Hospitality Technology
International (Pty) Ltd

Newsletter - July 2009

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Humour for the day!

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What Exactly Is Marriage?

Perhaps difficult enough for adults to define, this question received some interesting responses from those of a younger generation...

"Marriage is when you get to keep your girl and don't have to give her back to her parents"
- Eric, AGE 6

"When somebody's been dating for a while, the boy might propose to the girl. He says to her, 'I'll take you for a whole life, or at least until we have kids and get divorced, but you got to do one particular thing for me.' Then she says yes, but she's wondering what the thing is and whether it's naughty or not. She can't wait to find out."
- Anita, AGE 9

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - How Does a Person Decide Whom to marry??

"You flip a nickel, and heads means you stay with him and tails means you try the next one."
- Kelly, AGE 9

"My mother says to look for a man who is kind... That's what I'll do... I'll find somebody who's kinda tall and handsome."
- Carolyn, AGE 8

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Concerning the Proper Age to Get Married.

"Eighty-four Because at that age, you don't have to work anymore, and you can spend all your time loving each other in your bedroom."
- Carolyn, AGE 8

"Once I'm done with kindergarten, I'm going to find a wife"
- Bert, AGE 5

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - How Did Your Mom and Dad Meet?

"They were at a dance party at a friend's house. Then they went for a drive, but their car broke down... It was a good thing, because it gave them a chance to find out about their values."
- Lottie, AGE 9

"My father was doing some strange chores for my mother. They won't tell me what kind."
- Jeremy, AGE 8

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - What Do Most People Do on a Date?

"On the first date, they just tell each other lies, and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date."
- Martin, AGE 10

"Many daters just eat pork chops and french fries and talk about love."
- Craig, AGE 9

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - When Is It Okay to Kiss Someone?

"You should never kiss a girl unless you have enough bucks to buy her a ring and her own VCR, because she'll want to have videos of the wedding."
- Allan, AGE 10

"Never kiss in front of other people. It's a big embarrassing thing if anybody sees you... If nobody sees you, I might be willing to try it with a handsome boy, but just for a few hours."
- Kally, AGE 9

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Great Debate: Is It Better to Be Single or Married??

"You should ask the people who read Cosmopolitan"
- Kirsten, AGE 10

"It's better for girls to be single but not for boys. Boys need somebody to clean up after them"
- Anita, AGE 9

"It gives me a headache to think about that stuff. I'm just a kid. I don't need that kind of trouble."
- Will, AGE 7

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The Hole in One Club

We would like to congratulate Andre Richards, MD of eRes Development, for an astonishing hole in one recently.

You might be wondering why it is so astonishing? The reason being is that he doesn't play all that often and it was as a guest at the most renowned new golf course in South Africa - Blair Atholl.

We all know that Andre is calm and collected, but come on...

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HTI in association with...

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Some of our Distribution partners include these travel and marketing portals...













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Breaking News

City Lodge Group and Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife Moving to eRes®

For almost five years, HTI has been the service supplier of eRes® to the Reshub clients at GijimaAST. Recently the Reshub has signed two new members, who will be moving across to eRes® in the next few months.

The City Lodge Group of hotels is scheduled to go live with eRes® as their new booking engine and GroupView to manage their loyalty program. Also on board with the Reshub is Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, who will be rolling out the full suite of HTI products through the Reshub.

HTI is looking forward to working with both of these organizations and adding them to the distinguished list of "companies we keep".

                                                               

eRes® User Group Meeting 2009 - Don't Miss this one!

eRes® Development has planned the 2009 User Group meeting for the afternoon of Thursday the 10th September, in Johannesburg. The venue is still to be confirmed but it will be in the Sandton / Woodmead area. You don't want to miss this one...

Support Report

HTI Welcomes...

It's been a very busy time for HTI Operations! Between new projects, new releases and new staff, everyone is in motion.

We're pleased to introduce two new members to the Support and Installation Team. Edrich de Beer has joined us at head office in Rivonia, while John Dyer will be Durban/ KZN based. Edrich comes to us with strong operations experience in both Rooms Division and Food & Beverage, whereas John has worked with eRes® and has a background in training, courtesy of the SA Defense Force. Both are currently busy in training under the tutelage of Jeanine, and both seem to be enjoying it tremendously. We'll be curious to hear how Jeanine's technique measures up against those of the military!

Also new to HTI is Maxie Palmer. Maxie has joined our Accounts Department will initially be focused on Debtors. She may have already been in touch, as we're less than a month away from the renewal of operating licenses. We will only be issuing full licenses to those users whose accounts are up to date, so if you anticipate any issues on your account, please contact Maxie in our Accounts office directly, and she will be happy to assist.

Mpumie Ngcobo has also recently joined eRes® Development. Mpumie will be a huge help to Joel in 'testing and documentation'. She brings with her impressive credentials and will be a great addition to the eRes® Development team.

