Hospitality Technology
International (Pty) Ltd
3rd Floor, Block A
Edenburg Terraces
348 Rivonia Boulevard
Rivonia, Sandton
Gauteng, RSA |
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The Products we Offer
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Humour for the day -
Marriage Theme
I need a raise...
The boss had listened in sympathetic silence as Mario went through the reasons why he needed, and felt he deserved, a raise.
Then, with a compassionate smile, the CEO patted he younger man on the shoulder.
“Yes, Mario,” he said kindly,
“I know you can’t get married on the salary I’m paying you… and some day you’ll thank me for it.”
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Driving Breakfast
A wife was making a breakfast of fried eggs for her husband.
Suddenly, her husband burst into the kitchen.
"Careful", he said, "CAREFUL! Put in some more butter! Oh my gosh! You're cooking too many at once. TOO MANY!
Turn them! TURN THEM NOW! We need more butter. Oh my gosh! WHERE are we going to get MORE BUTTER? They're going to STICK!
Careful. CAREFUL! I said be CAREFUL! You NEVER listen to me when you're cooking! Never!
Turn them! Hurry up!
Are you CRAZY? Have you LOST your mind? Don't forget to salt them. You know you always forget to salt them. Use the salt. USE THE SALT! THE SALT!"
The wife stared at him. "What in the world is wrong with you? You think I don't know how to fry a couple of eggs?"
The husband calmly replied,
"I just wanted to show you what it feels like when I'm driving."
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HTI and some of our associations...
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HTI (originally
M-R Systems) has been operating for 20 Years in the hospitality industry. We are happy to celebrate this with you, our loyal customer!
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Apex PMS Interfaces to Spa System - ESP
HTI continues to enhance its functionality and the latest development is a seamless interface to ESP, the popular Salon and Spa Management System. Existing Apex customers as well as future Apex customers that offer spa facilities managed by ESP will now have the ability to charge any and all treatments to their guest folio at the front desk of their hotel or lodge.
The interface caters for the needs of all staff, both in the spa as well as front office staff that would normally have to re-capture any charges that may apply from their day in the spa.
HTI has a number of customers that use ESP, so please enquire if you would like to implement this interface to streamline your operation.
Contact us on sales@hti-systems.co.za or call us on 011 803 2208 to speak to a sales conusltant about the interface and its benefits.
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PlusPoint Goes Biometric
In keeping with the changing demands of our products, HTI has now completed the integration for PlusPoint users to implement biometric finger print readers. This PlusPoint interface can be used for waitron and cashier staff to access the Point of Sale terminals, as well as for quick supervisor access to the control menu - void transactions, transfer invoices, change invoices etc..
For more information on the interface and to receive this add-on to PlusPoint at no extra charge please contact sales@hti-systems.co.za.
For more info on the physical hardware - the biometric fingerprint readers - please contact Nadine Moses from DigiPos on nmoses@digipos.co.za.
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New Staff
With the increase in demand for HTI Products, the need has arisen to expand the HTI HelpDesk and the number of support staff manning the support centre and we are very happy to welcome the following additions to the support team.
The first addition to the team is Johalien Coetzee who has been appointed as a Support Consultant. Johalien comes from a reservations background, having worked on eRes® before during her time in operations. Johalien's past experience on eRes® and operational knowledge from her days at various lodges will be of great value. She has a friendly way about her and you can look forward to speaking to her in the call centre.
Johalien Coetzee
Also joining the support team is Nivashen Irsen or Nev for short. Nev joins us from the South African Chefs association where he was the Operations Manager. Not only is he a specialist on Food & Beverage, but has also gained some Front Office experience having worked for Southern Sun Group. Nev is currently completing HTI's internal certification and will be in the Support Centre in the very near future.
Nivashen Irsen
Technical Department
HTI Technical has seen the movement of Fanie Labuschagne away from day to day technical duties into a full time development role within HTI. With the void that Fanie has left in the techincal department we saw Rian Deneys joining us in the capacity of a technical support consultant.
Rian's role at HTI extends from ensuring the day to day technical aspects of the company are in order as well as assisting Rynhardt where necessary with customer interfaces to the various third party partners that we deal with on a day to day basis.
Rian Deneys
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Apex goes In Room - EONA In room TV Interface
We are happy to announce the release of another useful interface for Apex customers. HTI has recently completed an 'In Room TV' interface to Digital Entertainment Solution's In Room TV product offering, known as EONA.
Some of the added functionality of the product includes
Services for guests in their rooms
• Welcoming Video
• Personalised welcoming message
• TV channels/radio stations
• Pay Per View
• Video on demand
• Pay TV
• Jukebox
• Internet TV
• Email TV
• Hotel information portal
• Messaging
• Wakeup
• Bill display
• Express check out
For any more information on the interface and how you can take advantage of the interactive feature of your In Room TV system - EONA - contact any of our HTI consultants.
