Social Networking

Cornell studies reveals how consumer use (or don't use) technology when ordering food and booking hotels.

My Marriott Hotel on Facebook allows gamers to manage their own restaurant, where they'll buy equipment and ingredients, hire and train employees, and serve guests.

Guests can navigate an interactive map of local venues, check-in to their favorite spots, leave posts letting friends know where they are, and get rewards points when they check in.

The company plans on leveraging a social media and customer review service that will help to identify the brand's strengths and weaknesses across its 75 venues.

Customized high-definition media solution offers broad array of interactive television apps to connect, inform, and entertain guests.

For the 50-unit frozen dessert chain Tasti D-Lite, cross-department collaboration has spawned a customer engagement strategy that is helping to bridge the online/in-store gap. HT talks to VP of technology BJ Emerson about Tasti's social engagement roadmap, plus how the growing mobile and social trends are expected to change the face of loyalty as we know it.

The mobile, social and cloud technology trends that are gaining prominence across much of the industry are finding their way into property management systems in 2011. HT taps the vendor community to learn about how these and other trends are shaping PMS technology.

Booking tool enables fans to shop properties, chat with an Omni reservations agent live, and book a room, without ever leaving the Omni Facebook wall.