Lean Manufacturing Training
Lean manufacturing is a business performance improvement tool that focuses on enhancing value, cost, delivery, and people. It helps expose waste and makes continuous improvement possible by identifying and eliminating non-value-adding activities in design, production, supply chain and management.Organizations that are applying lean technology to their manufacturing processes are achieving the greatest improvements in speed, efficiency, and profitabi

Why Aren't You in the Yellow Pages?
The Yellow Pages has been around for over 100 years, making it one of the oldest and most used media in the world. Yet there are many businesses that choose not to advertise. So what’s your excuse?There’s actually only three reasons:You are too cheap.You think your business won’t benefit.You actually never thought about it.Let’s examine each one. To begin with, have you ever had a Yellow Page repres

The Freelancers Field Guide to Contract Work
**** What is Outsourcing? ****Outsourcing is a great way to earn extra money or even a full time living. When a company outsources its work this means they are looking for people outside the company (you) to complete jobs for them on a contract or short term basis. Most freelance work can be found on freelance marketplaces across the internet. For a list of freelance websites search Google, or some of the freelance directories available.ons of buyers (travel agents and the public) search for travel services and sellers (hotels, airlines, car rental companies, etc.) work together to exchange travel services on the world's global distribution systems and the Internet distribution systems.

However, any mention of the Internet as a distribution channel for travel needs to start with an understanding of the existing electronic distribution infrastructure, the Global Distribution System (GDS). The airline industry created the first GDS in the 1960s as a way to keep track of flight schedules, availability, and prices.

The GDS’s were actually among the first e-commerce companies in the world facilitating B2B electronic commerce as early as the mid 1970s, when SABRE (owned by American Airline) and Apollo (United) began installing their propriety internal reservations systems in travel agencies.

The legacy of these GDS’s, namely Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre and Worldspan, today provide the backbone to the Internet travel distribution system and additionally there are thousands of private label Web sites like Expedia and Orbitz, as well as hundreds of tour operators, corporate booking portals, and regional convention coordinators.

Yet although technology has given hoteliers so many ways to sell a room, it has become nearly impossible for a smaller hotel operator to understand, let alone intelligently manage the available channels for room sales. In fact if you are the average small hotel, many of these channels have an allotment of your rooms, and it is likely most are showing out of date rates and incorrect availability.

Communicating with all of these channels in order to keep them current on your inventory and rate

Global Distribution System (GDS). The airline industry created the first GDS in the 1960s as a way to keep track of flight schedules, availability, and prices.

The GDS’s were actually among the first e-commerce companies in the world facilitating B2B electronic commerce as early as the mid 1970s, when SABRE (owned by American Airline) and Apollo (United) began installing their propriety internal reservations systems in travel agencies.

The legacy of these GDS’s, namely Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre and Worldspan, today provide the backbone to the Internet travel distribution system and additionally there are thousands of private label Web sites like Expedia and Orbitz, as well as hundreds of tour operators, corporate booking portals, and regional convention coordinators.

Yet although technology has given hoteliers so many ways to sell a room, it has become nearly impossible for a smaller hotel operator to understand, let alone intelligently manage the available channels for room sales. In fact if you are the average small hotel, many of these channels have an allotment of your rooms, and it is likely most are showing out of date rates and incorrect availability.

Communicating with all of these channels in order to keep them current on your inventory and rate

vel agencies.

The legacy of these GDS’s, namely Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre and Worldspan, today provide the backbone to the Internet travel distribution system and additionally there are thousands of private label Web sites like Expedia and Orbitz, as well as hundreds of tour operators, corporate booking portals, and regional convention coordinators.

Yet although technology has given hoteliers so many ways to sell a room, it has become nearly impossible for a smaller hotel operator to understand, let alone intelligently manage the available channels for room sales. In fact if you are the average small hotel, many of these channels have an allotment of your rooms, and it is likely most are showing out of date rates and incorrect availability.

Communicating with all of these channels in order to keep them current on your inventory and rate

m, it has become nearly impossible for a smaller hotel operator to understand, let alone intelligently manage the available channels for room sales. In fact if you are the average small hotel, many of these channels have an allotment of your rooms, and it is likely most are showing out of date rates and incorrect availability.

Communicating with all of these channels in order to keep them current on your inventory and rates, requires in some cases, daily manual intervention with multiple faxes and phone calls. More importantly, verifying the accuracy of each channel's current allotment and rate by the property is critical but rarely automated. Most times hotel operators do not know where or how their rooms are being sold or at what rate until the booking confirmation arrives.

The tangle of reservation channels is not likely to be simplified soon. But with regard to the easy accessibility of hotel reservations on the Internet directly booked from hotel websites with their own integrated reservations systems, the system is working.

Unfortunately even now, the overwhelming majority of small to medium sized hoteliers far from realizing and exploiting the Web's true potential are still accepting bookings by telephone, form and fax from their websites or selling their inventory at reduced rates or high commissions via Web-proficient online intermediaries.

As such, hoteliers, who want to broaden their room’s distribution intelligently, improve margins and maintain their brand identity in the face of on-line distributors that would turn hotel rooms into a lowest-price commodity should seriously consider integrating a real time reservations system into their own website for the ultimate benefit of their own hotel and visitors.

After all, commodities tend to look and taste the same. Do visitors want a box they will rent if the price is right or a room experience they will wish to revisit again and again?