Choice Hotels Launches “Openings Portal” For Its Hotel Franchisees

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 17:31:23 +0000

With the launch of its new Openings Portal, Choice Hotels International is simplifying and improving the process of opening a hotel for its franchisees. The advanced project management platform was designed to let Choice owners track every step of the opening process, from franchise agreement to the first check-in. The ideas is to help owners welcome guests faster and capitalize on their investment sooner.

The hope is that the platform’s intuitive design and functionality will help remove friction and create a more seamless process. According to a company spokesperson, Choice’s dedicated Opening Services team will continue to be franchisees’ primary resource during the opening process, and the Openings Portal will supplement the hands-on, personal services, with the following features:

Three tracks: critical milestones, brand requirements, and training and activation, where owners can monitor their progress as they complete each step in the hotel’s opening process.
Fully mobile functionality so franchisees can update their progress anywhere, at any time.
A powerful search feature that quickly guides owners to important documents and valuable educational content, which helps franchisees learn about the opening process and how to help improve profitability.

The Openings Portal is housed on Choice University, a premier property-level training resource, which last year was ranked No. 6 in ELearning! Magazine’s Top 100 Companies for Corporate Training. Choice University offers hotel owners a wide range of engaging, relevant content designed to deliver a positive impact across all areas of the business, including a curriculum tailored to each user based on job function and brand.

Fully mobile functionality allows franchisees to update their progress anywhere, at any time.

The new resource builds on several innovations that Choice Hotels recently created, including Virtual Pay capabilities and the Group Management Platform. Virtual Pay allows travel managers to quickly and effortlessly book stays for their guests without needing a personal credit card, and Group Management Platform is an online reservation solution that makes planning and booking group travel easier.

The new tool should help Choice Hotel maintain its industry-leading voluntary franchisee retention rate. The company currently has approximately 2,000 franchisee. It’s not the first time the publicly traded company, which has more than 7,000 hotels in total representing nearly 570,000 rooms as of the end of last year, has demonstrated its technology prowess.

In January, for example, the company launched its Group Management Platform, an online reservation platform to make planning and booking group travel at its hotels faster and more efficient. The tool is available to members of the Choice Privileges loyalty program who are looking to book 10 rooms or more.  Using the tool, guests can make reservations for groups, review details at a glance, select various payment options, confirm reservations, send customized emails inviting guests to book and make room modifications at any time.

For the past five years, the company has made its hotel property management system available under its SkyTouch Technology subsidiary to any hotelier in the world, including its direct competitors. So far, more than 750 non-Choice hoteliers have become customers.

Choice Hotels’ technology leadership position has clearly helped it strengthen its midscale presence while growing its upscale and extended-stay portfolio. Last year, the company expanded its domestic development pipeline to its largest ever and increased its international room count by nearly 6 percent.

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Red Lion Hotels Gets Into the Hotel Technology Solutions Business

Mon, 11 Mar 2019 15:10:37 +0000

It’s not the first time that a major hotel group has launched and marketed a new technology solution. For the past five years, for example, Choice Hotels has made its hotel property management system available under its SkyTouch Technology subsidiary to any hotelier in the world, including its direct competitors. So far, more than 750 non-Choice hoteliers have become customers. More recently, Standard Hotels launched a unit developing a mobile-first online travel service, called One Night, for independent boutique hotels.

Still, it remains unusual that a major hotel group would form a subsidiary to compete in a crowded technology solution provider arena that includes hotel property management systems. But that’s exactly what Red Lion Hotels (RLH) has announced it will be doing, perhaps inspired by the success of Choice Hotels. Last week, the company unveiled the launch of RLabs, with the stated goal of building new technology platforms for the hospitality industry including software, robotics, and artificial intelligence.

The first offering from RLabs is Canvas Integrated Systems, which, not unlike the Skytouch offering, is being billed as “an all-in-one cloud-based hospitality management suite” featuring a collection of seamlessly-integrated tools designed to drive revenue, secure more revenue opportunities, automate channel management and reduce cost and friction for independent hotel owners.

While the integration of best-of-breed solutions is hardly a new concept, the company makes the bold claims that it will utilize technology not currently accessible by most independent hotels to provide revenue management, channel management and global sales at the fraction of the price of existing options. According to a company spokesperson, Canvas Integrated Systems will provide additional platform capabilities such as personalized loyalty programs and keyless entry.

The company has stated that it expects that Canvas Integrated Systems will be able to provide a savings of up to 50 percent over what typical independent hotels are currently paying, and potentially even more for hotels that are part of a soft brand. Those are high expectations and should provide a significant competitive advantage if the company can deliver.

Reduced cost of ownership is a big part of the value proposition. According to RLH, hotel operators will receive many of the advantages and transactional costs of a well-established larger system structure without having to incur costs and meet expensive brand standards required by soft brands.

Not surprisingly, Red Lion Hotels is the first customer. Seven Red Lion hotels will begin using Canvas Integrated Systems early this year, with the first hotel, Monterey Tides, said to have already implemented the system in December. No word yet on how well the new solution is performing.

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Choice Hotels Launches “Openings Portal” For Its Hotel Franchisees

Red Lion Hotels Gets Into the Hotel Technology Solutions Business