Using Data Communication to Give Ease in Hotel Room Services

Gaining extra comfort in a trip is an important factor. Staying in a hotel needs food, laundry, and other activities that can make guests comfortable. The guesses' requests are usually ordered to the Room Service. Sometimes problems occur in serving the guests' requests due to human error, such as overdue orders, misunderstandings, etc. Computers are used to prevent those problems by typing requests directly from a computer in the room. The method is done by collecting data from the direct interview at a hotel related to guests' requests, analyzing the current system, doing literature study, creating a Room Service system draft, as well as implementing the new system in a form of prototype. A Room Service system prototype is created with the abilities to order food, drinks, laundry and ironing. This prototype designed meets the guests' satisfaction towards the hotel room services.


INTRODUCTION Case Study
The research is executed at Mercure Rekso Hotel located on Jl. Hayam Wuruk 123 West Jakarta.

Objectives
The research is objected to: (1) give more satisfaction to guests in providing room services such as food, beverages, and laundry and ironing simply by typing the orders through the computer in the room; (2) eliminate human errors during service providing.

Scope
This research is limited within the following processes: (1) analyzing the current order system of food, beverages, laundry and ironing; (2) proposing a new order system which is done simply by typing the orders directly through the computer in the guest's room; (3) designing and implementing a protoytype of the new order system.

METHOD
This research uses the following methods: direct interviews to the relevant departments at Mercure Hotel about what are needed in room services, literature study about computer network, current system analysis, and prototype design with the abilities to order food, drinks, laundry and ironing, and prototipe test.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The Current System Analysis The current system works as follow: A room guest who wants to make orders for room services such as having food and beverages be brought to his room, he will call the Room Service through the telephone in his room and it takes more time to complete the order. The internet connection in the hotel is connected through an internet provider using fiber optic cable in Cyber building. The cable is directly connected to the main switch in EDP manager room which leads to other switches on hotel floors ( Figure 1).

IP addressing
First of all, IP addresses for each computer in the system should be set, so data communication can be made. Static configuration is done, because each komputer is only used for a room. 20 host computers for 12 hotel floors; 8 host computers for one floor, and 5 host computers also for one floor The following is the IP VLSM range (Tabel 1). The following is the design of new network topology for Room Service (Figure 2). The following is the design of network topology for Room Service on on each floor ( Figure  3).

Implementation System Specification
The required components and their specification for Room Service computer is availabe on Tabel 2 (for hardwares) and Tabel 3 (for softwares). Below is the Room Service data flow diagram (Figure 4).

The Implementation of Computer Network
To do this simulation six laptops are used as a prototype: one as Room Service computer, two as guests computers, one as Restaurant computer, one as Mini Bar computer, and one as Laundry computer. Simulation process is well done. Below is the topology of the new implemented network system for Room Service.

User Interface
Below are several displays of the computerized Room Service system ( Figure 5 -14).

CONCLUSION
A Room Service system of the Mercure Rekso Hotel Jakarta with a simple application are successfully built, implemented, and already simulated. The writer suggests to modify this system into an integrated system, such as a new Room Service system which has a connection to hotel billing system.