Module 5

5 Unique Hotels Around The World. A hotel is a hotel is a hotel.

Uhm. Nope. And yes. A hotel provides you with a place to sleep, but here the similarities stops. A lot of you were impressed with the Rotel, the rolling hotel from our “Weird Stuff From Around The World” post and the places we showed you in this post about amazing hotels. 1. Want to spend the night with Toby and Sweet Willy? 2. Ice, Ice Baby. The Aurora at your door step. Cuddle up in warm furs while a wonderland of ice surrounds you.

No ice cubes needed in the drinks at the bar of the Icehotel – they come in ice glasses. 3. As the Icehotel is only open during winter in the Capsule hotel you only can stay during summer. 4. Normally people travel to stay at a hotel. Why get mobile when your hotel does it for you? A room with a view. the Everland in Paris. Romance and relaxation guaranteed – the Everland in Switzerland’s Yverdon, by the Neuchatel lake. Annotated Bibliography. Why Hotels Need to Care About Their Reputation [INFOGRAPHIC] It's a social media world, one where consumers rely more heavily on their peers' online opinions than ever before.

This is especially true when planning a trip. A company called Olery acts as an aggregator for all reviews posted about a particular hotel online. This gives the hotel the ability to respond to reviews in a more timely fashion. Whether a patron posts to Twitter, TripAdvisor, or Facebook, the service lets hotels see such activity in real-time and respond accordingly. Olery's data, summarized in visual form below, shows that most people consult reviews before deciding where to stay. Annotated Bibliography. What does 'iPad revolution' mean for hotel guests? A customer tries out an iPad at the Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York.

By Emmanuel Dunand, AFP/Getty Images Nearly a third of travelers today use three mobile devices - a smartphone, laptop and tablet computer (Apple iPad) - on hotel Wi-Fi systems vs. a single one just three years ago, according to hotel broadband provider iBahn. And not only are people carrying more devices, but they're watching more content on them, iBahn CEO David Garrison says. HOTEL DESIGN PHOTO: Is it a spaceship or chandelier? You decide In just the last 15 months, iBahn's seen data usage in an average online hotel session in its customer hotels skyrocket 150% - growth that Garrison links directly to the growth in iPad sales, which is why he's spending so much time talking about the "iPad revolution" these days. Annotated Bibliography. Vancouver Hotel is First in Canada with in-room iPads.

Photo credit: OPUS Hotels | Flickr Opus, the boutique hotel in Vancouver’s Yaletown warehouse district, has always marched to the beat of its own drum.

Instead of having a single design scheme for its rooms, the high-end hotel has five different ones to match different personalities, from stylish sophisticates to modern minimalists and Hollywood A-Listers. Now, Opus has taken its personalized approach one step further, with in-room iPads programmed to match each of those different personality profiles. These new “digital concierges” (standard in all rooms) come preloaded with apps and web links that reflect specific shopping, sightseeing, restaurant and nightlife preferences.

Artsy types can learn more about Vancouver’s hippest galleries, for instance, while shopaholics can browse the city’s trendiest boutiques. Annotated Bibliography. Hotel Industry Survey – How to Align Business and Technology Priorities. One of the most pressing issues facing the global hotel industry as it slowly recovers from the biggest economic downturn in its history is how to most efficiently bridge the gap between business and technology goals.

Make your opinion known. Contribute your insights to a hotel industry white paper focused on best practices to close the gap between business and IT objectivesPhoto Credit: keiichi.I | Flickr With plummeting occupancy and depressed rate levels, the hotel industry radically cut spending, reduced headcount and deferred projects to survive the great recession. Now, with demand returning and some signs that rate increases are beginning to hold, many hotel group business leaders are betting that technology will help them maintain operational efficiencies and keep costs low as business volumes return to scale. The challenge for hotel industry information technology executives is that in many cases, funding and staffing resources may be locked in at these reduced levels. Annotated Bibliography.