The Wellington Hotel
The Wellington Hotel
A 3 star hotel by the sea in the picture perfect North Cornwall village of Boscastle, The Wellington Hotel has 14 bedrooms, 3 aparthotel suites, a pub bar serving food and drink and an elegant dining restaurant. The traditional hotel is independently owned and steeped in history.
Challenges:
The owner wanted to switch to cloud storage and get rid of their clunky old servers. The hotel was previously on Guestline’s Window based PMS and wanted to switch to the cloud hosted PMS, Rezlynx, as this is more flexible and reliable with less maintenance. The operating system on their tills wasn’t supported either as they were on Windows XP.
Solutions:
The group opted for an entirely new property management system that featured a fully integrated distribution platform, all from one supplier - Guestline.
Guestline installed a full turnkey solution:
- Rezlynx PMS
- Channel Manager
- PCI Manager
- Online Booking Manager
- EPoS
Benefits:
Simple migration:
The entire install took 2 weeks and the Guestline trainers gave clear instructions and thorough training to all members of staff.
Easy to manage:
The system is easy to operate and it is simple to manage bookings and check guests in quickly.
Effective rate strategy:
Rates are easy to manipulate and can be simply tweaked to generate additional occupancy if the hotel is quiet. The system allows changes to be automatically applied to rates with new prices being reflected across all channels in just a few minutes.
As rates are so simple to change, they can respond quickly to changes locally when they get an influx of local contractors staying or if there is a popular event on locally. Corporate rates can also be set for local businesses.
More channel bookings:
By changing rates regularly, the hotel are achieving more bookings through online travel agenices (OTAs). They use the channels as useful advertising platforms to generate new business and then keep in touch with the guests to drive future bookings direct. They now receive more online bookings than telephone reservations.
Higher repeat bookings:
By using the email templates in the system, the hotel market to the core groups of guests that regularly stay at the hotel every year. They can also analyse past trends to see which guests have stayed on specific weeks, link it to the events calendar and provisionally book them in for the following year to drive repeat business.
Guest history is all stored and recorded in Rezlynx so they can make note of any special requests.
Group bookings:
As the hotel can check in and out large group bookings all together, it’s a lot quicker and more efficient for guests. They use a group master booking chart and pro-forma invoices are automatically set up in the templates. This results in more accurate and error-free invoicing which is also less time consuming for the Accounts team.
Reporting:
Multiple reports can be generated so they can easily analyse the different revenue sources. They analyse the different types of bookings, occupancy levels and cancellations.
Efficient EPoS:
In the 12 months since installing their new EPoS system, they haven’t once seen a balance fail. They can process orders quicker during busier periods and tickets go straight to the kitchen after orders are taken. The mobile EPoS licence is useful when taking orders on the outdoor terrace.
PCI compliant:
Their ‘card not present’ transactions are now put through PCI to safeguard risks if the guest doesn’t turn up or the card is faulty. They use it as a card guarantee facility for group bookings if the payment is not going through Bacs.
They can put through payments with the card that was used to reserve the room if the guest has already checked out – ideal for when guests need to leave early before Reception opens which is often the case with their corporate clients.
"The Guestline systems are so easy to use, we picked them up in no time at all. The automatic upload facility has saved us so much time in our day to day operations as there is less manual inputting and it minimises errors.
Overall, it makes general duties a lot easier and efficient and enables us to concentrate on making our guests’ stay even more enjoyable!
The trainers were brilliant, and we enjoyed having them here. They went through everything in detail and with patience, with virtually no disruption to normal service."