Collegium Glashütten – Zentrum
für Kommunikation and SIHOT

The Collegium Glashütten – Zentrum für Kommunikation is a conference hotel in the region of Taunus, which belongs to Commerzbank AG. To make a success of seminars, meetings and conferences, you need more than just the physical space to work in. You need a relaxed working atmosphere that encourages concentration, pleasant surroundings that promotes creativity and lets you recharge your batteries, and a well-designed event organisation that leaves nothing to be desired in terms of service. At Collegium Glashütten, we have set out to meet and exceed all these requirements, to create the ideal environment for your events. In a back-to-nature, retreat-like location but with good transport connections situated near to Frankfurt in the Rhine/ Main region, this 4-star venue offers you 27 well-lit, multipurpose conference rooms with capacity for up to 200 people. Generously proportioned open-plan areas indoors, a large garden and our terraces create spaces for inspiring dialogue at any time of the year. Relax and recuperate in one of our 127 comfortable hotel rooms with views of the verdant rolling hills of the Taunus or of our modern spa and fitness facilities. The broad expanses of the Taunus begin right outside the hotel entrance, and offer plenty of scope for enjoying the great outdoors as well as team-building and group activities. Our kitchen and service team offers a varied cuisine during your conference – and naturally for your special event.

Collaboration:

SIHOT and the Collegium Glashütten have been working together since 2020. Before switching to SIHOT, the conference hotel used the same PMS provider for 20 years. Outdated processes, reports and forecasts prepared using Excel made daily work for employees more difficult. After a thorough comparison of different PMS providers and a profound sourcing process, the selection for SIHOT was completed shortly before the global pandemic. Which meant implementation was due in the middle of the Corona crisis. The limited resources presented both companies with major challenges.

 “Even if there were delays on both sides because of the short-time work, we are really very satisfied with the result we have now,” reports Mr. Nordmann, Managing Director of the Collegium Glashütten.

The system could be individually tailored to our needs. The software was implemented in the middle of lockdown and SIHOT supported us in numerous video conferences. During the entire process, the SIHOT team dealt intensively with every problem and offered a solution as quickly as possible.

Why did you choose SIHOT?

We appreciated the company’s headquarters in Germany. Due to the proximity to the support and the advice in German, cultural and language barriers can be avoided. Another major factor was, that the event module was also available as a cloud version.

„The event management module integrated in the PMS is a unique selling point of SIHOT. We haven’t come close to finding a comparable system within a cloud solution.“ 

Andreas Nordmann, Managing Director of Collegium Glashütten

What has changed most since using SIHOT?

Our 20-year-old processes have improved a lot since we switched to SIHOT. They were set up in a more efficient way and we luckily nowadays don’t need our Excel overviews anymore.

Now we know in real time which event is taking place and in which of our event spaces. The internal communication tool supports us completely. The booking of events and rooms is now completely automated. Other areas that have improved are distribution, forecasting and support.

What were the biggest challenges that could be solved with SIHOT?

1. To find a SaaS system that combines event management and PMS

After extensive research, we had not found a SaaS solution that combines event management with a PMS solution and at the same time meet our requirements. The only comparable solution we would maybe have considered was “on premise” and therefore an exclusion criteria for us. Therefore, I would recommend SIHOT particularly to colleagues from the MICE industry.

A booking can now be received and processed further without paper. In addition, we always have an overview of when which room is occupied and with which event. Visual planning tools represent even complex events in a simple manner. Colleagues can update each other or assign tasks via the internal communication tool. The system can also automatically generate contracts, function sheets and email notifications.

SIHOT has developed a function for us with which we can clearly manage the storage and management of the parcels. In addition, our pension list is very complex. This is also a point where we have experienced a very high degree of customization from SIHOT. Now we can see with one click which and, above all, how many catering services we need per outlet.

„I would recommend SIHOT particularly to colleagues from the MICE industry.”“

Andreas Nordmann, Managing Director Collegium Glashütten

2.  Individuality

What convinced me most about SIHOT was its high degree of customization. At the beginning we had the expectation that we would have to adapt to the way the system worked. But it has been shown that the software could be individually adapted to our needs. At the first workshop, we were not, as expected, explained how SIHOT works.Instead, we were first asked: What should SIHOT be able to do? It can be described as a kind of agile method that ultimately revealed how we can achieve our goal with the software. SIHOT always tried to find a solution. In addition to the customized event functions, we also got a very good solution for a VAT issue that we internally faced. Since we belong to Commerzbank, we are subject to the VAT process of the group. It is important that the system does not charge sales tax for hotel and event bookings of Commerzbank employees. It was very important for us to be able to map the mixture between sales tax-liable and sales tax-exempt customers via the system and to integrate it into the forecast. Furthermore, the entire layout of the documents can be adapted to the Commerzbank corporate identity. We are heavily dependent on the clear guidelines of Commerzbank and needed a system that is able to implement these guidelines.

„What convinced me most about SIHOT was its high degree of customization.“

Andreas Nordmann, Managing Director Collegium Glashütten

Results

What results have you been able to achieve since the beginning of the collaboration?

We have only been working with SIHOT for a few months, but I can clearly say that we have been able to streamline work processes in many areas. Be it at the end of the month or the weekly preparation for the internal processes. The tasks that were communicated to the team leaders always took 2 to 3 hours before. Now we completely eliminated that time and our team leaders can focus instead on more important things. Bookings by online travel agencies used to be registered manually. Due to the direct interface with SIHOT, incoming bookings are now processed automatically, which saves us a lot of time. By streamlining the processes, we achieve noticeable cost savings every month.