CRS Sets The Stage

Developments in reservations technology prepare hotels for future innovations.

By Joan Marsan, Technology Editor -- HOTELS Magazine, 7/1/1999

Developments in central reservations systems have seemed

slow moving and silent recently, but only in the sense

that the earth's plates move unnoticed until they meet,

crusts crumbling as the earth quakes.

Software developers have been steadily programming CRS

system changes that could enable some of the hotel industry's

greatest marketing advancements. Until now, the potential

of any system has been limited by users' inability to

operate within it efficiently, to transfer data from

the CRS to the PMS, and to communicate reservations and

alterations promptly. But the advent of Internet-based

systems, PMS/CRS interfaces and three-tier architecture,

along with the increasing sophistication of graphical

user interfaces (GUIs), high-speed communications, and

clean, accessible data sources has expanded CRS potential.

CRSs are opening up data mining opportunities while decreasing

labor and communications costs.

New CRS systems are allowing hoteliers

to explore what the Internet offers as a central reservations

backbone. And while the idea of the PMS and CRS functioning

as one system in the ether of the Internet is still

more fiction than fact, clearly a new generation of

CRS technology is in the making. This new generation,

with its increased data collection and storage capabilities,

could spawn a creative range of applications for customer

information, says John Burns, president, Hospitality

Technology Consulting, Scottsdale, Arizona. "That's the cloud of either

threat or opportunity on the horizon,"Burns says.

Striking Similarities

"There are fewer and fewer differences between

CRSs," Burns says. Most have a three-tier client-server

architecture. Systems increasingly use TCP/IP protocols

for communication between properties, running on PCs

with direct connections to the Internet rather than relying

on dial-up connections. And they use the speed and complexity

that their architecture and connectivity styles allow

to run attractive GUIs.

The systems are becoming standardized enough that they

may seem to lack innovation. But entertaining the idea

that these systems are tediously similar would be short-sighted;

they are no less revolutionary for their standardization.

One incorporating all of these features has, in fact,

been installed in the United States' premier museum of

history and culture, the Smithsonian National Museum

of American History. The museum, noting the magnitude

of technology's movement towards standardization, acquired

Carlson Hospitality's Curtis C CRS.

Curtis C, employing a three-tier architecture, is the

archetypal CRS. The system's powerhouse is its single

Oracle database, warehousing Curtis C and PMS transactions,

key account information, hotel information, report summaries,

and extensive guest service profiles. A logic platform,

the second layer of the three-tier structure, provides

the means for access to the database from the GUI. The

GUI is the top layer, the tier with which users interact.

Curtis C incorporates several GUIs, including a Web reservation

site, a toll-free access system, GDS reservation interfaces,

an accounting system, and a guest communications manager.

Curtis C's architecture offers many advantages. The

uniform data structure ensures fast, easy, accurate access

to data. The standardized platform enables rapid deployment

of new capabilities at reduced cost. And the GUIs make

use of the applications intuitive, even for novices.

GUIs make it easy for regular users to envision creative--and

possibly profitable--adjustments or even new functionality

for systems.

All of these facets come together

in a system that helps to serve a company shifting

its customer focus. "In

the middle of the project, we changed from a focus of

delivering customer volume to delivering customer relationships," says

Scott Heintzeman, vice president of knowledge technologies,

Carlson Hospitality Worldwide. The new Curtis C system

provides round-the-clock access to consistent and detailed

customer information to every reservationist who interacts

with those customers. In so doing, it assists employees

as they strive to meet Carlson's dictum of relating in

an informed, customer-specific way with each potential

guest.

Customer Information Is Key

As with Curtis C, the newest CRS packages support hoteliers'

attempts to learn more about their customers and profit

from their distinct preferences. They retain all guest-specific

transaction information and make that content readily

accessible to employees as they interact with customers

during future transactions. The MICROS-Fidelio enterprise

system, Opera, draws together customer data gathered

from a multitude of sources--the CRS, the PMS and HotelBank,

a link to the GDSs--and consolidates the information

in a single database. The breadth and specificity of

the data collected allows previously unimagined applications.

