Fairmont Centralizes Group Reservations With Passkey
Passkey makes booking technology available across Fairmont’s global portfolio.
-- Hotels, 4/18/2008 1:47:00 PM
Fairmont Hotels & Resorts has deployed Passkey’s online group reservation solution as a brand standard across its entire portfolio, making it the first hotel group in the world to do so. The implementation gives Fairmont meeting planners consistent group booking capabilities across the portfolio in a centralized way, taking pressure off property-level sales personnel to coordinate large-scale reservations while also giving meetings planners a much-appreciated alternative to the online requests for proposals.
“Each event is built online using Passkey centrally, at Fairmont headquarters in Toronto, and they manage the reservations there. They are telling their properties, ‘Don’t worry about the group reservations—just manage your property,” says Sam Fahmy, vice president of products and marketing for Passkey. Meeting planners thus get a consistent experience regardless of which Fairmont property they book at.
The Passkey system allows Fairmont to customize each group’s program to create the ideal setting for events. Each group gets its own dedicated Web site for event attendees to manage their reservations online. The event planners, meanwhile, can track real-time room inventory and reservations status. Reservations are automatically transferred to the Fairmont central reservation system through a two-way live interface.
Along with the Fairmont deployment, Passkey is being implemented at the property level across all of IHG’s Crowne Plaza and InterContinental brands, as well as at several large Holiday Inns in North America, Fahmy says. “Online group reservations is not as sexy as Wi-Fi or new beds, because it is reservations—how exciting is that?” Fahmy admits. “But in terms of value-added, it’s a lot more exciting than a lot of these amenities because it results in real benefits for hotels.”
The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino has been on the Passkey system for more than a year. But it was not until last summer, when Passkey added the Smart Alerts functionality, that the hotel’s group supervisor, Bethany Chrysler, realized the full impact of eliminating the traditional RFP model. With Smart Alerts, hoteliers can configure the software to notify staff if and when certain reservations thresholds are met, assuring that inventory is always on the mark. Before Smart Alerts, Chrysler had to wait for a room block to sell out before assessing inventory and rates. “But now, there’s less urgency,” she says. “We can pre-plan a lot better.”
“We really utilize the Smart Alerts—that’s actually how I monitor my events to make sure there are plenty of rooms available and that we’re setting the right rates,” Chrysler says. “We are definitely giving our guests better service.”
For more information, visit passkey.com.
No related content found.
View All Podcasts
