Holiday Inn Joins Hyatt In Using THISCO Res Service

Holiday Inn Worldwide has agreed to use the UltraRes housing solution by THISCO to simplify batch reservation processing, making it the second hotel chain coming out of the beta testing phase to do so.

The agreement, in which all 2,200 properties will hook up to the service by the end of this year, is part of a larger deal in which Holiday Inn will use a total package of electronic services from THISCO's parent company, Pegasus Systems Inc.

UltraRes--a unified protocol and digital switch that links housing providers to the room inventories of individual properties--is designed to reduce costs, processing time and inaccuracies in reservation processing.

Laurie Donachy, senior vice president of worldwide sales and reservations for Holiday Inn Worldwide, said the UltraRes tool should help the hotel grapple with the one downside of increasing convention business--too much paperwork.

Instead of duplicating efforts on data-entry, the chain can "capitalize on the tremendous growth in the meetings and conventions area" by entering the data only once, at the housing bureau, before electronically shuttling it to the hotel where the booking needs to be made.

Donarchy explained that the decision to sign up with Pegasus was more than a technology strategy--it was a long-term, strategic marketing decision to grow market share worldwide by making inventory readily available to meeting planners, corporate travelers who prefer to book online, and travel agents.

"We believe that Pegasus can give us the means for reaching the online audience and that, for meetings particularly, the UltraRes product can drastically improve that reservation process--allowing us to bypass the antiquated method of transferring rooming lists by fax or courier for manual re-entry," she said.

Hyatt Hotels, which participated in the beta test in 1996 and later signed up for the service in time for its official rollout in January, has had success with the product in the 15 hotels that have used it in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New Orleans, New York, Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. To date, UltraRes has processed more than 30,000 meeting reservations.

One Hyatt executive--who described UlraRes as a miracle product--said a reservation job of several thousand attendees that used to take several days to process could be completed in 30 minutes. (BTN, Dec. 16, 1996)

Meanwhile, the THISCO sales force has been working hard to pitch the automated processing approach to hotels, housing bureaus and third-party housing providers. Their argument is that of cost reduction. Typically, the reservation component of conference registration costs (which can be as much as $5 per night per meeting attendee in some cities) can be diminished significantly when automated.

While hoteliers and housing providers alike want to cut down on processing costs and improve efficiencies, reluctance on both sides has, thus far, slowed adoption. As previously reported (BTN, May 19), many housing providers were reluctant to adopt it as a standard automated processing approach, unless the company could demonstrate pending hotel participation.

On the hotel side, the rapid growth of many chains, and the attendant automation requirements for everything from back office systems to central reservation systems had initially made adoption of the THISCO "switch" a somewhat lower priority, one Pegasus insider said.

Still, the organization believes it will make significant progress with hotels--such as Holiday Inn--for whom meetings business is its bread and butter. John Davis, Pegasus System's president and chief executive officer, said that 10 to 15 other chains were in the pipeline and should be announced soon.

Earlier this year, in an effort to standardize the processing of convention attendee housing, the International Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus' board of directors voted to endorse UltraRes as the technology standard for the electronic transmission of convention housing. Since January, convention bureaus in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Vancouver have been using the solution via WorldTravel Partners, while bureaus in Chicago and New Orleans are using it via housing provider International Travel Services.

While IACVB president Karen Jordan emphasized in previous statements to BTN that housing decisions were still a very individual decision that each bureau would make based on the demographics of their business, the consensus in recent months seems to be that participation by major chains would spur greater CVB interest.

Pegasus, which earlier this month filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed initial public offering of its common stock, provides technology that includes TravelWeb, HCC Technology Solutions, and UltraDirect, which provides real-time availability and rates by linking all CRSs.