New concept Ciena Hotels & Suites has carefully selected technology solutions to improve hotel efficiency and profitability while giving customers what they want – convenience, options and greater control over their hotel interactions

 

When the newest hotel in Texas opens its doors in Cotulla in early 2013, staff and guests will marvel at a great showcase of the latest technology products under one hotel roof. Aside from offering market-leading amenities, such as a custom in-house movie theater, Dreamscape bedding, complimentary welcome snack and bottled water in every room, plus 24/7 fresh food-and-beverage options, the hotel aims to boost profitability in its competitive set by automating many mundane and labor-intensive procedures.

 

Bob Zachariah, president and CEO of HotelWorks, parent of Ciena Hotels & Suites, along with his team carefully selected all on-site technologies by focusing on best-of-breed vendors that offer something unique. Ciena Hotels & Suites intends to combine these unique solutions into an efficient and streamlined operation that has appeal to staff, guests and potential future franchisees of the brand. By combining unique technology services within a vibrant hotel atmosphere, Ciena is reducing mundane human operations for the benefit of staff and providing guests with exciting new options for obtaining the information and services they want – exactly how and when they want them. By harnessing greater efficiencies, Ciena’s cost model is expected to have huge appeal to hoteliers seeking to increase profitability by embracing Ciena’s business systems.

 

Ciena guests will naturally be able to book their room online. While this is not a huge departure from the current norm, guest interaction is expected to be much more mobile device biased than is typical. The Ciena hotel will offer Mobile Key by OpenWays that enables guests to bypass the traditional requirement to stop at the front desk to check-in and collect a room key.

 

Continuing with the self-service options and theme, Ciena has also selected the ICE (Interactive Customer Experience) enterprise platform from Intelity. The implementation will include Intelity’s ICE TV, ICE Mobile and ICE Lobby to allow Ciena guests to make requests and order services at the touch of a finger.  

 

A critical part of the technology jigsaw was the selection of the hotel’s property-management system. A key component of the Ciena experience will be its guest-loyalty program, and therefore it was vital to choose a flexible PMS with great guest-loyalty capabilities. After a vigorous search of several leading PMS options, Ciena selected  Infor HMS by Infor.  The solution will be implemented as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based solution in order to benefit from the functionality, financial and scalability advantages offered through the cloud.

 

While it maybe not so evident initially to many guests staying at the property, a huge boon expected to streamline the lives of staff and therefore enable better service to guests was the selection of HotSOS (Hotel Service Optimization System) by MTech (part of Newmarket International). HotSOS automates the workflow of the hotel and tracks guest request, incidents and fulfillment through an integrated platform.