Creating stickiness with a data-driven central reservation system

Besides opening the Asia region up to more travel, cheaper modern regional airlines have ushered in a golden era of intra-Asia travel – there are now more Asians travelling within this region instead of outside, and they are travelling more frequently as well to enjoy the rich and diverse range of food, languages and cultures that all the countries in the Asia continent has to offer.

This golden era also signals a regional travel and hospitality industry that has become very active and extremely crowded. Service providers in this thriving industry are scrambling to differentiate themselves, and it is the service provider that is able to pack in as many services and value-for-money offers into a single bundle, that wins the customers.

With the proliferation of mobile technologies and fast broadband connectivity also, two keywords come to mind when modern hospitality service providers try to keep up with the needs of the modern traveller – freedom and flexibility.

Enter the central reservation system (CRS) that is a crucial enabler for hospitality players offering this experience to their guests. Besides being intuitive and able to offer in-depth insights, a comprehensive and effective CRS system has to be a one-stop platform for service providers to display what they have to offer.

For example, the modern, savvy traveller of today wants to make hotel bookings in whatever way they want, whenever they want. That means flexibility to be able to book other hotel facilities like conference rooms, transportation tickets, and yes, even packages to theme parks and special events, all done in a seamless manner.

A CRS, as its name suggests, is vital to enabling this convenience and flexibility.

This CRS must be able to support the modern hospitality service provider’s multi-channel sales strategy across online, call centres, counters or agents. It must be able to securely fulfil their customers’ requests and through a payment option that they can select from a list of options, be it direct or postpaid payments.

Also important is the visibility that the CRS offers into customers’ spending patterns, which can highlight opportunities for cross-selling and up-selling.

The Fusionex suite for hospitality and travel

For Fusionex, a leading data technology provider specialising in Big Data Analytics (BDA), the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, and Deep Learning, its Fusionex Big Data platform becomes a natural bolt-on for the Fusionex CRS, which reaches customers through convenient online, kiosk, and mobile platforms.

Fusionex’s Big Data Analytics GIANT solution consolidates billions of records, from traveller registration to hotel guest interactions and retail customer management, after which it cleanses the data and manages disparate data to gain useful insights. These insights in turn would facilitate bookings, make product recommendations and provide better customer experience with a high degree of flexibility and personalisation.

Besides the Fusionex BDA platform, Fusionex also offers a Loyalty Management System (LMS) through which hospitality service providers can give out loyalty points and redeemable rewards.

Central Reservation System – the glue that ties it all together

Fusionex’s CRS brings all of its powerful capabilities together and enables service providers to sell more than just rooms; they are able to consolidate other offerings they have like shopping malls, transportation, banquet hall service and theme parks, for easy access by their guests.

The solution is also TripAdvisor-certified and supports the travel Global Distribution System (GDS). This means it can reach over 300,000 IATA-registered travel agents using the same reservations systems as airlines. Fusionex’s CRS system is optimised for search engines as well as Google Analytics.

Big data and analytics at work… in Korea

Last February, Fusionex had announced the successful deployment of a CRS platform to power operations of a new mega resort in Korea – it spans 500 acres of theme parks, hotels, entertainment facilities, villas, condominiums and more.

With its new Fusionex solution, resort operations will be able to unearth hidden insights in its data with a near-real-time overview of overall hospitality performance. It can even drill down to analysis of specific theme park rides, enabling decision-making and efficient strategizing based on Fusionex’s predictive analytics.

The CRS will also support requests by travel agents, providing a wider avenue for travellers to find their way to the resort. The system will also provide seamless communication between floor staff and resort security.

Powerful – all-in-one property management

Fusionex’s CRS also packs enough power to serve as a property management solution for small establishments, with easy-to-manage features, transparent administration screens, historical audit trails and easy IT integration with systems like OPERA PMS.