Role of Ict in the Hospitality Industry
1. ICT APPLICATION TOOLS - INTRODUCTION
ICT has beyond doubts made huge contribution to the development of hospitality and tourism services. Due to the advancement in technology, the fierce competition and also due to the complexity of the hospitality and tourism markets, organizations from all over the world now depend almost on the use of ICT to plan, manage and market their services. There was a time when organizations would depend on using effective BPOs also known as call-centres to reach out to the consumers, but now the use of the internet has changed the whole scenario. Organizations have now integrated their system with ICT tools such as GDS, CRS, PMS, DMS etc to facilitate in the overall management and marketing of services especially in the hospitality and tourism industry. For a country like Singapore, where hospitality and tourism is one of the major industries, the use of ICT tools to support and facilitate the industry can be explained and justified with many examples but before that we need to understand the function of these ICT tools. Let us first explain in brief some of these tools and their functions.
1.1 GDS/CRS:
For a technical definition, Global Distribution System (GDS) also known as Computer Reservation System (CRS) is an electronic distribution infrastructure; worldwide computerized reservation network used as a single point of access for reserving airline seats, hotel rooms, rental cars and other travel related items by travel agents, online reservation sites, hotel & travel organizations, car companies, rail companies etc (Business Dictionary, 2009). It is a system for logistical functions (information transfer). It stores current information about all available service providers and have the necessary infrastructure to transfer such data. The Global Distribution system (GDS) was first introduced by the airline industry during 1960’s in order to keep track of flight schedules, price and availability, and then later they
ICT has beyond doubts made huge contribution to the development of hospitality and tourism services. Due to the advancement in technology, the fierce competition and also due to the complexity of the hospitality and tourism markets, organizations from all over the world now depend almost on the use of ICT to plan, manage and market their services. There was a time when organizations would depend on using effective BPOs also known as call-centres to reach out to the consumers, but now the use of the internet has changed the whole scenario. Organizations have now integrated their system with ICT tools such as GDS, CRS, PMS, DMS etc to facilitate in the overall management and marketing of services especially in the hospitality and tourism industry. For a country like Singapore, where hospitality and tourism is one of the major industries, the use of ICT tools to support and facilitate the industry can be explained and justified with many examples but before that we need to understand the function of these ICT tools. Let us first explain in brief some of these tools and their functions.
1.1 GDS/CRS:
For a technical definition, Global Distribution System (GDS) also known as Computer Reservation System (CRS) is an electronic distribution infrastructure; worldwide computerized reservation network used as a single point of access for reserving airline seats, hotel rooms, rental cars and other travel related items by travel agents, online reservation sites, hotel & travel organizations, car companies, rail companies etc (Business Dictionary, 2009). It is a system for logistical functions (information transfer). It stores current information about all available service providers and have the necessary infrastructure to transfer such data. The Global Distribution system (GDS) was first introduced by the airline industry during 1960’s in order to keep track of flight schedules, price and availability, and then later they