Web-Based Management Information Systems - Example

APPLICATION OF HOTELOGIX TO HOTEL FAIRMONT HELIOPOLIS AND TOWERS, CAIRO EGYPT Application of Hotelogix to Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers, Cairo Egypt Introduction The web-based Management Information System (MIS) currently used in the hospitality and tourism industry that is preferred for application to Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers, Egypt, is Hotelogix; a web-based hotel managements system for small and medium-sized hospitality businesses (HMS INFOTECH Pvt. Ltd, 2013). It is a solution that offers full service encompassing all the daily operations and activities of the motel or hotel industry from reservations, point of sale terminals, front desk operations, to the housekeeping management activities. It is web and cloud-based, as such, it offers hospitality businesses to enjoy its full range of services without necessarily requiring any investments in in-house software or additional infrastructure, as well as additional technical or professional IT personnel. Hotelogix Hotel Management System is currently used by a myriad of hotel and hospitality businesses across the world in over twenty countries (HMS INFOTECH Pvt. Ltd, 2013). This report proposes to apply this web-based Management Information System (MIS) currently used in the hospitality and tourism industry to Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers, Egypt. Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers is a luxury hotel located at the heart of Egypt’s presidential and diplomatic neighborhood in Cairo. It is only a few minutes and miles away from the Cairo International Airport. Its location is a bit unique, it is apparently in the Heliopolis city of the sun where ancient Egyptians celebrated creation, life, and the creation. The guests of the hotel can easily access the Cairo International Conference Centre, Virgin Mary’s Tree, and the palace of Baron Empain, the founder of the modern Heliopolis, amongst many other legendary attractions in Cairo (Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, 2014). Purpose of the Report This report prefers and proposes the application of Hotelogix PMS, which is a cloud and web-based system as the PMS of choice. The purpose is to analyze and describe the Property Management System requirements of Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers and explain the feature and content of Hotelogix, which make it a unique and most preferred Management Information System (MIS) in the hotel and hospitality industry. Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers – Company Profile Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers is uniquely designed with a unique mix of authentic décor and contemporary art which reflects distinct Egyptian heritage and echoes modern Cairo heritage. Every detail of the hotel accentuate the attractive interaction of natural living elements, water, and light, from its unrivalled spacious guest rooms, water passages, collection of restaurant themes, state-of-the-art conference and meeting facilities, to the fascinating day-lighted atrium (Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, 2014). The Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers in Cairo Egypt has gracious 835 suites and guest houses, which in essence redefine the definition and standards of luxury. The designs of all the guest houses and suits have been done to reflect the authenticity and uniqueness of the history of Egyptians; they have been blended with contemporary amenities of the modern world. Equipment in the rooms include a safety box, Wi-Fi, air conditioning, radio, direct telephone line, iron, voice mail, as well as hair dryer (Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, 2014). Stylishly tasteful venues meant for hosting events are marked by their luxurious and timeless sophistication and atmosphere; their beverage offerings, finest food, and their magnificent conveniences such as access to Egypt’s high-speed internet, enthralling light systems that are programmable, advanced large sound systems, exceptional teleconferencing equipment, and the largest Cairo’s ballrooms, also grace and mark Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers’ event venues (Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, 2014). Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers also has more than 15 different exceptional dining choices, more sixty thousand square feet of banquet space-the largest in Cairo, and unmatched range of recreational and guest facilities that include tennis, squash, fully-furnished health facility/club, kids play ground and kids pool, beauty salon, spa, three swimming pools, and a convenient shopping mall that offer various choice. These make Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers an unrivalled hospitality destination on its own, in Cairo (Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, 2014). With this kind of facilities, clientele base, and business operations, this reports considers Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers as a premium, high-end hotel, which needs a pricing software that is more cost-effective, all inclusive and comprehensive in its operations to handle the hotel’s various facilities, departments and their operations such as the gym, restaurant, spa, housekeeping, minibars, and the swimming pool, among other in an easy and efficient manner. Currently, Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers uses a robust legacy hotel management system, which does not offer them the complete functionalities of a property management system (Dhunna & Dixit, 2010). Challenges and the significance of Hotelogix to Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers Thus, Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers requires to commission a more advance and comprehensive property management system that is affordable, easy to teach and learn, and does not require extra software or hardware installation, or additional technical IT personnel, which is considered a scarcity in Egypt. It is important to note that, Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers is a large five hotel in Cairo and is ready, willing, and is prepared to invest in additional hardware such as servers and other operating equipment necessary for running legacy property management systems, PMS (Deakin, 2002). However, the skills, knowledge and professional talent necessary to manage, run, and maintain such hardware is expensive and to some large extend unavailable in Cairo. Hiring talent from other countries and continents such as Europe is possible but not feasible and easy since people with such talents are not willing to relocate and their structure of pay is far much higher compared to current market scales in