The property group opened with three apartment style hotels across Melbourne and an additional property located in Brisbane. The group offers fully furnished apartments for short stays where guests are looking for accommodation which differs from the traditional single room of a hotel. The properties offer room types from studios up to two bedroom apartments.
The group runs a small but busy central reservations office in Melbourne which still handles a significant volume of direct bookings, with the remainder of their bookings coming from their website (cityedge.com.au), various connected OTA’s and other travel agents.
Group Operations Manager, Boris Dias, selected GuestCentrix after a review of their operational systems in early 2015
The Challenge
As City Edge Apartments grow, and have strategic plans for future growth through acquisition and franchise, they needed a software system which offered them:
Scalability
- the ease of adding new properties without the need to build from scratch a new system every time
- as they are able to add new rooms and room types to existing properties they needed a system which could easily handle this process with ease
Central management
- A priority to be easily able to manage AR and outstanding debtors at the properties and across the property group
- An easy way to manage system users – one software access login for each user, with multi property access, and multi levels of user capability
- Cloud based to ensure the management could access the system from anywhere
Accounts Receivable
- Accurate financial recording to manage AR or debtors and sure the accounts are up to date
- Ability to manage AR and debtors ledger through the central office
- Reservations & Revenue Management
- A central booking office where reservations staff can easily switch between booking locations and easily identify properties which have accommodation available for the dates the guest requests
- Daily rates and yield management to ensure RevPar and ADR is maximised across the group
Business Intelligence
- The need to be able to review revenue and statistical information group wide, and a per property basis
- Guest information, to ensure they have enough information about the guest, their booking behaviour and their stay information to e-market the guests before and after the stay
The Solution
The core of the system is the GuestCentrix PMS which offers City Edge an easy to use system, information at their finger-tips and powerful rate and yield management, combined with accurate financial recording to ensure all debtors accounts are up to date and payments have been made.
GuestCentrix Central Solutions has company data, guest profiles and statistical records configured once, centrally. These records include Market Segment, Booking Source and Booking channels. When a new property is added, configuration time is limited to creating new room types and room records. All other data for new properties exists in the existing operating software
A system fully hosted in the GuestCentrix Cloud, removing the need for expensive servers on site has enabled City Edge to concentrate on running their accommodation business, not managing IT systems
GuestCentrix E-Messaging is used to enable City Edge to better communicate with their guests, either before, during or after the guest stay. Guest profiles for emailing are selected for communication based on property location, source of booking, or in arrival / departure / in-house dates
GuestCentrix Channel Interface connecting PMS to Levart has allowed for a direct booking engine to be configured on the group website, and bookings to flow into the PMS without delay. Levart also acts as the groups channel manager and enables City Edge Apartments to select and choose the OTA’s of choice for their market place and position
Finally, GuestCentrix Yield & Web Interface Manager (GCWIM) is deployed, which ensures the properties can set daily rates in the PMS and to the online channel, easily hold rooms back from online channels, and create yield rules, to ensure revenue, ADR and RevPar is maximised within the group
Roy McCullagh, General Manager, CMS Hospitality said:
- “City Edge is typical of the style of independent hotel group who is looking to centrally manage their systems. City Edge have leveraged our experience in software development, and are profiting from this experience. We know they would rather concentrate on managing a growing apartment hotel group than managing their IT”
- “When we listened to Boris and his team of the issues that were being experienced before GuestCentrix, we knew immediately we had a solution that was stable and functional”
- “When Boris needs to add a new property, there is almost no additional training required for his team, as this is now done all in house. The new hotel system can be up and running in a matter of days”
Boris Dias, Group Operations Manager, City Edge Apartments adds:
- “Having GuestCentrix as a partner has made our operations run much smoother. From the outset, it was always the owners plan to grow the business, either by direct managing or growing as a franchise. Our historical issues with chasing debtors across the group has vanished with GuestCentrix. We now know who owes us money, what it relates to, and how much they owe – accurately”
- “The GuestCentrix PMS AR module ensures our accounts receivable team can accurately manage all debtor accounts quickly. Our debtor accounts are now reconciled without any delays
GCWIM has assisted us to maximise our revenue and yield our rates ensuring REVPAR and our ADR is maximised. It is easy to speak to the support team should we need assistance with the software” - “With GuestCentrix as the heart of the operation means that we don’t have to worry about building new systems when we open a new property. We contact GuestCentrix and they can have a new database of the new property ready for us for when we need to use the system to take booking s before the site is open”