The official website of Jurys Inn is quite interactive and allows the visitors to have a lot of visual information of the hotels and its services. The website highlights the service quality by showing pictures of the hotel rooms and hotel locations. It helps the company to attract the customers to find out more about the hotels. The website also highlights any available seasonal deals or discounts running at the time, this further increases the interest of the viewer. The home page is designed with a slide show of pictures that have been carefully selected to give a proper idea to the customers about the potential of the company to deliver the best service quality in the class (Jury Inn, 2015a). Advantages of the website is that it is quite user friendly and all the useful links are properly visible at the top. This makes it easy for the customers to browse through necessary information. Apart from that the company has also ensured that the homepage has enough information that the customer can have at a glance, thereby making it highly information extensive. At the same time the Jurys Inn has also ensured that the website is not too clogged with texts, this as a result may bore the viewer and he may lose interest. One of the best features of the website is that it allows the user to search for hotel rooms right from the home page, without even scrolling or clicking anywhere else. The home page has a dedicated window at the right side that is attractively designed in red to draw the customers’ attention. The customer is able to find desired hotel rooms just in few clicks. The payment option is also made quite user friendly. It accepts a wide range of payment mediums like credit cards, debit cards, internet banking etc. While booking the hotel rooms the website offers several other preferences such as floor location, room direction, availability of wheel chairs, etc (Jury Inn, 2015a). The company has designed its website by keeping in mind the wide range of customer base that it caters to. The website has a separate section for business customers to book meeting and conference rooms at ease. The “Jurys Meeting” section of the website gives clear insight of the professional quality of the meeting rooms. The website also highlights the fact that they offer the highest possible quality at the lowest possible price. All the information that is typically required for the customer to make his purchase decision is clearly given in the website. Moreover, the availability of meeting and conference rooms is always not constant due to their high demand. Therefore in order to make it easier for the customers to make the bookings, the website also provides an “enquiry” section from where the customers can check availability and book time slots. The entire website is quite bright and visually appealing. It creates a perception in the viewers’ minds regarding the high brand equity of the company and the quality of the service. This is quite important from the perspective of attracting potential customers. The ease of access to all the required information and easy booking options are the primary advantages that is capable of creating interest among the customers to delve in further and make the purchase decisions. However, there are also certain disadvantages of the website. The room booking section does not have any option to select the check-in and check-out time. This may be an important feature that the customers will like to have, without this option the customers are unable to ascertain the billing cycle and the number of hours they are being charged for. Thus it makes the pricing policy unclear. Moreover, the room description page lacks detailed pictorial information. Each room only has one picture to showcase, adding more pictures will make the purchase decision of the customers easier. The mobile version of their website, is not so user friendly, it lack a lot of glanceable information. The “deals” section in the mobile website is not easily visible, and the view will have to open to the “menu” to access it. In the mobile as well as the desktop version of the website, the information about the company is not easily accessible. The hyperlink to the company information is present at the bottom of the website and is in very small fonts. Overall the website is quite attractive in terms of drawing the attention of the customers and making it easier for them to book rooms and opt for other facilities, thereby promoting its brand image of good service quality at an affordable price. Question 3 The cyber security has become a subject of concern for both the business houses and the customers alike. The threat of hackers is increasing every day despite of the strict legal system in UK. The company maintains a centralized database system which allows the company to keep record of all the transactions and personal details of the customers in an easily accessible place (Velmurugan, 2009). Although this system makes it easy for the company to seamlessly run its operations, however it also makes it vulnerable to cyber attacks. Creating a centralized system makes it an easy target for the hackers to steal sensitive information like credit card data of customers, and use them to steal money from their accounts. Moreover, the hotels’ data base also keeps personal details of the customers like names, addresses, country of origin, profession, etc. Hackers with malicious intent can hack those information to cyber stalk any person of interest. This makes it a serious concern for the company as any such incident can severely damage the brand image of the company. Moreover, since a large number of customers make online payments, the official website of the company needs to be highly protected from phishing attacks. This can be achieved by installing high quality firewalls and bypassing the transaction information through a robust encryption system. Although installing a strong firewall can cost a significant amount for the company but it is essential to maintain the security. The company should hire a good IT company to design its database system so that it cannot be hacked and the personal data are kept safe. In order to further strengthen its security it should have its own physical server at, where all the sensitive information will be stored (Ioannidis et al, 2000). All the stored data particularly the transaction information and personal details should be kept in an encrypted manner, so as to deny unauthorized access to hackers. Moreover, the company should also install data mirroring system. The Data mirroring system will allow the company to keep a second copy of the primary server, so that in case of data loss due to natural calamity or otherwise, the lost data can be recovered from the second location. In order to ensure the physical security of the customers and the physical assets, the company should advanced monitoring and alarm systems. It should also keep the physical security system separate and independent from the centralized system, so that even if any hacker gets access to the server system, he will not be able to access the physical security system (Byres and Lowe, 2004) Since the hotel provides free Wi-Fi facility to the customers, it makes it more vital for the company to keep a more robust security. Since, the mobile devices and the computers of the customers will be connected to the same Wi-Fi