With the new infrastructure in place, the glh team moved to the latest version of Oracle Hospitality OPERA Property Cloud Service, giving the whole business access to a broader set of advanced functionality. “It was probably the smoothest upgrade that we’ve ever done,” says Matthew Newton. “There were no concerns about the number of calls or the IP ranging—that was all done in the background.”
The work has had a phenomenal impact. Firstly, the guest experience has been boosted by system stability and staff confidence. “It has clearly made a difference to our check-in and check-out times,” says Chris Hewertson. “We can offer a much slicker experience.”
Secondly, team members in glh hotels are much happier. “Staff are no longer coming into work fearing that the systems would be down or performing poorly. Our staff can actually plan their days. The stability and performance of the system has given everyone confidence,” says Chris Hewertson. “Two years ago, any internal conversation about our website focused on whether our back-end systems could deal with traffic and bookings. We are now absolutely confident that they can cope, which means that sales and marketing can be more bullish in what we promote.”
Finally, glh has also been able to improve its relationships with its external partners. “Our booking partner has seen a quantifiable increase in service,” says Chris Hewertson. “Our partners are tightly bound to us in how they service their large customers through the global distribution system and we can now have a much healthier relationship with them.”
For the IT team, the success of the project meant taking a very different type of phone call, as Matthew Newton explains, “We basically had 3-4 weeks where people were just calling us to say thank you—not to tell us something was broken or slow, just to say thank you. People would cross the room when they saw an IT person simply to thank them for sorting out the issues.”
Chris Hewertson sums up the impact, “We de-stressed our organization with the move to the new environment and the Oracle Hospitality OPERA Property Cloud Service upgrade. Property management systems aren’t even mentioned at our operational meetings any more. The focus is on strategic transformation.”