HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY REVOLUTION
(TRADITIONAL VERSUS INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AGE)
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Normally, the hospitality industry will be defining as an industry that giving service to the customer as their main product. The service that includes in the hospitality industry are restaurants, lodging, theme parks, event planning, cruise line, transportation, hospitals, institutional foodservice and more within the tourism industry. The hospitality industry is one example from many industries over the world that mostly depends on the disposable income and availability of leisure time.
People nowadays have high disposable income from their salary and it makes them spend more money for vacation or holiday. This scenario will help the growth of hospitality industry rapidly. Other than that, the availability of leisure time from retires people, students or workers also will help increasing in growth of hospitality industry. This is because people who have more leisure time would like to do more activities such as visiting, travelling, and others. So, they will spend their leisure time at restaurant, spa, theme park, hotel and other places.
What is the definition of revolution? Revolution will be define as the complete or drastic changes that happens to somethings. In this case, the changes that happen radically in the hospitality industry. In the other words, the sudden changes that occur in the traditional hospitality industry will improved the hospitality industry nowadays. There are many changes that happen in the hospitality industry from a few years ago until now. The most important changes that we will see in the hospitality industry are used of technology in the management and operation in the hospitality industry.
Due to the development in the technology, the hospitality industry also had improved their system of management and operation. They used technology in order to achieve their ability in giving good quality of service to their customer. We know that technology was improved day by day and becomes so rapidly changes or improvement. Nowadays, there are many technologies in communication, operation, skill, learning, business and others. For example, the most important technology nowadays is internet. The internet or IT is use as a tool for everyone to get information easily. So, this internet technology also used in the organizations, companies, and industries in order to ensure that management and operation will becomes more effective and easily.
Now, we know that hospitality industry revolution is the changes or improvement that happens in the industry from the past decade until now. The changes occur helps organization in the industry to achieve and provide their good quality of service. It also helps them to do works efficiently and effectively.
2.0 TRADITIONAL VERSUS INFORMATION AGE
2.0.1 The definition of traditional technology and information age
The definition of traditional meaning of science and technology will see in different ways and used. The term of technology will be define in broad as dealing with tools and using of knowledge in order to make work or task become more easy and faster. The traditional technology is technology or knowledge that people used in the past. The traditional technology has more disadvantages compare to the new technology nowadays. But, it doesn't mean that new technology does not have any disadvantages. We often use technology to control the world in which we live and it is developed to extend human capabilities. Technology is an innovation, change, or modification of the natural environment to satisfy perceived human needs and wants.
The definition of information age is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely. It also means the ability of person to have instant access of knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously. Information age also will call technology age or digital age. In the other words, the information age is the digital revolution that happens to the traditional technology and industry. The revolutions that happen to the industry will call industrialization.
Other than that, the information age definition also will see based on the technology view. We will view technology in four aspects. First, technology is defined as technique which refers to material products of human making. It refers to all material artefacts produced by a person or group in society. Second, technology is viewed as a technology which refers to the complex of knowledge, methods, materials and constituent parts used in making certain kind of technique (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 2010). It means that not only one technology is use in making a certain kind of technique.
Thirdly, technology is also a form of human cultural activity. So, it is viewed as a distinctive form of human practice like other professions which is practice by technologists like mechanists and engineers. Lastly, technology as a total societal enterprise is the complex of knowledge, people, skills, organizations, facilities, techniques, physical resources, methods, and technologies that taken together and in relationship to one another are devoted to the research, development, production, and operation of technique. In this sense technology is viewed as a whole with all the factors affecting its development.
2.0.2 Traditional technology versus information age
In order to see the pro's and contra's between traditional and information age, we should observe and identify the advantages and disadvantages of using traditional technology and information age. There are many points that we will discuss in order to see the different between traditional technology and information age. The first point that we will used is the importance of information age nowadays to the organization in the hospitality industry.
2.0.2.1 Communication
We will compare the traditional technology with information age based on the purpose of communication. According Collins English Dictionary (2009), communication is defined as act or ways human being communicates or speaks with each other using language or sign of body gesture. The traditional ways to communicate with each other is by face to face conversation or by traditional letter that using post office. The traditional way for communication is need more time, uneasy to communicate with others that far from us or at the other places and less effective.
However, the improvement of information age nowadays helps people to communicate with each other easily and quickly. Technology that helps people in communication is calling Internet Technology (IT). This technology helps organization such as hospitality industry like hotel or restaurant to communicate with each other. The members, subordinates, workers, managers in the organization also will communicate easily through internet.
2.0.2.2 Publishing
Publishing will be defined as task or work that is done in order to inform the public formally or officially (Collins English Dictionary, 2009). The material of publishing maybe printed or reproduced some graphic, text, software or others technology. The traditional way of publishing used to write all about the information in a paper before put it at the notice board in the office or other places. The people at the past may used the typewriter to typing, record and publish their works. From the traditional way, the technology has been improved step by step until now that we use computer as our tools for typing, saving, record and others.
The technology also being more advance because the existing of laptop or notebook that easy to bring and used at any places. All the tools helps organization to publish their work. Internet also giving extra publishing technology to the organization to publish their works or files. Its becomes more easily and effective in doing their work for advertising while applying it in the internet.