network; it makes them more vulnerable to cyber threats. If the hackers manage to get access to the Wi-Fi network they may get access to the personal computers and mobile devices of the customers. In order to further increase the internet security the company should bypass the internet connection through strong antivirus software, which will not only prevent spreading of malwares and viruses but will also prevent unauthorized access. The company should take special care of the security of the business customers, since their computers may contain confidential or price sensitive data. Question 4 The extranet system is used to make communications in between organizations. It is an alternative and secured way to communicate other than the internet. The extranet creates a network that will help the company to securely add limited users with whom it can communicate (Baker, 2000). The company should keep its suppliers and business partners in the extranet network, so that it can make secured communication with them regarding orders and delivery of raw materials. The competitiveness in the hotel industry is increasing every year. The firms are seeking out for new ways to gain competitive advantage and may often try to hamper the brand image of the rivals. Thus, business related information and communications should always be kept secured and co-nfidential. Using extranet will prevent unauthorised access to the company’s information and will thereby allow it to keep business related discussions confidential. The company should add its business partners like tourism companies, transportation companies, etc. The intranet allows an organization to communicate within the organizational boundary. It ensures that all the organizational information stays within the organization and is not being accessed by anyone else outside the network. The Intranet should be used by the company to communicate with the stakeholder and it can also be used by the board of directors to communicate among them (Baker, 2000). This as a result will help them to discuss business strategies among them in a secure way over the network. The intranet can also be used by the hotel staffs. In short the intranet will help the company to keep sensitive information within the organization. Moreover, the intranet can also be utilized to establish a knowledge management system which will help the employees to share information and experience among themselves. Questions 5 The social media can be defined as an internet based application that allows the users to communicate with each other at a personal level. Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, etc are some of the popular social media firms. These websites are mostly used by the several firms and ventures to publish advertisements. Although, the concept of social media is to provide free communication access to its users, however the revenue generation comes from the advertisements posted in the websites. Social media has become one of the primary ways of online marketing and promotional activities. In the hospitality and hotel industry the social network plays an important role in advertising and connecting with the potential customers (Tomlinson, 2013). The social media services can be divided in to three types, public networks, content sharing networks and enterprise social networks (Evans, 2010). The public social networks are the ones where the users communicate with each other at selectively open forum. This medium is used by marketers to post banner advertisements and publish their own page. The banner advertisements attract the users to subscribe to the company’s page and any posts made by the company in its page will be shown to the users. This has proved to be one of the most effective ways to communicate to the customs regarding any new product launch or introducing any product deals. The company can also receive the comments on the post that it has made which allows it to monitor the consumer behaviour and responses to a particular stimulus. The most popular example is Facebook and Twitter. The content sharing social media allows the users to post videos or pictures which are publicly viewable. These services are used by the marketers to post video or banner advertisements. The users can also subscribe to a particular company’s channel or page to receive notifications whenever the company posts any new content (Tomlinson, 2013). The third type is the Enterprise Social networks, which is a private social network and can only be accessed by a limited audience. Several organizations use enterprise social media services so that the employees can communicate with each other within the organization. This social network is not utilized by the marketers, as it is a private network and its revenue is not advertisement dependent. The hotel industry can largely benefit from the social media in terms of conducting its promotional activities. The hotel companies can post its ads in the social media websites highlighting the service quality and value propositions. It is mostly helpful for creating strong brand awareness among the customers. The social media websites allows them to post pictures and video that helps that acts as a good advertising medium. Since the hotel industry is mostly service oriented, so it is imperative for the companies to ensure they are able to visually portray the servicescapes and internal ambience. This will help the firms to make a proper marketing communication with the customers. The social media will also help to gather consumer feed back and get a clear insight regarding the constantly changing consumer behaviour. Reference List Asda, 2015. Asda Groceries. [online] Available at: [Accessed on 3 April 2015] Baker, S., 2000. Getting the most from your intranet and extranet strategies. Journal of Business Strategy, 21(4), pp. 40-43. Byres, E., and Lowe, J., 2004. The myths and facts behind cyber security risks for industrial control systems. In Proceedings of the VDE Kongress. 116, pp. 213-218. Cif, 2015. Cif Clean. [online] Available at: [Accessed on 3 April 2015] Cooksmill, 2015. Catering to you. [online] Available at: [Accessed on 3 April 2015] Dennys Brand, 2015. Dennys Brand. [online] Available at: [Accessed on 3 April 2015] Evans, L.L., 2010. Social Media Marketing : Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media. New Jersey: Que Press. Ioannidis, S., Keromytis, A. D., Bellovin, S. M., and Smith, J. M., 2000. Implementing a distributed firewall. In Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Computer and communications security. pp. 190-199. Jury Inn, 2015a. Jurys Inn. [online] Available at: [Accessed on 3 April 2015] Jury Inn, 2015b. Jurys Inn Hotels. [online] Available at: [Accessed on 3 April 2015] Pineapple, 2015. Products designed for your peace of mind. [online] Available at: [Accessed on 3 April 2015] Rutherford, D. G. and OFallon, M. J., 2007. Hotel management and operations. Hoboken: John Wiley. Soak & Sleep, 2015. Soak and Sleep. [online] Available at: [Accessed on 3 April 2015] Tomlinson, A., 2013. Social network marketing. U.S. Patent Application, 218. Velmurugan, M. S., 2009. Security and trust in e-Business: Problems and prospects. International journal of electronic business management, 7(3), pp. 151-158. Wood, R. C., 1997. Working in hotels and catering. Stamford: International Thomson Business Press. Read More