For this, our 7th Annual Kiosk Study, approximately 14,100 email invitations were sent to readers of RIS News, Hospitality Technology, Consumer Goods Technology and Vertical Systems Reseller magazines. Of these, 551 respondents entered the online survey. Only current or planned kiosk deployers were invited to complete the entire survey; those with no plans exited the survey after answering a few basic questions.
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This is the first year that Hospitality, selected by 52% of our respondents with current or planned kiosk installations, has overtaken retail (with 40%) as the dominant vertical. Last year, Retail was cited by 41%, followed by Hospitality with 39%. The current boom in hospitality self-service looks set to continue, as the percentages of Hospitality respondents installing within the next 12 or 24 months are significantly higher than the equivalent percentages for Retail. As the most established vertical market for kiosks, Retail has less demand for new installations.
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Improving customer service remains the key reason for deploying kiosks; over half of our survey respondents (61%) consider it to be \"extremely important,\" up from 48% last year. In terms of important technologies, touch screens had 76% of respondents ranking them as either \"extremely\" or \"somewhat important,\" followed by Internet connection, printers and credit card readers. Biometrics is starting to make inroads into kiosk deployments, and much potential is there for RFID in self-service devices, once prices come down for these technologies.
Hotel management and investment firm Coral Hospitality is standardizing its accounting operations and financial reporting on the Profitvue back office financial accounting software solution from Aptech Computer Systems, Inc.
Hilton Grand Vacations Company, the timeshare division of Hilton Hotels Corporation, announces that it has successfully alleviated password management issues, reduced password reset calls to the help desk and improved overall enterprise security through the Imprivata OneSign Single Sign-On (SSO) solution from Imprivata Inc., the converged identity and access management appliance company.
Thistle Hotels announces a partnership with MICROS-Fidelio UK Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of MICROS Systems, Inc., to upgrade its various legacy electronic-point-of-sale (EPOS) systems to the PCI compliant 9700 Hospitality Management Solution (HMS), across 30 locations in the UK.
Hilton Hotels Corporation partners with MICROS-Fidelio UK Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of MICROS Systems, Inc. to upgrade from its current MICROS EPOS solutions to the PCI certified MICROS 9700 Hospitality Management Solution (HMS), across 75 locations in the UK and Ireland.
The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA) announces the launch of a new, interactive Web 2.0 section of its Website featuring two blogs updated weekly by influential AH&LA executives.
Carlson Hotels Worldwide improves its operations and significantly increases productivity of staff in 40 countries with Salesforce Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) CRM and Force.com Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) from Salesforce.com.
The Hilton Tulsa Southern Hills Hotel located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, announces the first ever hospitality installation of the S-series hybrid digital menu board system from IDS Menus, a division of International Display Systems, Inc.
Hospitality overtakes retail for current or planned kiosk rollouts in 7th Annual VSR Kiosk study while improving customer service remains the key reason for deploying kiosks.