The Churchill Hotel York
The Churchill Hotel York
The Churchill Hotel is a historic, late Georgian mansion with a contemporary, modern interior. The hotel now has 41 bedrooms thanks to a recent refurbishment that also includes a new restaurant, bar and lounge area.
The Churchill also has a sister property; Judges Court, a 15 bedroom city centre hotel tucked away in a secret courtyard. Offering room only accommodation, the hotel was once an early18th century judges’ lodging.
The owners will shortly be opening a new hotel, also in York, which has 22 rooms.
Requirements:
- One fully integrated system across all three properties that will allow the group to review overall performance, centralise operations and manage processes from one central hub on behalf of all of the sites.
- Cloud hosted systems to allow the management team to access the systems remotely and reduce their IT infrastructure costs and maintenance.
- More sophisticated rate management tools to maximise revenue from their rooms and boost occupancy in a competitive market place.
Solutions:
- Rezlynx PMS
- EPoS
- Distribution
- PCI Manager
- Online Booking Manager
- Mobile Booking Module
- TripConnect
Benefits:
Centralised operations:
They have been able to centralise operations and now have just one reservations team to manage bookings for all 3 properties. The General Manager can log into the other hotel systems to see bookings at each site to review the group’s overall performance.
Flexibility and mobility:
With the systems being cloud hosted, the GM can access the systems from an app on his phone so he can monitor operations remotely and amend the rates according to occupancy levels if necessary.
Rate management:
The hotel sets price variance rules to reflect the changes in occupancy and seasonality which then adjust automatically - this is crucial to achieve last room availability.
The rates are set by room type to drive revenue from the different room offerings.
Online bookings:
Occupancy is increasing year on year as a result of being able to take online bookings 24 hours a day and by offering their room stock across multiple third party channels as well as their own website.
Increased occupancy:
Both the Churchill and Judges Court achieved over 99% occupancy for July 2015, which is the first time they’ve both achieved this level in the same month!
Cloud hosting:
The hotel migrated from their old Windows system to the cloud hosted Rezlynx PMS and are now enjoying access across multiple PCs between all the properties and not restricted to having to log-in from specific machines. The advanced functionality of Rezlynx better suits their business needs too.
Advanced reporting:
As the hotel can view year on year figures they can access a more enhanced level of reporting to analyse trends and forecast more accurately.
Efficient customer service:
With the mobile EPoS, the staff can now take orders on their iPads at breakfast. This not only provides a more efficient service at a busy serving time but the kitchen gets the orders quicker too.
Familiarity with systems:
As the Guestline solutions are growing in their popularity as one of the leading systems on the market, the hotel are finding that new staff are often familiar with the systems having used them before at previous hotels. They therefore only require minimal training and can utilise the systems from day one.
Support:
The support team are always on hand to assist with the most minor of questions or issues and always resolve the issue as quickly as can be.
"The new systems allow me to gain greater control over our operations and keep abreast of rates and occupancy levels across the group…even when I’m on holiday!
We are in a highly competitive market place and are enjoying healthy occupancy levels here, so it is crucial to have the ability to manage rates more closely to ensure we are driving revenue at every opportunity and selling down to the last room. To achieve over 99% occupancy in both hotels in same month is a fantastic result."