Hospitality and Tourism Information Technology

Preface Technology has redefined how we experience hospitality. From the front of the house to the back, technology has allowed hospitality businesses to provide a faster, better, and more personalized service. Such benefits may be achieved by relying on the systems that remember all customer preferences, by bringing guests the speed and convenience of self-check-in, and employing robots that may attend to customer requests around the clock. However, all these wonderful innovations come with challenges, such as justifying a return on investment, establishing system security, building sustainable solutions, ensuring interoperability across different systems, and delivering high touch while using high tech. Therefore, this book is set to serve academic and professional audiences by reviewing the theoretical and practical aspects of the effect of digitalization and information technology on the hospitality industry. This textbook is open access, which means that it will be available to readers without any fee. It is published by the University of South Florida M3 Center. Table of Contents Preface Cihan Cobanoglu, Seden Dogan, Katerina Berezina, and Galen Collins Chapter 12: Technology in the meetings and events industry Gina Fe G. Causin and Leslie Gail Scamacc