FTI GROUP and SIHOT

Founded by FTI GROUP in September 2015, Meeting Point Hotels is an international hospitality company with a portfolio of five brands comprising more than 60 properties with more than 14,000 rooms, in 9 countries. The company’s portfolio includes LABRANDA Hotels & Resorts with its five sub brands that include select, comfort, balance, family star and city, Design Plus Hotels, Kairaba Hotels & Resorts, Club Sei and Lemon & Soul Hotels. Located in sunny destinations, by the beach or in close proximity to the beach, Meeting Point Hotels is dedicated to serve guests hospitality with a smile and deliver authentic experiences with a local flair. Whether couples, singles, families or friends from sun-seekers, sports fans, culturally interested or just enjoying the local cuisine, Meeting Point Hotels has the right choice for everyone.

Background and partnership:
Initially every hotel of FTI GROUP could choose their own PMS, which became an issue after an exponential growth phase of the company. Various significant problems resulted from using different PMS’s as for example standardizing processes, training employees, reporting, or developing interfaces with additional software providers. After reviewing and evaluating countless PMS providers in an RFP process, FTI GROUP chose SIHOT as a unified PMS solution for all their hotels. The key decision criteria were, that SIHOT offered the best cost benefit ratio and a modular approach.

1. Saving time and improving efficiency through support

Challenge:
As every hotel of FTI GROUP worked with different PMS solutions it was difficult to have long-term contacts or Key Account Managers from the PMS’ side. FTI GROUP was also depended on the conditions the PMS provided i.e. contact hour or support language.

Solution:
One of the most significant benefits since using SIHOT can be noticed in the improvement of the support efficiency, as problems can be solved much faster. Today, the FTI GROUP product owners of the IT department have dedicated SIHOT contacts with whom they are able to address problems and find solutions. Hotel employees are offered a 24/7 support from SIHOT in five different locations in German, Spanish, Portuguese, and English. Especially SIHOT’s local support in Spain is important for the group, as most of their hotels are located in Spanish speaking countries.

2. Standardizing and improving reporting options

Challenge:
Due to the use of various PMS solution it was impossible for the group to have a standardized reporting. In addition, FTI GROUP was depending on the professional and truthful reporting admission of every individual hotel. Based on the individual reporting’s, FTI GROUP had to manually work on a country, region, brand, and group level reporting, that was indicating the overall performance.

Solution:
Since using SIHOT.PMS, FTI GROUP can benefit from the systems advanced reporting option on a hotel, country, regional, brand and group level. Additionally, the group developed their own BI, which is based on the data export function of SIHOT.PMS.

3. Changing from an inflexible to a modular solution

Challenge:
Whenever the group experienced growth the various PMS systems used, made it challenging to adapt to the needs of FTI GROUP.

Solution:
SIHOT’s hotel software solutions are based on a modular approach, which adapts to the specific business models of its partners. Therefore, FTI GROUP was able to customize its solution until it was perfectly adapted to the groups business model. However, the group is not limited to the same approach in the future. When new hotels join the portfolio or FTI GROUP likes to implement more advanced solutions, it can add additional modules or a custom developed solution. The following examples showcase how FTI GROUP and SIHOT achieved a customized solution:

1. Multi Property Solution: In addition, to SIHOT.PMS the group decided to use a transnational multi-property solution, which enables FTI GROUP to access data comprehensively from several hotels and manage availability, guest data, forecasts or joint daily closings for all registered hotels. However, the solution is already built in a way that at a later point in time, FTI GROUP has the option to use additional modules as for example Central Management (SIHOT.CM) or Central Reservation System (SIHOT.CRS) once the complexity increases

 

2. Data Hosting: For FTI GROUP on-premise data management was one of the key selection criteria when selecting SIHOT. However, external data centres or SAAS solutions get more and more common and with SIHOT, FTI GROUP can change their data management without changing their PMS system in the future

 

3. POS and Multi-Currency: Based on specific demands of the group, FTI GROUP chose several modules in addition to the PMS solution. Particularly POS and Multi- Currency were important for the organisation. With SIHOT.POS FTI GROUP simultaneously manages PMS and POS data and the multicurrency function enables the management of two currencies at the same time

 

4. Integrations: Integrating an additional software program for hotels, while having several PMS providers was accompanied by extra costs and timely effort. Therefore, FTI GROUP oftentimes disregarded to use additional systems. If FTI GROUP wants to integrate a new program i.e. a channel manager today, a pilot implementation in one hotel will enable the easy roll-out in the rest of the hotels

“SIHOT is a very efficient system with many functionalities as well as further modules,
which also have the advantage that they can be added later and do not have to be acquired
right from the start”

Yvonne Schneider, Operation Manager TO/DMC Support FTI GROUP