SUMMARY
Current economic conditions in the United States have hotel and restaurant owners wary about opening new locations. Fortunately, a new kind of software has allowed owners to take some of the guesswork out of coming up with areas in which their business could thrive. Geographic information systems (GIS) can provide owners with vast amounts of demographic and economic information about customers in various areas across the country. GIS data primarily comes from government agency databases. The software can go so far as to provide the owner with an exact intersection at which it believes business would be good for the company. It also gives information about competitors and advertising opportunities in the area.
Jack Butorack Jr., president of franchising for Marco’s Pizza, is a firm GIS believer. He purchased the software from MapInfo and went through an intensive process of location selection. After generating a list of 300,000 possible locations, MapInfo studied 67,000 possible competitors and were able to narrow the 300,000 down to 3,500.
In some cases, GIS human resource needs may be quite intensive. While some small companies can get away with designating only one person to GIS, others may require an entire team. This may seem like a huge sacrifice, but the long term benefits are undeniable.
Koroneos, George. Get Smart about Location Growth. Retrieved April 29, 2008 from http://www.htmagazine.com.
URL: http://www.htmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=MultiPublishing&mod=PublishingTitles&mid=3E19674330734FF1BBDA3D67B50C82F1&tier=4&id=FCE766CEF22546BC99FA612A838AA75E
REFLECTION
The use of geographic information systems makes complete sense. Sure there are lots of places on the web where you can find demographic information about customers in different areas, but the information you will find publicly on the Internet is not nearly as detailed and informative as the information provided by servers like MapInfo.
In all industries, not just hospitality, it is very important to know that there is a place in the local market for your business. For example, imagine you are the owner of an upscale fine dining restaurant looking to expand. Chances are that your business would have no success in a poor area. Very few families would be able to afford eating a meal at your restaurant. This would especially be true if there was already a fine dining restaurant somewhere in the area. There would be absolutely no customer base to support both fine dining restaurants, and maybe even the pre-existing one alone. GIS software could prevent the business from making the mistake of building a new location in that area. Instead, the software would probably recommend a more urban, middle to upper class area. I think that GIS technology would be a great investment for any corporation looking to expand.
1 comment:
I think a GIS system is a great addition to the hospitality industry. I always thought when joining the Hotel, Restaurant and institutional Management major that I would eventually open my own restaurant. But after learning that most restaurants fail and how hard it is to start and succeed in doing that, my feelings have changed. Picking the right location for a restaurant is one of the most important features of implementing a new restaurant. I have seen from my own experience the amount of restaurants that open that make me think “why would they open there, that’s a terrible location.” With the GIS system, this can all change and could be a great help for restaurant owners everywhere.
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