Sixteen hotel systems, one rules engine
A hotel group in Australia with 47 hotels under seven brands, 13 it ran itself and 34 under licence, closing an older points club.
/work/hotel-gamesCame in new build
- System
- Rules engine, stay feeds, desk tool for 47 hotels
- Ask
- One programme replacing the old club, rewarding direct stays only
- Region
- Australia
The piece Sixteen inlets into one block, each as thick as the count of hotels on that property system, with two outlets for the desk and the member.
- 16systemsread by one engine
- 47hotelsacross seven brands
- 3pointsper A$1, direct stays only
- 2airline programmessent a points file
The ask
One guest programme across seven brands to replace the old points club, with balances carried across and only direct stays earning.
The real problem
Between them the hotels ran sixteen property systems, with only ten on the group's main one.
Anything that needed cards, tiers or new kit at reception would stop at the few big hotels.
Sixteen systems, one set of rules
- Idle
- Live
- Strain
- Fail
BeforeA programme run from reception, with cards and tiers, would have reached the hotels on the main system and stopped there.
AfterEvery hotel's system sends its stays daily to one rules engine, which feeds the desk tool, member site, SMS and airline points.
What we built
A rules engine at the centre, fed every day by every hotel's own system by file transfer, export or email. It reads each stay the same way whatever sent it and decides what the stay earns.
An agent booking earns nothing. A guest with a frequent-flyer number earns airline points instead. At reception a small web tool on the PC the hotel already had checks vouchers, finds members and logs flyer numbers.
How we made it hold
We wrote the rules down before building them, as a manual head office approved: what earns, what expires, who gets which message and when.
Backstage The decisions behind the build, and the hardest problem
Decisions
Take each hotel's stays in whatever form its system could send.
With sixteen systems in play, the engine treats every stay the same way once it arrives.
Keep the desk's part to a web tool on the reception PC.
No cards, tiers or new hardware, so the hotels off the main system could run it too.
Write the rules as a manual first.
Head office approved what earns, what expires and who hears what before any of it was built.
Ruled out
Cards, tiers and kit at reception.
They would have stopped at the few big hotels.
The hardest problem
Sixteen property systems, with only ten hotels on the group's main one. Every hotel sends its stays daily in whatever form its own system can manage. One engine applies one set of rules to all of them.
The difference
- The programme went live in 2015 and later won an industry award for best loyalty programme.
- One set of rules across 47 hotels, read from sixteen property systems.
- Every hotel ran the desk's part on its reception PC, with no new kit.
