Leveraging technology enhances hotel operations

National Report--Streamlining hotel operations from the front desk to the back of the house is a critical way to help reduce overhead and enhance revenue. Thanks to new technology, hotel companies are realizing that running a tighter ship is easier today than five years ago.

Although hotel companies are using different types of technology within their organizations, they seem to agree that simplifying, centralizing and integrating systems is crucial to running more efficient operations.

"We're centralizing our systems whenever and wherever we can," said Mark Hedley, senior v.p. and chief technology officer at Wyndham International.

Brian Garavuso, chief technology officer at Interstate Hotels & Resorts, said his company also is leveraging technology--both its own systems and brand technology--to augment revenue and keep costs down.

In fact, both Interstate and US Franchise Systems recently implemented Web-based management and reporting systems to maximize efficiency and drive profitability.

Interstate's internally developed eDaily system, which was rolled out to its 300 managed hotels starting at the end of 2003, allows the company to send online daily reports to every hotel in real-time. Part of Interstate's overall business-intelligence suite, eDaily allows hotel managers to see daily operations at a glance every morning via the Internet from any computer, anywhere. This beats waiting until a spreadsheet report arrives to the office at midday, Garavuso said.

The online reports let hotel managers and corporate management analyze the data to determine how the hotels performed on a particular day versus the same day last year or how they performed week to week. Managers also can run any type of comparison with the click of a mouse instead of waiting for an information technology professional to run the numbers, Garavuso said.

USFS' Project Reveille, introduced in February to more than 260 Microtel owners, includes a similar Web-based reporting program, empowering Microtel owners with technology tools to enhance back-office operations. Called Hotel Dashboard, the Project Reveille module essentially is a detailed management and reporting system that makes key information available to owners and general managers, including night audit data, top account production reports, forecasts and other relevant statistics. To help allow managers to get easier access to information, Microtel upgraded and standardized each hotel's property-management system to a custom-designed software version of Platinum by Ramesys.

Hotel owners can access a significant amount of business-intelligence information readily and easily, said Steve Jacobs, executive v.p. and chief information officer.

"Hotel Dashboard takes disparate data and puts it onto one system, which is pivotal to driving profitability," Jacobs said.

Hotel data, including rate and guest information, was available to owners before the roll-out of Hotel Dashboard and the improved PMS. But it was cumbersome to access the information in a timely matter and often difficult to figure out how to make sense of the statistics once you did get the data, Jacobs said.

In contrast, hotel owners now can view forecasting information and review comparisons instantly. Multiunit operators also perform audits on all of their properties on one report, instead of several employees auditing individual hotels. This cuts down on labor expenses and simplifies the process, he said.

Wyndham also is centralizing its systems to operate more efficiently and eliminate many information technology tasks at individual hotels--freeing up staff members to serve guests.

Wyndham recently integrated its SDD Jazz communications management system with the ByRequest database of 1.9 million frequent guests, Hedley said.

The chain gives ByRequest customers free long distance and local phone calls, free copies and faxes and free Internet service, Hedley said. Instead of reconciling the charges at check-out and tying up the front desk, the ByRequest database interfaces with high-speed Internet access provider Wayport and SDD Jazz to automatically determine how much to bill each individual guest.

Reduction in labor costs and enhanced guest service leads to repeat visits and higher revenue, he said. Wyndham recently converted 4,500 personal computers running off Microsoft NT at its hotels and central office to Microsoft Server 2003 and Microsoft Active Directory. This platform allowed the chain to consolidate 63 e-mail servers to 11. Two full-time corporate employees were freed up to work on other tasks.

"This [e-mail] is a critical business system for us and we try to keep it as efficient as possible," Hedley said. Fairmont Hotels & Resorts also credits its internal e-mail system for helping to streamline operations. The www.myfairmont.com employee portal is part of Fairmont's unified network structure that fuels the chain's external www.fairmont.com portal, hotel guest www.thefairmont.net portal, and high-speed wired and wireless access to guests and employees. The employee portal not only allows associates to access e-mail, but they also can use the Web-based system to view guest information, retrieve data from the PMS, examine accounting records and more, said Vineet Gupta, v.p. of technology.

"Before, each hotel had its own system with different standards," Gupta said. "This helps enforce the same standards on one system."

Fairmont also is standardizing systems through internally managing and maintaining its own high-speed Internet service. When initially launched in 2001, the company outsourced the service to an Internet provider, but decided to take it in-house two years ago. Now, Fairmont funds the service and keeps 50 percent of the revenue derived from the $9.95 daily fees. The hotel owners keep the other half.

"We paid off our infrastructure costs and now we're actually making money from this initiative," Gupta said. hmm@advanstar.com

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