Things are really starting to heat up in the northern town of Pinetop, Arizona in preparation for the 20th Annual White Mountain Bluegrass Music Festival. Music lovers from all over the country will be staying at hotels in Pinetop AZ to check out this years exciting event August 14 and 15th at the Hon-Dah Resort & Casino.

As usual, this years festival features a Dutch Oven Cook-off. To be part of this competition, entrants must be members of the International Dutch Oven Society, cook over a charcoal fire up off the ground and use ingredients prepared from scratch on site including cutting of meat, vegetable, other ingredients and marinating. This is an exciting and time-honored part of the festival and each category is judged by professional, qualified judges.

The White Mountain Bluegrass Festival features bands and other groups from the Southwest. Ben Sandoval is a featured performer who has been involved in folk music, old time fiddling and bluegrass and old-time country music since the 70s. Ben has been very active organizing other shows including the Wickenburg Bluegrass Festival in 1979, the Gisela Bluegrass Festival in 1981 and the Prescott Bluegrass Festival in 1982, the Morman Lake Festival and Paysons White Mountain Bluegrass Festival.

Traditionally, hotels were largely dependent on cards and paperwork at the front desk to keep in touch with old and current customers. They were largely at the mercy of the desires of vacationers to arrive, and on their own efforts and staff to be ready for potential surges or long droughts of occupancy. Luckily, such inconvenience and old-fashioned methods are long since past, thanks to advances in information technology.

The first area in which information technology became important was in regards to billing. Old-fashioned paper-based book-keeping was time consuming and inefficient, and was not able to quickly tell a hotel owner what the situation of their hotel was. Luckily, advances in modern record keeping allow for a hotel owner to keep track of what they have on hand, how much of it they have, and how much it costs. Accounting is complicated, but advanced accounting software, especially that tailored to the unique needs of the hospitality industry, helps to enable hotel owners to make smart decisions. Services and products that are no longer used can be quickly cut off to save money, while those who show demand can be increased in quantity or modified so as to reduce the heavy usage.

Most hotels are familiar with booking rooms and reservations over the phone, but information technology has expanded well beyond that. Hotels can now work with various online travel companies and booking services to have their rooms booked online, with no need to employ expensive staff. This also allows a hotel to advertise their open rooms and special deals directly to persons who would be most likely to purchase them, instead of wasting lots of money advertising in an unfocused manner. High quality information technology thus allows for better arrangement and management of bookings in order to allow a hotel to better maximize occupancy, and to know in advance when large groups or lean times are approaching. This allows a hotel manager to make plans regarding temporary staff, good times to renovate or expand, or other concerns, because he/she can determine the state of their hotel currently and for the next few months with only a few clicks on the computer.