Please Note: If we do not currently interface to a third party application that you would like to implement, please contact HTI to discuss the possibility of integrating any of your disparate management systems. This will help to streamline your operations and can significantly reduce unecessary time spent to consolidate information on the guest folio at check-out.
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New Features - eRes® Version 5.4
eRes® Core Product
Guest and Property Email History screen – and search by Reservation number
This functionality enables the user to search for email history on reservations pertaining to Guests and Properties using the reservation number.
Ability to exclude Kids Rates when calculating Linked Rates
This functionality allows the user to exclude Kids Rates from the calculation of Linked Rates. If this setting is enabled, Kids Rates (K1-3) will be excluded from the calculated specified percentage on linked rate additions or subtractions.
Loyalty Members – Ability to display the Last Stay details
Currently eRes® is displaying the number of Loyalty Points available per Loyalty Member. eRes® will now be able to also display the last stay details of a Loyalty Member. Currently only supported for OCIS, but similar GroupView abilities are on the Road Map.
Alternate Property Availability Response
eRes® may now be configured to display multiple alternate available Properties on the web if a desired Property is not available for reservations. Each Property in eRes® may be configured to have a prioritized list of 'alternate' Properties to be returned to the Web in the event that the originally requested property is not available. A Setting will limit the total amount of Alternate Properties that can be made available.
GDS Exception Report – New filters added
The GDS Exception Report is populated with exception errors that occurred between the GDS and eRes® when the network was down or the queued reservations could not be retried when the connection was up again. There are various other conditions or exceptions that may be logged such as Reservation not found, not enough units available, rate code not found, contact name required etc. Filtering these exception errors has been simplified by added filters. Filtering can now be done by Direction (Upload or Download/sent or received), by Action (Sell, Amend, Cancel and Update) and by entering Keywords (a single specific word, or a specific phrase of the error). Multiple exception errors can also be deleted at once.
Charge per day of stay and Mandatory Services – Dependency
Previously in eRes® v5.3 when a Service was marked as being Charge per day of stay then the Service would automatically become Mandatory at the Property. This behavior was limiting the creation of Charge per day of stay Services, because they all would become Mandatory Services. The dependency has been removed, allowing users to create Charge per day of stay Services as being Mandatory or Non-Mandatory.
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eRes® Interfaces
Epitome PMS – Certified
The Interface between eRes® and the Epitome PMS (from Infor SoftBrands) has been completed and certified. The currently supported functionality is:
• Availability uploads from Epitome to eRes®
• Rate uploads from Epitome to eRes®
• Reservations from eRes® to Epitome: New, Amendments and Cancellations
Security Flag added to API Requestor screen for External Payment Allowed
A flag was added to the Add / Edit API Requestor screen for security purposes. This will specify the right for the API to allow posting of external payments
Note field is now returned in the OTA xml message
The Note field on the Property build screen is now returned in the OTA_HotelDescriptive xml message. This will allow the note to be displayed on websites, and in 3rd party booking systems
PassThru
An UpToPax field was added to the eRes API, and this field is now included in PassThru messages to other eRes systems. This means that Unit Rates returned by PassThru will take UpToPax into consideration when calculating the reservation amount
eRes API: Accepts points redeemed in Res Message
An enhancement was done to the OTA Hotel Reservation Requestor, allowing our Loyalty Program & other external Loyalty Programs to accept points redeemed. eRes® must use the redeemed points as passed in the message and indicate this on the reservation. When the Loyalty Program has been set up to accept external payment, this payment can be accepted as deposit or just indicate a redemption on the Loyalty System.
eRes API
The eRes API now has the ability to receive the Loyalty Tier in the availability / rates search and reservation messages. This is typically used when the hotel group's website already validates the loyalty number against a Loyalty System, and therefore receives the Loyalty Tier from the Loyalty System. This field is only used by eRes when the Requestor setting 'Validate Loyalty Number' is switched off.
Availability upload threshold - All Online Travel Agent Interfaces (Expedia etc.)
Availability updates will only be sent to Expedia, for example, once the availability drops below the availability threshold - say 10 units. This will reduce the number of availability messages sent to Expedia, ultimately improving the performance of the interface upstream.
OWS: Validate Loyalty member against OCIS
When a user enters a Loyalty Number on the Guest Details Screen (or the Start New Reservation Screen), eRes® will:
• validate the Loyalty Number against OCIS
• populate the Guest Details Screen
• display the number of points available, and the last stay details on the
Loyalty Program screen (accessible from the More button next to the
loyalty number input field)
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eRes® WebAdmin
Define the number of Base Rate Levels by Day
Currently WebAdmin only caters for the creation of 5 Rate Levels by Day. The user is now able to add more Rate Levels by Day – up to 9 Rate Levels can be created. This will cater for the creation of more extensive rate levels, ensuring effective Revenue management.
