Seminar explores how integrated IT can help hospitality industry improve both service and profit
HONG KONG, March 15 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Systems integration is changing the hospitality industry in important ways for owners, operators and guests alike. It's enabling travelers to check-in using their smart phones (and will soon put room-key functions on them, allowing guests to bypass front desk formalities completely). Designed for a more wireless world, integration is driving lighter, yet much richer applications -- increasingly hosted off property -- dramatically improving guest services while providing powerful tools to help owners and operators improve returns.
It's putting more services in handheld devices, changing the way reservations are made, shrinking distribution costs, eliminating conflicts, and routing more sales through hotel websites -- shifting control of room inventory from third-party wholesalers back to hotels.
These game-changing hotel and restaurant applications ushered in by systems integration will be extensively covered in a series of presentations by MICROS-Fidelio on March 18. The event is designed to help operators make their businesses more competitive and profitable -- and better at enhancing customer experience so guests come back again and again.
MICROS-Fidelio executives will explain how property management systems (PMS), point of sale (POS) technology, customer relationship management (CRM) and other tools interact in real time to put more usable information in the hands of owners and operators, and guests alike.
Hotel systems
Michael Ferrier, Senior Vice President, Hotel Systems, MICROS-Fidelio Asia Pacific, whisked through some key points he'll be addressing in the hotel session.
-- On room inventory: "Pre-integration, hotels handed out blocks of
inventory to wholesalers at fixed rates on yearly contracts and watched
any unsold basically go to waste. With integration between PMS and
electronic sales channels (GDS, ADS, and Internet), hotels can open up
inventory to anyone prepared to sell rooms at the hotel's prescribed
rate within agreed periods or based on the hotel's yield strategy.
Similarly, integration enables hotels to take ownership of inventory
back so they're not reliant on third parties to sell their product."
-- On reducing channel costs: "The least-cost sales channel is the hotel's
own branded internet site, so why not use it? MICROS-Fidelio provides
services which allow the hotel's web designer to interact in real time
with inventory in the PMS or central reservation system: A potential
guest in New York searching for inventory in Hong Kong has exactly the
same access to the reservation agent sitting in the hotel's reservation
department. The other advantage is the hotel owns the relationship, not
a third party, so it can tailor the reservation process to capture
information about the guest, inform the guest about services provided
by the hotel, and maximize revenue opportunities by allowing the guest
to purchase additional products or services."
-- On rate integrity: "Integration between the CRS or PMS and the hotel's
electronic sales channels, helps guarantee rate integrity and ensure
the best rate your customer will get is on your website."
-- On system deployment: "Chains have to ensure corporate and property
infrastructure match up. Even now, you see chains standardizing the PMS
but not the point of sale because they increasingly see point of sale
systems as a commodity. However, integrating the PMS and point of sale
allows hotels to share guest profile and preference information, and
recognize the true value of guests by capturing consumption data for
non-resident guests, or guests paying by cash or credit card in the
outlets. Without this level of integration, only consumption charged
to the guest folio would normally be attributed to the guest history
record."
-- On IT trends impacting guests: "The most visible changes the
hospitality industry will see is the shift to handheld technology
MICROS is already trialing MyStayManager, a hosted software application
that allows guests to use their smart phones to manage their
reservations, check in, check out, order up room service, book a
treatment in the spa or make a dinner reservation in the restaurant,
and soon even to unlock their doors."
-- On IT behind the scenes: "Hotels will be moving more IT off-site to
MICROS-Fidelio or other hosted data centers to streamline processes,
reduce costs, minimize risk and, most important, ensure compliance with
payment card industry data security standards (PCI-DSS) to reduce risk
of guest data being compromised. Fee-based software as a service (SaaS)
is now a huge part of what we do and our product strategy moving
forward. Close to 50% of our PMS sites are now 'above property' in a
MICROS-Fidelio or third party data centre facility, and we have plans
to release a true SaaS PMS product designed specifically for the
limited service market. MICROS-Fidelio will also be rolling out more
products as 'hosted services' -- like MyStayManager which is also
provided on a subscription basis -- again using the 'utility' model
increasingly adopted by industry and services globally."
Point of Sale Systems
Previewing his session on POS technology's impact on hotels, restaurants and other venues, Michael Sacks, Vice President, Point of Sales Solutions (Hospitality Division), MICROS-Fidelio Asia Pacific, predicted more web-based solutions will be coming across the board.
