Role of IT in hospitality

There has been a large amount of IT investments in the hotel industry, and hotels are in the forefront when it comes to deploying technologies like Wi-Fi. Dheeraj Gehani Information System Manager, Hyatt Regency talks to Deepali Gupta about the evolving need for IT in the hotel industry.

What is the role of IT in the hotel industry?

IT Plays a major role in the industry much like it does in the manufacturing setup or any other big ERP setup.

We use IT in all the internal departments. It is used in Rooms Division to accomplish all checkin, checkout, and billing functions; in the engineering department for the building management system and internal guest complaint system; in the Food & Beverage department for restaurant sale accounting; in finance for the accounting functions; in materials for all the materials-related functions; and in HR for payroll.

We are no different from any other ERP setup where all the departments use the system and benefit from IT.

What are the current computing demands among travelers?

Travelers have been very demanding as far as the Internet connectivity and speed go. They want their VPNs to work, and ask for faster connectivity speeds for downloads. In fact among the business travelers, facilities like Wi Fi really make a big difference. Naturally the uptime also needs to be high. Given that we cater to a large, number of International business travelers technology can make the difference between getting or losing the customer.

On the recreation front, they ask for DVDs on demand, games on demand, and computers on rent.

How do you see requirements evolving in the future?

IT will be used to process restaurant orders, and every employee will have an RFID tag on their uniform. I see this because we use IT to process any kind of internal and external restaurant orders.