Yeoh Siew Hoon finds evidence of yet another wall crumbling -

It's been an interesting week what with a hotel technology event being held in town and a few meetings being held on the sidelines of the conference.

One person I caught up with was Eric Munoz, vice president-sales, Asia Pacific & Middle East for SoftBrands Hospitality, who had been sufficiently intrigued by my article on "Taming The Social Media Beast" to contact me through LinkedIn.

And thank goodness for our Blackberrys that we actually found each other. We had arranged to meet at a café and when I arrived, I looked for someone I thought would look like an Eric Munoz or a person working in a hospitality-related industry –ie someone in a suit.

I saw none that fitted my idea. So I sent an email, "I am here."

A message comes back, "So am I. Sitting in middle of café, wearing T-shirt, Middle Eastern type."

I looked up and there he was, right across from me. I am glad he described himself because I would have had no idea how to describe me.

So first lesson – find out what people look like before you arrange to meet them in strange places (although I do find that takes the fun out of things sometimes).

Second lesson – don't assume; people no longer look like they should.

"I wonder if we would have found each other without our Blackberrys," I asked Munoz, who looks more like a rugby player than a hospitality solution vendor.

"We are too attached to these gadgets," he says, putting his down on the table while mine faced his.

So gadget to gadget, we conversed.

What Munoz told me was interesting and only confirms what I believe about the collapse of walls in our industry. Hotel technology providers like SoftBrands, which have always focused on hotel operations, are crossing the line hotel online distribution and beyond.

From selling property management solutions, the company is now looking at front-end solutions in CRM, revenue management and online distribution. So the new focus is on software and consultancy.

Familiar? It's what IBM did.

"We are evolving from PMS vendors to distribution channel management, recognising that revenue mangement, CRM and online distribution are the future. It's the missing piece – the link between operational technology with customer-facing solutions," he told me. "It's the next phase of hotel technology."

So yet another player enters the crowded space of CRM, revenue management and online distribution.

SoftBrands itself is in transition however. After it bought Hotel Information Systems to become the second largest global PMS provider for the hospitality industry with more than US$43 million in revenue and 4,000 properties, it was sold last month for US$80 million to a holding company created by private-equity firm Golden Gate Capital and rival company Infor, which is a software company with about 9,000 employees and $2.2 billion in revenue.

"Size and scale matter in a consolidating software marketplace," SoftBrands CEO Randy Tofteland was quoted at the time.

The walls continue to crumble.

Yeoh Siew Hoon, one of Asia's most respected travel editors and commentators, writes a regular column on news, trends and issues in the hospitality industry for 4Hoteliers.com.

Siew Hoon, who has covered the tourism industry in Asia/Pacific for the past 20 years, runs SHY Ventures Pte Ltd. Her other writings can be found at www.thetransitcafe.com

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www.webintravel.com - October 20-23, 2009 Suntec Convention Centre, Singapore