For restaurants and other venues, that will take "a lot of the working parts" out of the store. "After that, all that is required is connectivity between the POS system at the store level and the MICROS-Fidelio hosted solution," Sacks said, before running down his shortlist of key trends:
-- On better analytics: "'Above-store' POS are changing the way systems
are implemented and more management applications are being added in the
above-store cloud. The quality of general management reporting and the
facility these applications give you to drill down into the sales data
is unmatched. "We developed a comprehensive cube of data with a
graphical user interface that allows a manager, regional manager or
owner to look at all different sides of the cube. So if you want to see
top menu item sales for lunches, for example, you can select days or
weeks or a combination of dates from a very user-friendly calendar. You
can create different views of the data in near real time because data
is uploaded every 15 minutes. From an owner's perspective, it allows an
instant enterprise view of overall sales, and the ability to drill into
sales at any time. From a manager's perspective, it gives real clarity
to what's happening at the employee level; or what's happening at the
meal period level. In most Asian operations, where multiple waiters
handle the same tables, sales-per-employee data isn't applicable. That
said, you could still see different views of employees' voided
transactions, discounts and other items that are useful from an
auditing standpoint."
-- On web order integration: "MICROS-Fidelio is now trialing an online
application that links a restaurant chain's website with MICROS-
Fidelio's online order engine, and in turn interfaces with the chain's
POS. When an order goes in, mapping software identifies the nearest
restaurant (that's open), and once it's confirmed, that order is
immediately posted to the store's POS system. This is matched with an
iPhone app for those who want to order on the go."
-- On local customization: "Because hotel restaurants here are more
popular with locals than in other parts of the world, POS systems
require integration to table management & restaurant reservations
systems which enable operators to take reservations and service
restaurant customers as well as hotel guests."
-- On lighter IT: "Our next generation POS solution is developed with
service-oriented architecture (SOA), making it lighter at the site
level, and eliminating the dependency on property-based servers. We'll
host POS from our hosting center and all that will be required at the
hotel or restaurant level will be a router, terminals, and printers.
There will be no degradation of service if the internet connection goes
down. The only thing you'll lose is enterprise-level consolidation of
reporting -- which is restored once the internet connection comes back.
-- On minimizing upfront investment and staffing: "With Software as a
Service (SaaS) in the future, you'll sign a two-year contract with a
monthly fee. The burden of IT management, compliance and other
headaches is passed on to the vendor, which restaurants especially
should welcome. It's always been a challenge for owners to deal with
ongoing IT issues because restaurant managers typically don't have
strong IT skills. On the hotel side, SaaS will allow some consolidation
and overall savings by reducing property-based requirements for IT
staff. For hotel groups, the emphasis can then be placed on regional
pooling of resources."
Payment speedway
Seminar attendees will also hear about the latest in integrated payment technology. For hotels, the MICROS Payment Gateway (MPG) offers dynamic currency conversion (DCC), improves staff productivity, speeds up check-in, and eliminates risk of double entry or any need for manual reconciliation, giving both guests and operators peace of mind, not to mention increased DCC revenue for the hotel. For restaurants, MPG does all of those things, plus increases table turnover by allowing card payment at any MICROS POS workstation, or indeed right at the table.
Solutions Day March 18
Carmen Lam, Managing Director of MICROS-Fidelio Hong Kong, said she expected the Solutions Day seminar to draw a mix of professionals -- IT people, operational people, marketing people, general managers, perhaps 130-150 in all.
"This is not an event where we'll lecture people about what cables to use to put networks together," Lam said. "It's a solutions day. It's about running a hospitality business in today's economy with state-of-the-art solutions." And so presentations will be framed to help attendees answer some very basic questions: "How do you make use of all the integrated systems from MICROS and our partners? How can these help you run your business better, make more money and help you serve your customers better? And on the other side of the coin, how can you increase productivity to reap more profit?"
About MICROS-Fidelio Hong Kong Ltd.
MICROS-Fidelio Hong Kong Ltd., is a wholly-owned subsidiary of MICROS Systems, Inc., which provides enterprise applications for the hospitality and retail industries worldwide. Over 310,000 MICROS systems are currently installed in table and quick service restaurants, hotels, motels, casinos, leisure and entertainment, and retail operations in more than 130 countries, and on all seven continents. In addition, MICROS provides property management systems, central reservation and customer information solutions under the brand MICROS-Fidelio for more than 25,000 hotels worldwide, as well as point-of-sale and loss prevention products through its subsidiary Datavantage for more than 79,000 specialty retail stores worldwide. MICROS stock is traded through NASDAQ under the symbol MCRS.
For more information on MICROS-Fidelio seminar and MICROS enterprise solutions for the hospitality industry, please contact:
Sandra Pang (+852 2540 6872; +852 9077 7001)
Issued by: Pronto Communications
Tel: +852-2540-6872
Fax: +852-2116-0189
Email: prontopr@pacific.net.hk
