INTERNET
New hotel app: check it out, then check in
11-10-2007
by Charlie Taylor
Finding a hotel room is likely to become that bit easier following a new deal between two Irish firms which will see them rolling out a real-time booking system.
Avvio.com, a Limerick-based provider of online reservation booking engines, has teamed up with Ennis-based IT support firm Tierney's Office Automation to roll out new technology which will benefit both hoteliers and end users by providing real-time accommodation rates and room availability updates.
The technology combines Avvio's flagship Convert 4.0 software with Tierney's Hotellinx Suite, a property management solution, to create a system which allows end users to view exactly what hotel reservation staff see. This means that customers need no longer waste hours hunting down rooms that are already taken or have gone up in price.
As Avvio's managing director Brian Reeves acknowledges, online reservation systems have been the subject of criticism in the past for advertising accommodation rates and rooms that may no longer exist. However, the new technology is meant to ensure that incidences such as double-booked rooms and out of date accommodation rates become a thing of the past.
"What consumers have found when they go online is that usually rates and allocation of rooms is manually managed by hotels in 99 percent of cases, which is not the most accurate way of doing things because it relies on staff updating the property management system. If they don't do this often enough then rooms can be allocated or rates changed without it being input on the system. This happens all too frequently and is a nuisance for end users," Reeves told ENN.
"We've improved on this by taking all the property management information and putting it in an online environment. With our system, the rate that end users see is the rate that's in the same instance being added to manual systems, so that they can be sure that when they go to confirm the booking, that's the information that's also contained on the hotel's internal system," he added.
In addition to keeping customers sweet by offering them real-time booking information, the new technology also comes with Avvio's Connect application, which allows hoteliers update their online advertising to carry the latest rates.
"If you're online and see an ad for say, a weekend break at Dromoland Castle or elsewhere for X amount then that ad has been created dynamically as a result of the latest information on room availability and rates at the Castle at that instant. That ad can therefore be amended as and when necessary to ensure that this is the exact rate that internet users will be charged," explained Reeves.
Avvio claims that feedback from hotels it works with has been overwhelmingly positive and the company is now intent on rolling out the technology to clients over the next 18 months.
The company is also intending to launch a major software drive into international markets starting with the launch of Convert 4.0 at the World Travel Market in London next month.
Avvio, which was founded in February 2002, currently employs 27 people. It claims that 80 percent of Ireland's 5-star hotels currently uses its software and estimates that its Convert product will yield in excess of EUR45 million in accommodation bookings for clients in 2007.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 