Viewpoint: Hotels competing for your business - where next?

Business travel is key custom to many hotels. Three main themes emerge from a review of reported trends in provision: 1. development of special brands, 2. enhancement of special on-site services, and 3. use of promotions. Information technology and the information age are having a major impact on the hotel sector. As higher quality information facilitates their search for better value, so chains should pay more attention to underlying market forces. This is unlikely to be simple as many factors are involved and impact will differ location to location. The emergent information society essentially changes the paradigm from the production of goods and services to the underlying processes and exploitation of knowledge, the development of the information society is facilitated by, but greater than, the growth and application of information technologies.