Mountain Hotel replaces cloud-based software of an older generation with hetras
Kevin Obschlager and Sarah Keller, owners and managers of The River House Boutique Hotel, only last year implemented an earlier-generation cloud-based hotel system. “hetras has shown what professional cloud-based software can do. The speed is impressive, the connectivity really works and the service provided by the hetras team is absolutely first class. We are convinced we made the right choice with hetras.”
The implementation itself was carried out over just a few days. Part of the task was to migrate data from the old system to hetras, which the hetras team pulled off without a hitch. A second part of the implementation involved the configuration and testing of interfaces including point-of-sale (GKS Orderman) and Reconline. The Reconline interface, recently released by hetras, connects hotels to the Swiss Travel Centre which operates booking sites for Swissair, Swiss Rail (www.sbb.ch) and myswitzerland.com, the official Switzerland tourism website. Though the training of the staff could have been done entirely via the internet, the hotel preferred a personal touch and so hetras sent a small team on-site to train the staff and monitor the cut-over.
The hotel staff continues to use their existing Apple hardware. No additional hardware or software was required. A log-in and password is all that’s necessary to use true cloud-based software.
“The River House stands for high touch personal service for our guests. But we still appreciate automation of tasks wherever it makes sense. With hetras in place, we know that our most important channels have up-to-date rates and availability, we know that all details from every reservation is in hetras before the guest arrives and we know that the invoice upon check-out is up-to-date” added Obschager.
The River House will soon have more company in the luxury hotel sector in Andermatt. The quiet town of 1,300 people located close to the Gotthard Oberalp ski region is on the cusp of a major change. A EUR 1.5 billion expansion of the town, including new luxury hotels planned by Andermatt Swissalps and a new ski area run by SkiStar is currently under construction.
Marc Fries, director of operations at hetras, added “I’m proud of how rapidly we have progressed as a company. Our R&D team is capable of developing a new interface in a matter of days and our implementation team is able to fully implement a hotel in a matter of hours. Being a Swiss citizen, I’m also proud that we have our first customer in Switzerland.”
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