Asset and Inventory Management in the Hotel Industry using RFID technology: An Experimental Study with Economic Analysis

The ability to provide a cost-effective solution to improve hotel organizations efficiency through inventory management has made RFID technology one of today’s most potential deployment technologies. Hotel organizations are invariably competing in assuring the service quality and are facing many challenges in terms of inventory management that directly impacts the overall customer satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to conduct an experimental research to investigate if RFID technologies can offer efficient and effective solution to manage asset and inventory in the hotel organizations. An experimental research was conducted by implementing RFID tags on assets and inventories and tracking those using receivers in a boutique hotel. A framework to install identification tags, touch points and RFID system was suggested. This study also examined the costs, maintenance and ROI (Return on Investment) of using RFID system for two years by doing an Economic Analysis and comparing with the traditional barcode systems.