Johannesburg, 12 Feb 2002
South African hotel and resort management group Protea Hotels has contracted Cape Town-based e-business solutions provider Sys-Net to Web-enable its Progress Software-based central reservation office (CRO) system. Sys-Net has been a Progress independent software vendor (ISV) since 1989.
The project is the latest in a series of development, upgrade and customisation activities Sys-Net has undertaken for Protea Hotels since it developed the CRO system for Protea in 1990. At the time, the CRO system was required to automate reservations across 30 hotels. Today it manages bookings, customer relationship and marketing activities across 100 hotels and resorts worldwide, including the Aventura Resorts group.
The system has evolved from a basic system for receiving data obtained via incoming telephone calls to an advanced international marketing system that interfaces with all the major international travel agency systems such as Galileo, travel information syndicates such as Expedia, and major travel agency companies such as Rennies and Thompson`s Travel via a Progress WebSpeed-based extranet. Travel agents can check the availability of accommodation and access multi-currency pricing, linked to daily exchange rates, in a secure, password-driven environment. Protea Hotels receives 70% of its bookings electronically.
The system`s core activity and main benefit is to deliver Protea Hotels inventory to international markets and enable international bookings. Special customer relationship management (CRM) features include the ability to track travel agent booking patterns to identify key clients. Revenue management features enable revenue optimisation, while reporting features enable detailed statistical analysis. Powerful rates management features enable Protea Hotels to respond to changing market conditions quickly and easily by changing room rates and offering specials. Built-in checks and balances prevent erroneous rates at any point of contact, telephonic or online.
"By Web-enabling the system, we hope to meet the corporate market`s need for direct booking facilities as corporate clients establish in-house agencies to cut channel costs," says Bryan Mulliner, Protea`s group revenue manager. "Protea chose a bespoke system mainly because the only systems available at the time were expensive international products. Sys-Net`s system has delivered everything we required and more.
"The system empowers Protea to manage and market its accommodation offerings effectively and to manage its relationship with the owners of the hotels it manages by providing all the information and statistics needed to report back to them," says Mulliner.
"We chose the Progress application development environment and database specifically because of its ease of management and rapid development capabilities," says Jonathan Starke, MD of Sys-Net. "We developed the original CRO for Protea in two months, a record then and even now. With the introduction of Progress WebSpeed we were able to increase the effectiveness of the system by adding extranet capabilities so the client interface could reside on a Web-server at Protea`s ISP, yet connect to the database at head office."
WebSpeed is Progress`s integrated development environment for building and deploying highly scalable e-business applications that process large volumes of transactions at high speed.
"The Protea Hotels CRO system is a typical example of the flexibility, scalability and robustness of Progress Software," says Rick Parry, MD of Progress Software SA. "Sys-Net has shown exemplary innovation in its use of key Progress features to deliver a truly world-class system. The Web enablement project gives Sys-Net another opportunity to use Progress technology to guide Protea Hotels towards the broad benefits of e-commerce."
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