Business Focus is a weekly column providing at-a-glance
statistics and commentary on spending priorities and trends in
particular sectors. This week we look at the hotel and catering
industry.
IT spending in the hotel and catering industry is relatively low
compared with industries such as financial services and telecoms,
whose core operations are dependent on IT-based processes.
The sector spend of £2,241 per desktop per year for small
caterers and £5,554 for larger enterprises is, in both cases, lower
than the UK-wide industry average by nearly a third.
Despite this, the industry has in recent years become a growing
user of technology. Investment has grown as tailored back-end and
front-end systems based on common desktop business productivity
software have become increasingly widespread.
Following the relatively smooth transition to chip and Pin
payment technology, which led many hospitality operators to update
their point of sale systems, the main focus for the industry's
technology investment has shifted to improving customer service and
driving operational efficiencies.
The next wave of payment regulation affecting any business with
checkout facilities is the Payment Card Industry Data Security
Standard, which raises the minimum standards for storing and
transmitting customer credit card data. This is likely to lead to
extra IT security and data retention investment among caterers.
Self-service and mobile technologies, such as kiosks and
handheld order handling/point of sale devices, are some of the
latest IT trends to catch on. Further down the line, there may also
be a place for biometric identification, following a trial in a
Scottish school of a palm-reading electronic point of sale system
in its canteen.
Methodology
The analysis is based on Computer Weekly's database of more than
60,000 IT budget holders, twice yearly user IT expenditure survey,
CBI/Kew senior executive surveys, government surveys, government
demogratphic data, HM Treasury economic forecasts and Cambridge
Econometrics industry sector forecasts.
Further details:
www.kewassociates.co.uk
Business Focus: retail
www.computerweekly.com/218781