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eRes® WebBookings
WebBookings Enhancements
The following enhancements were implemented:
• The 'My Itinerary' reservations summary was changed to 'My Reservations'
• The message displayed when the user starts a New Booking to: Your current
unsaved reservation will be lost if you start a new reservation – are you sure
you want to continue?'
• The 3D Secure authentication failure message was removed from the
reservation confirmation
• Secure3D Result and Secure3D Result Description columns were added
to the Payment Gateway Log table to indicate failed Secure 3D transactions.
This will improve the reporting process of indicating failed
Secure3D transactions
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eRes® Analysis
Channel Analytics – Search / Book Ratio
These new Analyses enables the user to see how customers are using their system. This will analyze how many searches are being done prior to a reservation being made. As previously mentioned these analyses will be broken down into: How many times the customer searches before making a reservation. The average lead time for the reservation. Which Properties are being searched for?
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eRes® Reports
New – Electronic Voucher Report
This Report provides data pertaining to Electronic Voucher transactions. All reservations using Electronic Voucher procurements will populate on this Report under 'Failed Voucher Procurements' and 'Successful Voucher Procurements'. This Report will allow the user to track all failed and successful transactions allowing for effective management of Electronic Vouchers
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Watch This Space...
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Distribution, Revenue Management and Web Marketing in Hard Times
The small, medium and large hotel chains that have survived and succeeded in the troubled economic times, since 2008, have a single common denominator.
They have mastered the art of web marketing combined with live bookability.
The two keys to this powerful low cost tool are:
• Knowledge of Search Engine Optimizing (SEO) and the use of metatags
• The technical capacity to attract and convert live bookings, with automated channel
management and flexible rates management.
If you efficiently mix these two ingredients, the result is both dramatic and very profitable.
The first rule is to have your stock constantly merchandised in front of the buying public. This involves creativity to attract the buyer’s attention and the SEO tools in place to ‘round them up’ to your doorstep. This may be your own Internet Booking Engine (IBE) or it may be through On-line Travel portals (OTA). Your own web site (IBE) is a specialized task handled by a qualified web-master. The distribution of your inventory and rates to multiple active web channels involves a good reservations manager with revenue management and channel knowledge.
The second element is to have the best live reservations and distribution management system you can afford. This must be linked directly with your hotel or lodge based Property Management System) PMS applications.
At HTI we have more than 80 hotel and lodge chains using a variety of our applications to improve their capacity to attract and convert new business.
We want to help you to use our applications to their best ability, and to achieve your business objectives. Let us organize a strategy workshop for you.
Give our marketing people a call to discuss your specific requirements.
rory@hti-systems.co.za
Tel: 011 803 2208
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Top 10 funny reasons a hotel says they don't need a new website, booking engine, or online marketing strategy!...
1.) We don't need a new website, my nephew built ours
Really well thought out then. I take it your nephew doesn't travel much... (HTI)
2.) We have a lot of repeat business, so we don't need to use the internet
So business is good then, all year round - during a recession?
3.) We provide a high level of customer service so "we prefer" that
our customers call us
Really well thought out then...
4.) I get 10 calls a day from India offering me everything you just offered me
for $100 per month
How many clients do they have?
5.) We already have an online reservations system
Actually, what you have is an e-mail form...
6.) Look, if you search in Google for the name of my hotel, we're #1
Hard to believe...
7.) Well, I'd have to discuss it with my Director of Sales, who would
have to discuss it with the GM, who would have to discuss it
with the owner...
Sad reality...
8.) We don't need that, we're full all the time (at R250 per night)...
Dream big!
9.) Sorry, we blew our budget on a stand at World Travel Market
How is business now? Last year, domestic travel made up 76% of
South African travel statistics. Local is lekker!
10.) We don't need that... we already nearly fill our hotels with online business
from Online Travel Agents
Your own website is your cheapest channel, it has very little in the way of
operating costs, no commission, more control...
With thanks to Ashwin Kamlani, President & Founder of
Hotel Internet Help Inc out of Miami/Fort Lauderdale
Published on LinkedIn - Sales Marketing and Revenue Technology
Hotel Professionals Group (9th October 2010)
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** NB ** OFF SITE BACKUP PROCEDURES - All clients must ensure that they have offsite backup procedures in place. In other words, ensure that you are taking a copy of the database off-site at least once a month, preferably once a week. This can be done simply by copying the database on to an external hard drive / by copying this data to an external source not on the primary server. This will avoid crisis in the event that your hardware should crash or stop operating as per normal... |
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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!!
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