2.0.2.3 Customer Support
Customer is a person who is important in any business. A customer is a visitor of our business place or outlet. According American Heritage Dictionary (2009), customer will be defining as a buyer or guest that buy our product or consumed and experience our services. So, the customer is the most important things that we should know when we become a producer in any kind of business. In hospitality industry, we know that customer is always interacting with the people who provide service or produce the product. During the process the service are given to the customer maybe has any problems or dissatisfied of the service.
Traditionally, the hotels or restaurant in the hospitality industry used comment card in order to get the feedback of their services from their customer. This way is old style and not more efficient to get the information or feedback quickly compared to the new technology. The information age nowadays used e-survey in order to get any comment, feedback about problems or customer's experience about the service or product. The technology is easier to customer in giving any comment or rating the service that provide in the hotels or restaurant. The organization will used software in apply the e-survey. They also will do via internet or computer that with software that put in the business place.
2.0.2.4 Research
The other point in comparing traditional and information age is research. According Sekaran & Bougie (2010), research is define as the process in finding solution of a problems that occurs in our organization through study and analysis of the information that we gather from the situational factors or internet. We will see the comparison based on the way research will be done at the past and now. Researcher or people in an organization such as manager that want to do a research should find information about their variable in the research.
Traditionally, the information that researcher need must be finding in the books, magazines, newspapers, journals or papers that maybe have at library or other places. Nowadays, the researcher will searching the information to do their research in the internet.
2.0.2.5 Reduce Cost
The traditional ways in production process is using the labour force. The workers or employees that need to operate certain management, systems, or production line are more in numbers. For example in a hotel, the use of technology for operating the hotel such as software that used in check in and checkout customer, update room status, calculate the room rate, availability of rooms, inventory, billing and others will lead to high cost to the hotel. This is because the number of workers that works in the front office and housekeeping area is large in order to operating the operation.
The improvement of technology that used in the hospitality industry will lead in reducing cost of labour in term of salary. This is because certain tasks will do by software or technology in the computer systems. The tasks also will be going smoothly and quickly compare using the traditional methods or manually.
2.0.2.6 Increase Demand
The demand also will be increase if technology is being applied in the organisation. This point will be approved by using the information age will lead customer know more about our product or services. For example, the customer will do the reservation of a hotel room for their holiday through the internet. It differs with the traditional methods that need customer to walk-in to the hotel to booking or do the reservation of the hotel room.
Other than that, the demand also will be increase by advertisement that the hospitality organization do in the internet. They will publish any special promotion, events, rates, prices or other information about their service in order to attract more customers to experience and consumed their services. The traditional method also will do advertisement but it is much easier than using internet. The traditional method needs more money in order to do promotion, giving flyers or build banner. The promotion vie internet is cheaper, faster to distribute the information and the target market of customer also becomes large.
2.0.2.7 Increase Productivity
The last point to compare traditional with information age is increase the productivity. The productivity here means the tasks or work that has been assign to the workers will do at the given time of period. According to Maimunah Aminuddin (2008), productivity is a techniques that apply in the organization which give positive impact to the production output. Productivity is important in the hospitality industry. This is because hospitality industry produce a product and at the same time giving service to the customer. So, they should produce more output using less input.
For example, a server in a fast-food restaurant at the drive-thru counter such as McDonald should serve large number of customer every day. In order to ensure that this target of higher productivity, the organization used a technology systems in taking order and send the order to the production line without any movement of server to the production area. The using of technology in communication between server and the workers at the production line lead to increase in productivity, do not waste time for deliver the order and also will give faster service to the customer to get their food order.
3.0 CONCLUSION
As a conclusion, there are many points in order to differentiate and comparing between traditional and information age based on hospitality industry revolution. All the points that given is more to support that the new technology that apply in the industry have more benefit to the organization. There are more benefits that organization will get when using technology in their business operation. The benefits that they will get are increase credibility, increase exposure, larger quantity and quality inquiries, reducing more cost on printing, courier service and others.
The organization will increase their credibility by increasing more in their service via online is more professional it appears to the public. The organization also will increase exposure by giving their information about their activities, business, service, product or any information to the public. This information will used by the researcher or journalist in order to find the information for doing their research. The larger quantity and quality of inquiries will be see from the numbers of email received from customer and the information that publish in the website will attract more customer or not.
Lastly, the used of technology will reduce more cost on printing the flyers for promotion, cost of telephone calls or traditional technology will be reduce. So, using technology will give more advantages to the organization and industry. This is because people nowadays live in the challenging lifestyle. All information should be easily distributed to the public to ensure that hospitality industry wills growth rapidly and successfully. Besides that, the organization itself should be control all the technology effectively to avoid any problem that will happen to them. Giving training is necessary in how to implement the technology and always monitor the performance of each workers and technology that apply in the organization.
4.0 REFERENCES
American Heritage Dictionary (4th ed.). (2000). United State: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Collins English Dictionary (10th ed). (2009). United Kingdom: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.
Maimunah Aminuddin. (2008). Human Resource Management: Principles and Practices. Selangor: Oxford Fajar Sdn. Bhd.
Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (8th ed). (2010). New York: Oxford University Press.
Sekaran, U. & Bougie, R. (2010). Research Methods for Business: A Skill Building Approach (5th ed). United Kingdom: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd, Publication.
No comments:
Post a Comment