As the twenty-first century rolls ever closer, it's time for hoteliers to take full advantage of technology. Robots to clean the guest rooms or machines to read our minds may not be just around the corner, but the possible uses of technology to improve hotel operations are exciting. Today, a computer can help a manager of any size hotel generate new sales, save painstaking labor, or improve the quality of business decisions. This article contains examples of how technology can be used in hotel departments.

Labor law experts Jaclyn West and Don Lee discuss a recent Supreme Court ruling regarding employee benefits and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act that benefits hotels who employed existing personnel prior to 1979.

In the past year, the cost of gasoline has skyrocketed. Current predictions are that the prices will continue to rise. As one might expect, the cost of crude oil has a direct effect on the cost of all other forms of energy, such as electricity, natural gas, propane and fuel oil. All of this information indicates that hotel managers can possibly expect up to a 25% cost increase in most of the energy they use to run their hotel by the end of the year. The increased cost of energy, therefore, changes the economics of investing capital in energy saving projects. Projects that had a two to four-year return on investment would likely be reduced to a one to three-year return on investment. Under these circumstances, capital projects can be financed and pay for their cost out of the savings, while still providing cash flow to the owner/operator of the hotel. This article provides suggestions and ideas for hotel managers on how to take advantage of the high cost of energy problem.