Lindeth Howe hotel drives revenue with Guestline


The property Overlooking Lake Windermere in the Lake District, Lindeth Howe is a four-star country house hotel with 32 rooms, a bar, a swimming pool and a newly-refurbished restaurant.


The challenge The hotel’s owners required a fully integrated property management and booking system with automated processes that would help them become more efficient and drive additional revenue. They didn’t want disparate systems from multiple suppliers.


The solution The hotel installed a number of Guestline products, including Rezlynx PMS, Distribution Manager and Online Booking Manager.


The outcome Since the system has been installed, occupancy has increased by over 11% year-on- year. The team boost room sales by creating promotions that can go live immediately and accessing more channels. There is more flexibility to open and close channels depending on performance. As the systems operate in real time, the hotel can sell down


ment technology are opting for cloud-based systems over legacy ones.”


Cloud-based PMSs are also increasingly being built on common web standards and open application program interfaces (APIs), which makes them more open to integration with external systems and mobile apps. Sanghi continues: “Since the modern PMS


is cloud-based and supports real-time integra- tion to a variety of third-party tools, they are used for a lot more than just hotel manage- ment today. All the property’s information flows through the system, and the data can be mined to provide the hotel’s administra- tion with valuable insights that enable further optimisation. He says revenue managers, for instance, can use pricing trends to compare their rates against the market and determine their performance, and whether they should increase or lower rates. Other examples include Guestline’s cloud- hosted PMS, Rezlynx, being able to interface with a third-party tool called GuestRevu, which can be used to automati- cally send hotel guests a customised email after checking out, encouraging them to send feedback as well as enabling them to post reviews directly to TripAdvi- sor. Properties using the software can see all the comments, but only the TripAdvisor reviews are public, providing the hotel with valuable feedback.


www.thecaterer.com Rezlynx also interfaces with third-party


ResDiary, offering hotels a cloud-based res- taurant reservation system for confirmed res- ervations, enquiries and table management.


MOBILE ACCESS


The delivery of PMS via the cloud has also made possible the shift to users accessing the system from their mobile devices – a major trend in the PMS space.


A key benefit of mobile access, according to


Kate Fuller, marketing manager at Guestline, is that property owners and managers can access their systems on any device at any loca- tion and see in real time how room sales are going for a particular day or what the rates are. “From a managerial perspective, mobile access allows managers to keep on top of oper- ations on the go and off-site,” she said. From an operational point of view, mobile access can improve the way information about services is shared across a hotel, especially if it is a large property or there are multiple sites. Maintenance and house- keeping teams, for example, can use a tab- let to tell the PMS sys- tem whether a room has been cleaned or to log any issues. Some hotels use mobile access to improve their check- in and check-out pro- cesses. In place of the


reception desk, staff can now greet guests in the foyer with a tablet device in hand.


to the last available room. They now only need to update their rates


once as the system automatically distributes them across all online channels. Prior to installing Guestline solutions, they used to manually update their rate card on 13 separate channels, which took one to two hours per day. General manager Alison Magee-Barker says:


“The system is multi-functional and has helped us improve the way we do things and the time it takes. This has resulted in significant business improvements and revenue gains, which we hope to continually take advantage of.”


GUEST SERVICE APPS


Of course, it is not just hotel staff who are turn- ing to mobile devices these days. Guests are also increasingly likely to interact with hotels through their smartphone. Messett at eviivo says a survey of 5,000 properties in the UK found that more than two-thirds of same-day room bookings came via a mobile device. This move towards mobile has given rise to the guest service app – third-party apps that integrate with PMSs and can be downloaded by guests to use from their smartphones. Guestline, for example, has integrated its


system with a concierge app called Butlerpad which, among other things, enables guests to book a table at a hotel restaurant, send a message to housekeeping, request room ser- vice or order a poolside drink – all from their phone. The latest app that Guestline has incor- porated is Keez, which allows guests to check in to their pre-assigned room and open their door, as well as order room service, all from their smart phone.


Different apps have different pricing models.


With some, guests are charged to download the app, while others are free but take a commis- sion on any services booked using them. Another example is Infor’s interface with an app called Hotelbird, which guests can download onto their phones and use to check in and check out as well as unlock the door to their room.


McIndoe at Infor says: “It can also be used to push offers to guests using real-time mar- keting. This isn’t for everyone but for tech- savvy, younger guests who are used to using their smartphones in this way, this kind of self-service is important in their stay.”


Technology Prospectus 2017 | 47


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