"Once a guest has stayed at a property, their frequent

flier plans, their credit card information, their likes

and dislikes, their key drivers--room type, if they like

low-floor rooms with pool views--it's all in the system," says

Joseph Martino, vice president of central systems business

development, MICROS-Fidelio. Every other property linked

to the system can access this content through the Customer

Information System (CIS) via the CRS, giving hoteliers

the ability to promote to customers with respect to their

preferences. About 125 Scandic Hotels use the CIS to

manage frequent stay benefits. Return guests are issued

vouchers for free stays, and the CIS tracks how many

free nights are awarded, how many are consumed, the number

of outstanding vouchers, and the effectiveness of the

program in reaching and satisfying guests.

Two-Way Streets

While the CIS steals the show, its serviceability depends

entirely on a behind-the-scenes stagehand, the two-way

interface. While CRSs have downloaded information reliably

to properties for years, few have made use of the storehouse

of data in hotels' PMSs. Two-way interfaces allow the

CRSs to do just that, and their development has been

integral to the development of customer-specific databases.

A distinctive interface incorporated

in Hilton's new HILSTAR CRS allows not only the transfer

of customer information between the CRS and PMS, but

also a seamless availability display, whereby users

can view multiple rate categories rather than standard

rates. The interface, by REZsolutions, was developed

for a standards-based world, says Ray Kopsa, vice president

of Internet strategy, and uses a format incorporated

in REZsolution's standard-setting "Barnacle" interface.

While the unofficial name of the

interface, Kopsa says, makes the programmers chuckle,

it's also apt. "The

interface is based on the plankton through the whale

model," Kopsa says. The REZsolutions CRS can accept

a multitude of transactions because they are transferred

in a language that delivers them in bite-sized pieces.

By using a simple, standard message format, extensible

mark-up language (XML), the interface allows direct message

transfers from third-party systems. Through Barnacle,

transactions can be easily transferred between CRS, PMS

and GDS. And the language, formats and protocols are

familiar to Web programmers. "We want to finish

in a standards-based world," Kopsa says. "In

the longer term, it allows many more direct connections

to third parties. It's to everybody's advantage."

Cutting Costs

Standards are to everybody's advantage

in more ways than one. The emerging standard of a Web-based

CRS format allows enhanced GUIs, which allow users

to easily interact with the reservations system whether

the user is an employee at a reservations center, a

travel agent or a Web surfer. "The

whole objective is to create a system that makes the

hotel more efficient and profitable," says Girish

Shah, senior vice president, Hospitality Solutions International

(HSI), Phoenix, Arizona. And intuitive interfaces add

value to the Web-based systems.

"The GUI is very important," says

Eric Barcelo, information systems director, Allegro

Resorts Corp., Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Reservation

agents change every one to two months, Barcelo says,

and HSI's Falcon CRS offers a user-friendly GUI that

has cut training times from two full days to less than

one half day per agent, saving the company approximately

US$2,000 per month. The enhancement of the Carlson

Hospitality CRS interface eased training and thereby

decreased costs and increased profitability as well.

Including training hours, central reservation office

workers, handling about 21,000 calls per day, have

achieved an average US$1,256 in sales per paid hour,

reports Chris Brosnahan, general manager of world reservation

services, Carlson Hospitality Worldwide.

Enhanced Communication

Internet-based applications have

enabled the development of sophisticated GUIs, and

they've enhanced the transfer of information between

properties. "We're now linking

names and reservations across properties," says

Peter Flack, managing director of technology, Best Western. "We

couldn't do that before because we didn't take addresses.

It was too time-consuming."

Best Western's ability to begin identifying return customers

for data mining purposes comes from new, Web-based CRS

technology and VSAT-enabled, high-speed data transfers.

Best Western guarantees delivery of reservations from

the CRS within 30 minutes. To achieve this in the past,

properties swallowed escalating telephone costs, calling

in repeatedly to check for reservations. But replacing

terrestrial dial-up modems with Hughes Network Systems'

VSAT network has reduced costs by allowing Best Western

to consolidate multiple communications into one. While

the VSAT network was adopted primarily as a way to speed

CRS/PMS communications, it also handles credit card transactions,

eliminating the need for an additional dedicated phone

line.

"The new CRS systems are lowering telecommunication

costs," agrees Bob Bennett, practice leader for

information technology, hospitality and leisure group,

PriceWaterhouseCoopers. "There's not a bold forecast

for reservation systems," he says. "But the

systems are moving more and more to browser-based applications,

easier to manage at the property level, and with two-way

interfaces, allowing full data exchange. As CRSs move

to the Internet, we'll see one system that combines both--PMS

and CRS in one."