Maestro PMS Uses Lodging Link Technology to Provide Effective Guest Service Device Integration for Fairmont Resort Properties

Challenge

With a family of resorts and timeshares spanning North America, Fairmont Resort Properties, Ltd. has an expansive customer base each with travel trends, preferences and activities that the company carefully tracks, in order to better serve both new and repeat guests.

The company utilizes numerous disparate guest service devices to track customer spending and requests. Gathering data from these devices used to be a matter of manual labor, requiring overnight front desk employees to review each days receipts and attribute each charge to the respective customers' room for billing purposes.

When Fairmont Resort Properties wanted to replace its time-consuming manual process of tracking customer spending and requests, the company selected NORTHWIND Maestro Property Management System (PMS) utilizing Lodging Link technology from Comtrol Corporation for the Lake Okanagan Resort near Kelowna, British Columbia and Makaha Resort & Golf Club in Oahu, Hawaii. This sophisticated, multi-faceted property management system ensures each device can communicate with the resorts' front desk, instantaneously sending collected records to Fairmont Resort Properties central headquarters. It saves time, optimizes revenue and minimizes errors.

Technology Solution

Maestro PMS optimizes the resort's operations by using multiple modules to incorporate reservations, front desk activities, housekeeping and more into a single-image database. It simplifies guest information tracking and reporting, helps monitor guest trends, and increases customer loyalty. The software also supports a broad range of interfaces, from credit card processing to video checkout and call accounting in order to save labor and hassles in the billing process.

To ensure call accounting accuracy, Maestro PMS uses Lodging Link software as middleware, communicating data between the property management system and guest service devices.

"Lodging Link allows our system to display the guests name, rather than simply a room number, when they call the front desk for room service," Ellis said. "This helps us optimize room revenue by facilitating cost accountability instantly attaching a room number, customer name, resort service and call time to each guests record, so that upon checkout all room charges are ready."

Cory McClure, business development manager for Comtrol's Hospitality Products Division, said, "Lodging Link can communicate with more than 500 different hotel devices. This compatibility provids Fairmont Resort Properties with the solution they need to maximize room revenue, and savsMaestro the time and cost of developing this interface technology on their own."

Lodging Links connectivity ensures accurate billings by combining all charges (i.e. room charge, movie rentals, restaurant visits, outgoing calls, mini bar items, etc.) and immediately adding them to the correct guests bills. This arrangement helps resorts generate revenue by maintaining a reliable link between each guest service device and the front desk, which saves time and eliminates manual errors.

"Our main software resides in one central locale, while the resorts are scattered throughout North America", Ellis said. "Along with communicating on-site with hotel devices located in different rooms, Maestro PMS with Lodging Link technology communicates data from all our resorts globally back to our central location."

To learn more about Fairmont Resort Properties, visit www.fairmontcanada.com. For information on NORTHWIND
Maestro PMS, visit www.maestropms.com, or for information on Comtrol Lodging Link, visit www.comtrol.com.

Additional Information

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