The 156 bedroom, 5 star Athenaeum Hotel & Apartments on London's Piccadilly overlooks Green Park and is surrounded by all the excitement of Central London. The hotel is one of a small group of luxury hotels operated by Ralph Trustees Limited, including The Runnymede Hotel & Spa in Surrey and The Grove, Hertfordshire. The hotel is approaching completion of a multi-million pound renovation of the suites and bedrooms but before you even step foot inside The Athenaeum, you can see the hotel has changed. A magical vertical garden has been installed 8 storeys high, towering over Piccadilly!

Aptech Computer Systems, Inc., a leading hospitality software company, today announced the promotion of Cam Troutman to vice president and officer with extended responsibilities for corporate operations, client services, business development, and strategy. Troutman came to Aptech in 2000 with a background in technology sales and has held the title of director of sales since that time.

"When we started to use protel PMS in 2006, we realized that we had taken a major technological step towards the future. We invested a great deal of time in the selection process before we settled for protel MPE PMS via CIHOST Egypt. And we quickly discovered that managing multiple properties using protel makes our life easy. I can also assert that having a company like CIHOST Egypt for implementation and support leads to a new level of success. They really care, starting with tiny setup details to reports right up to the entire business concept. It's not only their slogan: customer satisfaction is their top priority.

With so much being written recently about mobile technology it is not difficult to hear the "call for mobile." What might be more difficult is determining exactly how and when to answer. With marketing budgets already in place, and in many cases slashed for 2009, if a mobile presence was not already in the plan, will you have to wait until next year? Like an online booking engine and Website before it, you don't want to be the last hotel on the block to "go mobile." Projections from the International Telecommunications Union estimated over 4 billion mobile subscribers at the end of 2008 representing over 61percent of the world's population.

The mission: Test and implement an interface to SynXis RedX to protel property management systems used at Mövenpick Hotels and Resorts. The Team: An internationally mixed crew of selected experts from the involved companies: Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts, Switzerland, and Germany, protel hotelsoftware, Germany, Rebag Data, Switzerland and SynXis, United Staates and Netherlands.

As rising labor expenses take an increasingly bigger bite out of property revenues, leading hotel companies are focusing on controlling their impact with business intelligence (BI) tools that provide new visibility into operating costs and profitability. At most properties tracking labor costs is handled by automated time and attendance systems, but calculating labor as a percentage of revenue is still primarily a manual operation. However, automated solutions that integrate data from third-party time and attendance and property management systems (PMS) are adding greater awareness of the role labor costs play across hotel groups. Labor is the largest controllable expense for hoteliers, so fast response to inappropriate labor costs is enabling operators to make better decisions on staffing that improve profitability.

SOUTHLAKE, Texas, 21 May -- Measuring the effectiveness of online marketing activities was the number one concern expressed by hoteliers at a series of summits hosted recently by SynXis, the Sabre Holdings business that provides complete hotel distribution and Internet marketing services globally.

VingCard, a leading hospitality security provider and part of the ASSA ABLOY Hospitality Group, has signed an agreement with Le Germain Calgary to install its wireless RF-online system, VISIONLINE, and Signature RFID contactless electronic door locks. The mixed-use property, featuring 150 hotel guestrooms, 90,000 square feet of office space and 40 condos, will complete the installation by the end of the year, with the first phase scheduled for completion in July.

VingCard, a leading supplier of hospitality security solutions worldwide, unveils VISIONLINE, a new wire-less radio-frequency (RF) online electronic-locking system. Ideal for the most demanding properties, the RF-Online solution gives hotels a more cost-effective way to streamline reliable two-way communications from individual electronic locks to a central VISIONLINE PC without the need to wire the locks.

The word “Infinity,” according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, means “boundless” or “inconceivably great or extensive.” To the global hospitality industry, the name “Infinity” means top-of-the-line advance security via an in-room safe by Elsafe that is literally designed to last forever. Today the boundaries of mechanical design are extended even further with the release of Infinity II by Elsafe – an inconceivably great in-room safe that now features exclusive anti-tamper technology, exclusive anti-cloning technology via RFID carrier, optional white and gold design finish, and compatibility to both RFID/NFC (Radio Frequency IDentification/Near Field Communications) and RF-online high security electronic locks.