How are reservations made in the past?
Through Travel agents.
In the past, people would approach the travel agents and they will make the arrangement base on your requests. The agent would then earn a small percentage of commission from the traveler and the hotels that they endorsed. The travel agencies act like an intermediation between the travelers (the customers of the hotels) and the hotels. This method is largely reliable and is still in use today; however, in general it is more popular with the elderly (those who are computer illiterate).
Telephone
Patrons of the hotel would call the hotel personally and make the reservation. This system is highly based on trust as since credit card is not as common as compared to the present; there is no guarantee that both parties will honor their agreement. (If you try to book a hotel now through the telephone, it is required that you disclose important credit card details. This is to prevent uninformed cancellation of the hotel room bookings.)
Booking the hotel rooms ‘over the counter’
This is the most traditional method of making room reservation. However, with the IT age, now it seems too much of a hassle to make a trip down to the hotel just to book a room. This is especially so if the hotel is in another geographical location and it is not near you.
Snail mail
As the name suggest, snail mail is Slowwww and bureaucratic delays are inevitable. The hotel management will have to sort large amount of mails which is very time consuming and inefficient.
Reservations *(Present-day)
1) Able to make reservation online (hotel’s own website)
Advantages:
Hassel Free
Cheap and Fast
Allows you to compare availability of hotel room in different location (i.e. different State/ Province of a country)
Provides location of the hotel (Map) which allows traveler to make better decision
Allows you to compare the different Room features and Rate per room with ease.
Allow cancellation of reservation within a certain time frame.
‘Cashless’ transactions
2. Reservation by phone
Advantages:
Fast and Cheap
Miscommunication may occur
Disadvantages:
Exposes customer to fraudulent activities as confidential credit card details may be disclosed.
3. Reservation by email
Advantages:
Fast and Cheap
Disadvantages:
Confidential data might be ‘snooped’ by criminals.
4. Making a reservation on a third- party website (i.e. Travel Websites)
Examples of such website includes:
Hotels.com
Asiarooms.com
Octopustravel.com
Zuji.com
Expedia.com
Accomline.com
Booking through a travel website has many advantages. It allows travelers to compare the facilities/ hotel room/ room rates of many different hotels in a specific location. This facilitates decision making especially so if he/she is travelling within a strict budget. The Website also provides satellite maps for the convenient of the traveler.
There is also a cost advantage when you book with the 3rd party website. Normally, the prices quoted will be ten to fifteen percent cheaper than the market rate depending on the season (peak/ non-peak?) and availability.
To give a fair analysis, we must also look at some of the disadvantages of this method,
Disadvantages:
Confidential Personal information is sold by the website
Paid bookings are not honored
Unauthorise use of customer’s credit card
Information communication Technology has improved the hotel room reservation methods by three areas, primarily in terms of speed, flexibility and ease. The aspect of speed can be seen from the contrast of the above two paragraphs. In the past, the time taken to book the hotel room by either travel agents, telephone, walk in and snail mail which could be very time consuming and unproductive. The older methods also present some risks that the mail could be lost when in transition, heavy cost of overseas telephone cost and language barriers in the case when the hotel receptionist does not speak the caller’s native language. In this case, the caller has to be put on hold to get another colleague to assist in the room booking call. Similarly, walk ins can also be time consuming in the case the hotel is located far away from the customers home, and the customer has to travel a long distance to get to the hotel just to make the booking for his trip which could be at a later date. Upon reaching the hotel reception area, the customer could also be confronted by situations such as a long queue at the receptionist area due to other hotel guest in the process of booking in or booking out. In this scenario, the walk in customer would have to waste precious time just to reach his turn in the queue. Travel agents booking are as time consuming, as the fact that the travel agent has to constantly check with the customers desired hotel for vacancies and then revert back to the customer, the time delay is extended in information collecting and feedback.
The flexibility aspect of how ICT has improved hotel room booking can be seen from the respective hotels official websites or booking websites as now the customer is able to select choices such as price range (USD 100 to USD 700), type of rooms (i.e. Single bed, double bed, queen sized, executive or presidential suites). The choice of rooms near lifts, stairs, fire escape routes, choice of level and balcony views. Previously if the booking were to be done were to be done by snail mail, which contains forms, or by telephone booking. The caller or mail sender might not have all the choices laid out in plain and detailed view to him as compared to a website. This is because a booking forms with its layout restriction of a letter size and the telephone booking system with the restrictions of the amount of choices that can be presented by a booking staff speaking to the caller. The booking staff memory is not as detailed as the total information displayed by the website .As a result, customers in the past who used the old methods may arrive to their hotel room and realize that he needs more items which were not presented to him during the booking form and telephone booking. The items that the customer may need would be items such as an internet connection for his laptop, a larger fridge in the room, specialized equipments in the room such as special handles or anti slip floor tiles for the elderly, disabled or the blind. Most hotel websites and booking websites even allows the user to have further additions to his booking such as car rentals to travel around the hotel area, helicopter tours via the hotel’s heli pad, local railway tours and even travel insurance can be incorporated into the hotel booking on the website. For sensitive travelers, the customer can even check on the booking website such as expedia.com, to see if the hotel they desire is approved by by the international gay and lesbian association.
Lastly, in terms of ease, the modern traveler has the ability to book the hotel room anywhere in the world, as long as there is an Internet connection. As a result, hotel guests can book their hotel rooms in the comfort of his own home. Alternative methods could include Internet cafes and via smartphones. Hoilday Inn chain of hotels has even created android software for its frequent travelers to be able to book their hotel rooms on the go.
ICT has revolutionized the hotel booking system as it has introduced more players into the tourism industry such as third party booking websites (Zuji.com and ctrip.com). The website allows the user to browse through the hotel room rates at a glance, which also can be further compared by countries, regions or states to allow the price conscious customer find the best deal. They also help hotels that have last minute room cancellations to have special deals to offer the recently vacated rooms at a lower price than usual to entice the opportunistic traveler to travel in a quick and tight schedule. This new method also helps the hotels in cutting down the losses due to the sudden cancellation and increase its occupancy rates to maximize profits. The hotels using ICT has the advantage in foretelling how many guest would be arriving and can thus adjust its internal staffing such as increasing more room service staffs, more bellboys and more waiter and waitress to the hotel’s restaurants to save on operation costs.
Although ICT has brought forth a huge change in the hotel industry, it has also opened up some limitations and risk, As ICT are based electronically, they are susceptible to information theft, performed by hackers and identity thiefs who are interested in gaining valuable credit card information of the hotel guests. Terrorists might also use the guest list to enable them to target a certain group of tourists. Rival hotels could also employ industrial espionage tactics to obtain information on the most recent hotel rates, special accommodations equipments and guest lists. As such they would be able to target the hotel guests with a lower price or package to steal the customers. This is possible due to the invention of thumb drives and emails in which classified information can be transported out of the hotel premises in relative ease. As in every hotel employing ICT methods, they would be required to spend more money to protect their servers which hosts the guests information and website control with measures such as emergency back up power in times of blackout, security doors that only allow authorized personnel to enter such as server administrators to prevent any tampering of the data.
Hotel Management
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