IT managers in hotels are those unsung heroes in a war.
They sit in a corner office and quietly manage the IT infrastructure which is critical for the functioning of a hotel.
Hotels acquire various software to manage their client facing operations.
However the internal IT operations are mostly manual and not much investments are made.
In this article we have curated a list of 10 free or open source tools that will come in handy to the IT managers in solving important IT challenges in their hotels without spending a lot of money.
1. Tool to compress images
The marketing and design team in hotels create a lot of graphic designs and images for their marketing requirement. The resultant image files have high resolution and are difficult to distribute via social media platforms and emails.
So to make the images smaller in size the usual practice is to reduce the size of the image. This does reduce the size of the image file but also downgrades the quality of the image.
This makes the image look ugly and pixelated in some screens.
So the alternate option is to compress the image instead of reducing the image size. Compressing the image reduces the size of the image file without affecting the image quality.
Tinypng is a free tool that compresses the image for you. We use it all the time to reduce the image file size without affecting the image resolution.
Website: https://tinypng.com/
2. Free URL shortener
URL shortener is another important that as an IT manager you should have in your arsenal to quickly shorten any url before sending the link via email or message.
Sharing a url in its entirety can appear to be ugly and unaesthetic. Shortening the url will always make the overall content a lot more appealing.
For example, the following is a link to an article on our website.
https://www.geedesk.com/resources/complaint-management-software-for-hotels
If I wanted to paste this link in an email or message and send it to a few recipients, it would make the overall messaging a lot less appealing.
So instead I will use a free url shortener and convert the long url to a shorter one like the below one.
It is a lot more appealing when you add it to your email or message.
Free URL Shortener is one of our favorite free url shortener tool.
Website: https://free-url-shortener.rb.gy/
3. Simple asset management system
An asset management software is very important for a hotel to document all their assets. Assets in hotels are usually much more complicated than a tech company.
An average tech company has some laptops, desktops and servers.
On the other hand a hotel has a vast variety of assets like laptops, desktops, point of sales kiosks, mobile phones, operating system licenses etc.
Due to such a huge amount of varied assets being involved it is even more important to document them to ensure optimum return on investment on the assets purchased.
In addition to that this is also required by the finance team to calculate asset depreciation before filing the income tax returns annually.
Adjutas is a simple web based asset management software. You can try it out free of cost for 30 days.
Website: https://adjutas.geedesk.com/
4. Tool to monitor critical infrastructure
Monitoring the various components of your infrastructure on a regular basis is crucial to ensure infrastructure reliability.
A monitoring tool will enable you to identify and track issues in real time and in many scenarios help you identify an issue before it causes a serious issue.
There are many open source monitoring tools available to choose from.
One of our favorite tools is Zabbix. We use it at Geedesk to monitor our infrastructure and servers.
Website: https://www.zabbix.com/
5. Free QR code generator
During my interactions with the IT managers in the hotel, they have constantly asked me for a QR code generator.
There are plenty of QR code generators online but one of our favorites is the QR code generator by the same company that has the free url shortener mentioned above.
It’s a free tool and you can use it to generate any number of QR codes for your links.
Website: https://free-url-shortener.rb.gy/qr-code-generator
6. Cloud based file storage system
A cloud based storage system is not optional any more and is vital to run well managed IT operations.
With a cloud file storage system in place you can store your menus to generate a link that will be used to generate a QR code.
In addition to that you can also use it to store important documents related to your organization.
As an administrator you can pick and choose which of the documents should be private and which ones should be public.
For example, your HR documents can be private and accessible only by the employees, while your menus are public and can be accessed by the guests coming to your restaurants.
Website: https://www.linode.com/lp/object-storage/
7. Internal documentation
Documentation is a very important activity within the realm of IT operations and system administrator. Yet it is the most ignored activity by the IT managers.
It is understandable that the IT managers are mostly overloaded but nevertheless documentation should never be overlooked.
Activities like regular maintenance schedules, vendor contact details, checklists to perform regular tasks, steps performed to troubleshoot and fix critical issues in the past need to be documented in a central repository.
These documentations will help in knowledge sharing within the team and also help in eliminating knowledge silos within the organization.
There are a wide variety of tools available in the market for your documentation needs.
We use Dokuwiki for our internal documentation needs. We love it because it’s free, feature rich and lightweight.
Website: https://www.dokuwiki.org/
8. Textfixer to compress HTML files
The marketing teams send loads of email as part of their marketing initiatives.
These emails are mostly received by the marketing teams in html format. These html files have both html and css for design purposes.
Before sending these emails out via your regular bulk email service provider it is paramount to compress the html file contents.
The compression will ensure that the overall html size is less and also loads up comparatively faster when the recipient opens up the email.
Website: https://www.textfixer.com/html/compress-html-compression.php
9. A simple learning management system
As an IT manager your learning and development (L&D) team will definitely need your help in delivering excellent training initiatives for your employees.
A simple learning management software will be very helpful for the L&D team to offer online training to your employees.
Employees can login into the application at their convenient time and complete training modules.
The L&D team can also track the progress of employees and review if the employees have completed the training modules.
We are in the process of setting up a learning management system. We have chosen Moodle. It’s open source, free and is feature rich.
Website: https://moodle.com/solutions/lms/
10. Using artificial intelligence
There is a lot of buzz in the market on artificial intelligence.
It has become the center stage of every demo, every presentation and every industry specific talk.
Though artificial intelligence as a topic is not a new phenomena, the recent launch of chatgpt has created enough buzz in the industry.
ChatGPT is so popular because it works like a home appliance. You turn it on and it just works.
This has made it easy for the masses to use artificial intelligence.
You can use ChatGPT to learn new skills, generate email templates for marketing initiatives, write scripts to automate tasks and a lot more.
Using ChatGPT is totally free and you need not purchase any subscription.
We heavily used ChatGPT almost on a daily basis for a lot of our tasks.
Website: https://chat.openai.com
Conclusion
We have created this list of tools based on our experience of working in the hospitality industry and months of interacting with IT managers in various hotels.
We understand that investing on internal operations of the IT might not be high on priority for a hotel, hence have curated this list with free and open source tool.
The open source tools might have a learning curve in terms of setup and configuration but nevertheless they can a potent tool in your arsenal.