Austria Trend Hotels & Resorts – Austria’s hotel group and a division of Osterreichische Verkehrsburo AG – has chosen protel hotelsoftware GmbH as its new software partner to equip the 25 Austria Trend Hotels & Resorts…
Austria Trend Hotels & Resorts – Austria’s hotel group and a division of Osterreichische Verkehrsburo AG – has chosen protel hotelsoftware GmbH as its new software partner to equip the 25 Austria Trend Hotels & Resorts. The installation is a true Multi Property solution, which will be used by all the establishments in Austria Trend Hotels & Resorts Group, i.e. the 17 city hotels in Vienna, the 6 hotels in the provincial capitals of Salzburg, Linz, Graz and St. Polten in addition to two resort hotels in Fieberbrunn and Kitzbuhel.
Even before the end of this year, the software is to be installed in three hotels. By late-2006, all 25 hotels, which belong to the four- and five-star category and which vary in size from 54 to 534 rooms, will be working with protel MPE (Multi Property Edition).
The decision in favour of protel MPE was taken by the board of Osterreichische Verkehrsburo AG. Wolfgang Baier, head of the IT technology & purchasing department said of protel: “We were impressed by the high technical standard, the stability and the sheer user friendliness of protel. We were particularly pleased about how protel can cater to our specific requirements and workflows in a customer-oriented and flexible fashion. We were so won over by the scope of services protel presented to us that we decided to change provider. In particular, no other provider comes close to offering the same facility that permits the central administration of our databases and, as such, central reservation, central marketing and reporting.”
Manfred Osthues, managing director of protel hotelsoftware GmbH reports: “We are proud of our cooperation with Osterreichische Verkehrsburo and, quite naturally, we are delighted about our success in asserting ourselves against such stiff competition. As part of the selection procedure spanning almost one year, Osterreichische Verkehrsburo researched the international IT market intensively for solutions and sounded it out with regard to special requirements. The administration of central databases is an integral component of the new IT strategy of Austria Trend Hotels. We are also especially delighted about the thoroughly positive feedback from our customers, who are already working with protel MPE and who were available to act as references within the scope of this decision-making procedure. protel MPE is an internationally recognised product, which has already been tested in numerous applications, and which also offers the same high level of reliability for which all protel systems are known.”
In future, all data of all the hotels will be administered centrally at the head office of Austria Trend Hotels & Resorts in Vienna. All the modules of the protel product suite are to be used, i.e. besides protel Front Office and protel Bankett, protel Sales & Marketing in particular is of special interest to the head office of Austria Trend Hotels & Resorts.
protel MPE: the central data management for hotel chains and cooperations
The basis of the protel MPE software concept deployed by Austria Trend Hotels & Resorts is constituted by a joint SQL database, in which all the Hotels & Resorts store their data. Both the head office and the hotels have direct, online access to this central database. The ability to store data centrally made possible by protel MPE offers hotel chains and cooperations greater flexibility and efficiency in many areas. Thanks to the central guest card index, which is used by all the establishments, the volume of data is reduced and the guest information can be used by all the hotels participating in the chain and cooperation for creating added value. protel MPE permits central reservation, central marketing and central reporting and, as such, the central control and monitoring of all the activities, revenues and evaluations.
A protel WBE (Web Booking Engine), which permits Internet reservation in real-time and without transaction costs, is used in all the hotels and at the head office, and is integrated into the website. A hotel-wide reservation enquiry function searches in all the hotels simultaneously. To perform this search, protel WBE uses the central guest card index in protel MPE, meaning that the guest is automatically known in all the hotels of the group.
The technology of protel MPE is truly forward looking – protel MPE is not launched locally, but on a central computer. And the PCs connected in the individual hotels do not transfer data in the true sense, but merely changes to screen contents. This does not require any costly data lines. In most cases, the existing hardware can still be used. The central computer system should, however, depending on the concept, be designed as a “high availability system”. The system for creating data backups is also organised centrally, making it both reliable and cost–efficient.
In addition to Austria Trend Hotels & Resorts, other major international hotel operations work with protel MPE. These include the Paramount Group of Hotels (UK), the largest Greek hotel chain Grecotel (GR) and the Arcotels (e.g. in Berlin, Zagreb, Prague, Vienna), among others.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
