Gone are the days of queuing at reception and in are the days of self-service and ultimate convenience. At the new Village Hotel in Glasgow, that means being able to book your room online, checking yourself in, using services like the hotel's Health & Fitness club, Starbucks or restaurant and being emailed your bill after your stay.
The Village Hotel in Glasgow – the latest addition to the 28-hotel strong British chain – opened its doors on 13 July with an impressive range of fitness club and spa service offers. The technology behind this new level of self-service and convenience has been provided by hetras, which offers hotels a cutting-edge cloud-based hotel management platform. hetras's technology package includes a property management and central reservation system and allows hotels to manage all aspects of a guest's stay – from booking to billing – online.
"Primarily we want to allow our customers to move at their own pace through the guest journey by offering mobile solutions", explains Rob Paterson, Commercial Director of Village Hotels. "By automating administrational tasks, we are shifting our teams focus from a computer screen to the customer. The project has given us an opportunity to challenge all our policies and procedures and redesign them to fit with the fast changing world of hotel technology. Agility is our aim in all aspects of our approach of the guest journey in a dynamic, exciting market like Glasgow."
Ultimate convenience
Every single aspect of a stay at the Glasgow Village Hotel can be managed online – the ultimate experience when it comes guest convenience and flexibility. OTAs are managed by hetras’s integrated Channel Manager, the hotel’s Internet Booking Engine (IBE) is empowered by hetras. Guests are excited to use self-service kiosks to check in while being assisted by Village’s friendly staff.
The chain is also about to launch a mobile app provided by hetras that will make booking even easier and will allow the guest enter the room using the smartphone. The Glasgow Village Hotel is already enjoying its first successes with OTAs after shooting from 0 to the top of the list on tripadvisor in within a week.
"hetras are a like-minded organization with a strong focus on simplicity and technology. hetras have proven history in the industry of innovation together with some very good brands", further explains Rob Paterson the hotel's decision of opting for hetras as its software partner, "and hetras was able to create the mobile concept for the opening within 6 weeks."
The ultimate in guest-centricity
Village Hotels are widely known for their extensive in-house facilities, which include Health & Fitness clubs, spas and various coffee shops and restaurants. All of the purchases made at them are managed by hetras's cloud-based platform and charged to the room. hetras's Business Intelligence system can furthermore be used to analyze guests' data after their stay to identify potential areas for optimization.
After the successful opening of the Glasgow hotel, Philip von Ditfurth, Managing Director at hetras, congratulated Village Hotels "on a fully booked property and on a concept, which emphasizes the guest experience without compromise."
Picture: Village Hotels
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