Cairo, Egypt. Pirating from chain hotels is another available option for Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers, however, the comfort and pay structures of using being part of chain hotels cannot be matched with the benefits that can be accrued from operating independently. Applying a cost efficient, easy to use, and simple to adapt PMS such as Hotelogix to Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers will meet its need for change; especially, from its use of an inefficient, complicated, and unreliable legacy system. The legacy system it uses is very cumbersome and complicated, and creates a number of accounting related issues, which eventually leads to a lot of inaccuracies in billings and in a lot of operational errors (Hospitality Information Technology Association, 2005). A cost efficient, easy to use, and simple to adapt PMS such as Hotelogix, will eliminate the current investments and efforts that Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers requires with regards to in-house software and IT infrastructure, solution and technical support mechanisms while on use. It also experiences multiple crashes, data losses and requires frequent reloading and real-time in-house monitoring (Tesone, 2006; Zhou, 2004). Product support issues which are delayed and are inadequate that Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers currently face will be eliminated. The overbearing burden that the hotel management faces when it comes to keeping in tabs with the operations of the hotel when they are not physically present at the hotel, especially with regards to operational errors that may be encountered due to PMS’s lack of technical IT support, will be addressed (O’Fallon & Rutherford, 2011). Keeping up-to-date reporting, make changes to rates and settings, as well as to track hotel occupancy is not possible when such managers are on the move; these problems will be eliminated by a cloud and web-based PMS such as Hotelogix (Arya, 2013). Hotelogix PMS beats other competing PMS’s out there because of its competitive price, it features such as user-friendliness, ease of adoption and use, it backup capability and level, and other features such as its capability that allows users to tailor the systems by altering things and features to suit the hotel’s current unique situation and needs as well as in the future, makes it an ideal cloud based PMS-property management system for application to Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers. The transition from the old legacy property management system is a smooth one since Hotelogix offers and guarantees helpful, quick, timely, and appropriate support, which ensures that the day to day operation of the hotel are not interrupted as a result of the switch or change-over; in fact, both the hotels future reservations and existing guest list are easily transferred or migrated to the new system (Deakin, 2002). Switching or changing over to the Hotelogix Property Management System will enable Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers streamline all their departments and operations using the various functionalities and capabilities that provided by Hotelogix cloud-based tool (HMS INFOTECH Pvt. Ltd, 2013). The Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers will be able to use a single, all-encompassing tool to accomplish a myriad of tasks at any given time. Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers uses a channel manager referred to as Siteminder, and are being taxed a little to manage both their legacy property management system and Siteminder as two separate systems. Changing over to Hotelogix will make it simpler and easier since Hotelogix can easily be integrated with Siteminder, thus making it easy to manage the property management system and the channel manager in one single platform. Hotelogix will also enable them to implement a POS system in their beauty salon, minibars, restaurant and bar, thus enable them move away from using spreadsheets to manage their point of sale. This will greatly ease and streamline the current burden of tracking sales, especially to guests, given that all charges will from now on be linked automatically to the guest’s folio and would, additionally be charged onto their room account directly before they check out of the hotel (Dhunna & Dixit, 2010; Tatnall & Davey, 1995). The hotel will also be able to integrate their accounting management system, Xero, with Hotelogix, which will ensure that they save time and manpower given that they will no longer manually key in banking and sales transactions. Features and Description of Hotelogix Hotelogix began by a simple vision of its founder who saw the need of developing a feature rich and robust solution for the hospitality and hotel industry on cloud computing technology. They identified the tremendous and continuous growth in the hospitality and hotel industry, as well as the growth in collating information which had become a major issue for most industry players. Information technology has over the past two decades taken hold of the hospitality industry (Arya, 2013; HMS INFOTECH Pvt. Ltd, 2013). Having begun with a basic DOS system and simple electronic room planning systems, hotels currently boast of suites that are managed by current software technology, which consists of all the day to day work processes within a hotel, from front office operations to housekeeping management. Traditional server-client system, although being kept with many service providers who have tried to keep pace with advancements in technology, and being scalable, have not been able to offer the industry with a single facility for a multi-property business, or even offer a web-based business analytic system to property business owners. These constraints have been as a result of traditional applications that are reflected in systems which are developed. In fact, single property owners or owners of chain hotels are not able to control their business parameters or get collective analysis. As a result, industry players have been striving to develop ways of collating information from similar or different systems; however, their efforts are still being restricted by interfaces. Thus, in 2008, Hotelogix set up a development team with the aim of developing solution to address this issue in the hospitality industry. This team was composed of seasoned and experience hotel professional and experience, long-standing professionals and specialists in IT. The goal was to develop a SaaS-Software as a Service property management system offering, which will allow owners of properties to pay per use and be able to access and use the system globally. Hotelogix is thus a cloud computing based system that is cost-effective and can enable multiple, utilization and the integration of all other needed