A few of my Cincinnati Microsoft peers and I spent some time yesterday with a great group of high-school students with the INTERalliance of Greater Cincinnati . Kids from about a dozen different local schools got together to form four teams and compete...

Hospitality Technology Magazine is reporting that loyalty program participation has gone up 19% during the recent recession. I haven’t had a chance to read the associated whitepaper yet. But I suspect the results are related to guests looking for any...

On June 16, Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. launched 11 hotel Web sites that use Bing Maps for Enterprise to offer customers a better tool for searching for hotel information. Entering a city, state, country or target date presents customers...

Mashable has a great article on the pros, cons and how-to’s for luxury brands and social media . While the article isn’t hospitality specific, the concepts are just as applicable to luxury hotels and restaurants as Gucci, Mercedes Benz and other consumer...

Brad Anderson from Rainmaker reviewing their Profit Optimization Solution. Using the Microsoft BI stack and pulling data from a customers existing PMS and/or EDW, Rainmaker’s software can help properties maximize total customer revenue. The solution is...

  Sherilyn Martinez talks about Avanade’s experience with Surface and a new solution they’re working on for hospitality. The new app really highlights the business value of Surface, as well as, some fun… Surface as the front-end to a CRM/Guest Loyalty...

George Deplaris from Sonoma Partners talks about their Franchise Management solution based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Sonoma Partners is one of the leading Dynamics CRM partners and have customers across several industries. Their franchise management...

Windows 7 pricing has been announced on the Windows Team Blog . General Availability (GA) for Win7 is set for October 22, with the OS being available in 14 languages. On October 31, an additional 21 languages will become available. Here’s the low...