            
Mpumie Ngcobo                                                Edrich de Beer

Other support messages

We would just like to convey a few suggestions to HTI customers this month:

Support Email
Please be aware that all consultants are required to out of the office at one time or another and hence individual consultants may not be available to assist you with your support query, particularly via their personal email address. If you have a support query and would like to correspond via email, as opposed to phoning the support centre, then please use the universal support mail address to ensure that your query reaches all available consultants. This email address is support@hti-systems.co.za. Thank you!

Upgrade Interface
In the next two months or so, HTI will be upgrading all of our Apex PMS customers to the latest version (v1.15), if they have not already been upgraded. Within this version we have added a new 'upgrade interface' which will automatically download the new release from our servers every time we load a new release. This will mean that a consultant can then easily dial into the property the next morning and quickly perform an upgrade on your application.

New Apex Manual
A new Apex manual is available and it will soon be available for download from our website.
If you require the manual urgently, please don't hesitate to contact one of our support consultants.

Product Spotlight

Apex Enhancement - Banqueting Floor Plan...

Below is a brief snippet of what is coming in Apex in September. The user will have the ability to plan the arrangement within the function room. The plan can be graphically displayed and this is what it will look like in the next version of Apex:

Apex Banqueting Module - Floor Plan Design

Technical Review

HTI introduces new Backup procedures for eRes® customers

We have implemented more stringent backup procedures for your eRes® database to ensure that your data remains secure and constantly accessible.

Until recently, HTI maintained a copy of your eRes® database each day on a rolling 14 day basis.

We have now implemented the following additional backup procedures:

1. Mirrored Hard Drives – your data is written on two hard drives that are synchronised at all
    times. If one hard drive had to crash the system would operate as normal on the other drive.
2. Daily backups of your eRes® database - stored on the database and backup server, PLUS
    backups on an external hard drive every day
3. External hard drive is swapped every second week (14 days) and kept safely offsite
4. Registry - backed up once a week
5. Applications and folders - backed up once a week

These measures will ensure that your data remains our highest priority and that they are kept safely and securely by our technical team. It will also allow us to restore your data if the need for it arises.

New eRes® Rollout plans

We are currently in the process of rolling out version 5.0 of eRes® to all of our customers, we have just started the process again and we once again ask for your participation in the User Acceptance Testing (UAT). We do understand that the UAT takes some of your time but it ensures that you are comfortable with the new release, understand bug fixes and changes but it also gives you the opportunity to understand and learn about new features we have developed for you.

This release will however be followed very closely with version 5 of eRes®, we have been limited with the amount of clients that can perform UAT per week but we intend to get them done as soon as possible and then get you upgraded to version 5.

Customer Chronicles

Christmas in July - It's HTI Wish List time...

We are offering this opportunity to our existing customers to submit any requests for product enhancements as part of our 'Christmas in July' promotion. We will consider all RFE's (request for enhancements) and we will table all ideas and product suggestions in our next development meeting.

Please note that we will consider all of your suggestions but we might not develop everyone's individual request. This will be at the discretion of our development team.

This is a unique offering that we would like to extend to all customers at this time, so please send a 'development request' email to HTI Development.

Closing Remarks

GET CONNECTED

If you are running one property, or operating many, the same principle applies
- GET CONNECTED.

In the last year we have seen many new small groups being formed to leverage the aggregated strength that marketing cooperation brings. This is a good move for an individual hotel or lodge, as long as the new culture becomes genuinely single minded. For example, when talking to an agent or corporate customer, or advertising your CRS number - the 'single point of contact' must be emphasised.

There is no doubt that there is strength in numbers - the major tour operators want to deal centrally with professional revenue managers, which individual hotels and lodges cannot justify. Distribution has become a mainstream part of the hotel business, and this requires specialists.

With the availability of greater bandwidth and the advance in mature web based reservations applications, there is no reason for any hotel to miss out on the excitement of instant gratification gained from receiving live bookings.

eRes® now offers more DIRECT (seamless) connections with the largest inbound tour operators and web marketing services than any other distribution system in Southern Africa.

eRes® now has more:
          - Extended Reach - More connected partners
          - Extended Bandwidth - Seacom will increase speeds by 120 times
          - Extended Functionality - More ability to increase occupancy and yield,
            and fine grained revenue management ability by channel
          - Extended Customers - More and larger groups becoming eRes® centric

If you want any advice on increasing yields contact me:



James Montgomery
jrm@hti-systems.co.za

Distributors of...

National Call Centre: 0861 HTI SYS (During office hours)
Tel: +27 11 803 2208
Fax: +27 11 807 1901
Web: www.hti-systems.co.za
E-mail: info@hti-systems.co.za
Contact Us!!