There’s long been a perception within the hospitality industry that some of the technology solutions sold to the hotel community don’t live up to their hype. While flashy PowerPoint presentations that promise a product can do everything under the sun may sway a prospect, it’s really up to the hotel to conduct its due diligence and choose a provider that provides a competent, flexible product to meet its needs, invests in the future and is financially stable.

With so much noise in the marketplace, you may not know where to begin or what to look for when you start evaluating solutions. You can’t afford to invest in a solution that may lead you down the path of technological oblivion. Sure it works great today, but it may not be built for tomorrow. As your business needs change, what if the inability to adapt to those changes causes your operations to grind to a halt?

Well, the times are indeed changing, and the advent of cloud-based software will help reduce fears of adopting new technologies. Some of the biggest headaches regarding software implementation have had to do with product scalability. Any number of hotel software solutions will meet your hotel’s feature functionality requirements, but this is only part of the software solution landscape. As hotels grow, acquire other hotels, add guest activities, deal with onward distribution and position themselves for the onslaught of mobile solutions, it will be paramount their software providers fully understand the future architecture and technological requirements within the industry to meet the evolving landscape.

And as I mentioned earlier, you should also take into account the financial stability of the company offering cloud-based solutions. The deployment of these solutions should reduce the costs for any hotel climbing on board, but keep in mind there are substantial ramp-up costs for the vendor to put these cloud-based solutions into place, including hardware, infrastructure, redundancy and support. Make sure the company you choose is financially stable so both you and the vendor are successful. Isn’t this what it’s all about?

There will always be flashy presentations and over-promising in order to win your business. But if you’re thorough in your investigation, you should be confident you made the right choice. Of course it’s also up to the hotel technology industry as a whole to be transparent about what they currently offer and what they’ll deliver in the future.

Better products and less PowerPoint presentations will make for better business.

Alan E. Young is vice president, global marketing, for Infor Softbrands. He is past chair of the board of directors of The OpenTravel Alliance, a global hospitality/travel industry technology standards association. Alan has also been very involved with other industry associations most notably AHLA, HEDNA and HTNG. Alan has been a guest speaker at World Travel Mart, HITEC, HEDNA, The HOT Conference and a number of other industry events. He can be reached at alan.young@infor.com.