Business Intelligence, Information Systems and Its Impact on Management of

Information and Decision Making

Management Information Systems

In addition to passive collection of user-generated data from mobile devices and social
networks (Nov, et al., 2010), data collected by property management systems (PMS),
customer relationship management (CRM) and reservation systems has led to the concept
of ‘big data’ in hospitality. Stair, Chesney and Reynolds (2020) define big data as large
amounts of unstructured data that are difficult to capture and analyse using traditional
methods. It is “things one can do at a large scale that cannot be done at a smaller one”
(Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, 2013). In the hospitality industry, the analysis of big data
can be used to gain insights which leads to more revenue, increased customer
understanding and satisfaction, better business decisions, competitive advantages and
strategic growth (Hotel Tech Report, 2022 and Yallop, 2020).

There are various business information systems used by the hotel. Amadeus is the Global
Distribution System (GDS) which connects the hotel’s reservation system with distributors
such as travel agencies who can review hotel rooms, flights and car rentals via one place
(TravelPerk, no date). Cloud computing (Jamsa, 2012), has allowed the hotel to provide
access to third party agents without the installation of vendor-specific hardware (Bingemer,
2018). This link between the hotel and other hospitality offerings simplifies the searching
and reservation processes for customers, as these third parties have access to the hotel’s
inventory (Štilić, et al., 2022). The raw data generated from using a GDS can be very
valuable, but it is often in a form which is too complex for real-time analysis by the hotel’s
operations managers who lack the relevant technical expertise (Waughman, 2018).

One of the main data sets collected in the front office and back office involves record-
keeping of guests and their room preferences. This information is collected via the hotel’s
cloud-based Property Management System (PMS) called Rezlynx PMS (Guestline, no
date). While Rezlynx PMS has the facility to create guest profiles to aid in tracking
behaviour, trends and patterns, this facility is not often used because the hotel does not
have a membership or loyalty program. To structure guest data, the hotel would benefit
from creating membership profiles and a loyalty program to create key performance
indicators on customer retention levels and growth rates over the long term. Analysis of
this data will support the sales and marketing department in developing strategic goals.
Hotel companies such as Hilton and Marriott have created a customer relationship
management (CRM) infrastructure which manages 139 million members (Hilton Stories,
2021) and 141 million members (Marriott News Centre, 2020) respectively. CRMs are the
foundation of a hotel’s strategy to gain and maintain competitive advantages via
improvement of guest’s satisfaction and loyalty (Chadha, 2015; Sarmaniotis, et al, 2013;
Tseng and Wu, 2014). The hotel has failed to maximise on the large amount of guests’
data collected by the PMS. A robust CRM has not yet been implemented to perform more
advanced data mining and analysis to effectively structure guest preferences and spending
habits (Dursun and Caber, 2016).

In the back office, the hotel’s scheduling and time-keeping system is called Eproductive.
Eproductive is a cloud-based people management system which manages staffing
schedules and costs and provides an HR portal for line employees and managers
(Eproductive, 2022). Batch transaction processing systems (TPS) such as payroll and
pay-check distribution functions are performed via the third party, Blocktech (Blocktech,
2022). Blocktech receives payroll and pension input from the accounts department. BACS
transmissions are authorised after final approval is given by account managers (Blocktech,
2022).

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