information by the firm while optimizing turnover, profits and costs. Hotelogix however, remained under development until 2009 when a BETA version was released for targeted users preview. This version saw unprecedented excellent user response with a huge number of users signing up, most of which were from Africa, the APAC, and the USA. The first version was thus released in October of 2009 with many resorts and hotels across breath and length of the globe signed up. The current operational version of Hotelogix is Hotelogix 2.0, which is a multi-hotel solution with Wi-Fi/EPBAX integration, full multi-functional Food Costing, POS, integrate AR, IPTV integration, integrated inventory, and accounting interfaces. This is an improvement of Hotelogix version 1.5, which integrated other devices such as IDS/GDS, website generation, and Video on Demand. As has been mentioned, Hotelogix is currently offered as a cloud-based Software as a Service-SaaS model that address major activities and operations of a hotel, particularly housekeeping management, spa management, front office, IDS/GDS connect, point of sale, and online bookings and reservations, see figure 1. Hotelogix is a Property Management System that enables property owners in the hotel and hospitality industry to distribute their available suites and rooms to all available channels of sales and enable all stakeholders to access the system in live, real-time system (Bardi, 2011). It is a system that has contemporary been built to organize resorts and hotels seamlessly. It is a web, cloud based system that offers its users the anywhere anytime access; it is also user friendly, its interface makes it one of the most intuitive systems to use. Figure 1: The Hotelogix Services/Features Key features and advantages of Hotelogix are: It requires very low costs of training and it is intuitive enough-it is easy to teach and easy to learn It is and can be integrated to devices that guests use such as Wi-Fi, EPBAX, Door Locks, IPTV, and Self Check Kiosks among others. It is an integrated wed, cloud-based PMS that has a user friendly and easy to understand interface that enables users to begin using the system on the go. Online training tutorials are available; this reduces the costs associated with training users Provides an integrated hotel website which a hotel can use to display and control availability online Has an integrated Online booking and reservation System; a hotel is able to accept online reservation on their website It also has a built-in component that enable multi-location offices to seamlessly operate Hotelogix also comes with an in-built hotel directory listing; this enables a hotel to accept reservations from travel agency websites Has an integrated online payment platform that will enable and allow hotels to confirm online bookings and accept online payments immediately Hotelogix has multiple options for pricing; thus hotels can be able to choose pricing that suit them with no commitments Integrates MIS, reporting and extensive and excellent business intelligence and analytic Being based on the cloud computing technology, Hotelogix offers an anywhere, anytime access via the internet It includes website design and development, which will enable hotels to get a well branded, designed and developed website through which they will be able to easily manage all details and price rates from one single platform. The fact that it is based on a Software as a Service, SaaS model, there are low up-front costs incurred; users pay on a pay-per-use basis It also has an additional attribute of Service Agreements which are customizable to the users’ needs; users can tailor the system to adapt to their immediate and exact needs. This system will be used by a myriad of users accessing the services of the hotel and all other hotel stakeholders. Guests, for instance, will use the system to book and reserve rooms or suites, access their hotel rooms, access internet connectivity, Wi-Fi or PABX, and also access device such as IPTV and Self Check Kiosk. They will also be able to post their feedback on the hotels website and read other users’ feedbacks, as well (Collins & Malik, 1998). Guests will be able to, using integrated online payment platform, confirm online bookings and make online payments. Staff user will use the system to manage, display and control guest suites or rooms reservation, process transactions such as sales through integrated POS (Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, 2014). Staff will also be able to, through the integrated online payment platform, confirm online bookings and accept online payments. Through the built-in component staff from multi-location offices will be able to seamlessly operate. Hotel management and owners will be able to enjoy anywhere, everywhere access to the systems, and thus will be able to keep in tabs with the day-to-day hotel operations including keeping tabs in the hotel guest reservations and booking, transactions, and reports. Integrates MIS, reporting and extensive and excellent business intelligence and analytic, will enable manages to make informed business decisions, which will be instrumental in their investment strategy as well as influence return on investment (Gupta, 2011; Sousa & Oz, 2014). Conclusion The proposed, preferred web-based Management Information System (MIS) currently used in the hospitality and tourism industry, Hotelogix is a solution that meets an hotelier’s basic day-to-day operational needs. Its design addresses business operational needs, goals, human resource capabilities, and system infrastructure requirements. Based on the internet backbone and cloud computing technology, Hotelogix offers indispensible services and exceptional benefits via a seamless solution, property management at an affordable cost. Hotelogix PMS compared to other competing PMS’s out there, offers a competitive price, it is user-friendly, easy to adoption and use, its backup capability and level, and other features such as its capability that allows users to tailor the systems by altering things and features to suit the hotel’s current unique situation and needs as well as in the future, makes it an ideal cloud based PMS-property management system for application to Hotel Fairmont Heliopolis and Towers. References Arya, N. (2013). Hotelogix acquires another customer “Aquarius On The Beach” from Fiji, as part of its “Switch to Cloud” Campaign to transition from a Legacy PMS. PRWEB. Retrieved March 20, 2014, from http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/01/prweb11452352.htm Bardi, J. A. (2011). Hotel Front Office Management (5th ed.). Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Collins, G. R., & Malik, T. (1998). Hospitality Information Technology: Learning How to Use It (3rd ed.). 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