Timo Kettern, IT Director for Westbridge Europe brings up a few good points in his guest post on www.tnooz.com. I would agree with many of his points. Most brands focus on distribution and standards that improve the distribution of hotel rooms. That’s all great as it ultimately will help increase the overall number of bookings on one hand. However on the other hand it complicates on property services to a large extend. Hotels are forced to invest in technology not always state of the art, yes it does integrate with the brands CRS and loyalty system, but that’s mostly the end of it. Because of the required integration with the brands systems, hotels are limited in the technology they can select, it often comes at a high cost, and introducing for example new self service opportunities becomes difficult. Long certification rounds and brand control, make it difficult to quickly and cost effectively connect a self service or social app to the hotels technology system.
Now is a good time for brands to review and find a way to not only add value to a hotels distribution but also provide for easy integration to property based systems, self service solutions,if implemented well can help hotel increase the guest value per stay.
