Sky’s the Limit
For the past three years, Choice’s Phoenix offices have been operating as a technology startup. During that time Choice doubled the number of employees in its IT and software development divisions and brought on Ric Leutwyler, formerly of Pegasus Solutions and Best Western, to oversee the launch of SkyTouch. Based on the work the company had already put into ChoiceAdvantage, it knew its growth targets. “We already have 5,500 properties up on the cloud, so we had a pretty good idea of what it takes,” says Pacious.
It starts with getting the basics right. “Everybody is in or chasing how best to leverage the cloud,” says Leutwyler. “And there are many people who talk about being there and they really aren’t. Being in the cloud means that all you need to access your data or run your software is a Web browser—even one on a tablet or smartphone.”
This mobile aspect has turned out the be one of the biggest selling points of the platform. “Hoteliers love the mobility aspect of cloud software,” says Leutwyler. “They love being able to check in on their hotel from home, an airport, from vacation and can actually do the things they need to do remotely. This frees them from always being physically at the property.”
But working well on a mobile device isn’t merely a simple byproduct of software existing on the cloud. The software has to also have a small data footprint as well. Back in 2003 when it was developed, ChoiceAdvantage had to work over the painfully slow 56K modems that some of the company’s hotel franchisees were still using the time. “Over the years as we’ve continued to enhance the software we’ve always kept an eye on keeping the bandwidth requirement small,” says Leutwyler. “Now, if a hotel’s Internet connection goes down, the owner or manager can still connect to the PMS over a cellular data plan.”
Like other software-as-a-service platforms, the Choice-Advantage and SkyTouch Hotel OS platforms are flexible in terms of their user interfaces. “We can do anything we want to that Web screen anytime we want to do it,” says Leutwyler. “If we want to add a new set of features or push out a message, we can do it almost instantly.” He says that Choice recently blew out sales goals for its loyalty program by pushing out a little reminder to front desk staff across the country that logged into the PMS. “It was just a simple pop-up message that reminded the employee to ask the guest about it,” says Leutwyler. “Even though you’ve trained your employees over and over to mention the rewards program, this proved to be so much more effective.”
