Hotels Upgrade Systems For More Than Just Y2K

<B> Hotels Upgrade Systems For More Than Just Y2K</B>

By Maria P. Vallejo

With little more than a year to go, hotel companies are at varied points in the compliance process, and their scheduled completion dates are scattered throughout next year. While many have boosted their Y2K readiness during the past few years, most hotels are testing--and incurring the cost of--their fixes in 1999.

Completion dates depend heavily on whether a company owns or franchises its properties. Those that own brands tend to have structured completion dates, but franchisees, for the most part, are responsible for assuring their own compliance.

These same factors affect expenditures, making the total tab for the Year 2000 switch difficult to calculate. According to a Merrill Lynch Y2K survey released in June, many have been sponsoring larger system-wide technology projects that also have resulted in Y2K compliance, reducing the costs associated specifically with the millennium project. Again, franchisees tend to pay for their own projects.

Companies owning brands and providing reservation services--including Choice Hotels, Hilton Hotels, Marriott International, Prime Hospitality and Promus--are expected to incur the largest expenses, the survey said. Choice, for example, will spend $150,000-$200,000 this year, and less than $10,000 in 1999, since most of its systems already are compliant. Hilton plans to spend less than $5 million, while Promus plans to spend $2-$3 million. Marriott has the highest tab: $30-35 million, including technology upgrade expenses.

Incorporating Y2K compliance into larger technology upgrades are: Bass Hotels & Resorts, Best Western International, Carlson Hospitality Worldwide, Choice Hotels, Marriott International, Pan Pacific Hotels & Resorts and Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts. Carlson, for example, is replacing its current central reservation system with Curtis-C, an internally developed and Y2K-ready system. It also is installing the already compliant Fidelio-based Harmony Property System in its three brands, Country Inns & Suites, Radisson Hotels and Regent (<I>BTN,</I> Sept. 14).

As a precautionary measure, Carlson is testing its vendors' products and demanding compliance guarantees from them. Its existing natural disasters recovery plan also serves as its Y2K contingency plan. "To us, Y2K is just another potential situation that's come up, another area where your business might be in jeopardy," said director of desktop network services Michael Murphy.

Going outside its internal technology team, Marriott--where computer applications look at reservations six years into the future--began remediation projects in the early 1990s, when it opened a ten-person Year 2000 Office. Ina Kamenz, vice president of the office, is testing all systems, including MARSHA, Marriott's central reservation system, which is expected to be compliant by year-end.

Choice Hotels, too, got an early start, and began updating most systems years ago. It began testing its central systems on July 1, said vice president of information systems Gary Thomson, and is "in fairly good shape." Choice is requiring that its brands convert to Profit Manager, a Y2K-compliant property management system, by the end of 1999, and about 300 hotels are using the Link Plus system designed to operate until Dec. 31, 2000. Choice's other brands using the DOS-based Choice Link system are being offered a free Windows-based version that is Y2K ready.

Best Western switched its reservation system from a mainframe to a compliant client-server environment two year ago, said Doug Schoenfeld, its Y2K consultant.