Opera Reservation System

When our clients, Ramada Jarvis and VILLAGE Hotels, asked us to redesign and develop their website and online booking engine using Opera, the PMS from Micros Fidelo; they presented us with a very exciting challenge indeed.

The Potential with Ramada Jarvis

Ramada Jarvis operate 30 hotels in the UK, each offering their guests a host of different facilities such as comfortable accommodation, meeting rooms, health clubs and executive packages. When approached with the task of redesigning Ramada Jarvis' website, we were asked to integrate the site with Opera, a property management system which is configurable to the specific needs of any individual hotel operator.

The Solution

Our team worked closely with the key Program Manager at Ramada Jarvis to understand each property's specific characteristics. Ramada Jarvis may be a world renowned chain, but each and every hotel under their umbrella is individual; meaning that we had to take into consideration each hotel's specific needs.  Some of the key considerations included giving Ramada Jarvis the ability to monitor and update group bookings, as well as integrating with Opera's profiling option which allows the hotel to maintain a record of guests' details making reservation handling faster and more accurate. We also developed a system that allowed Ramada Jarvis to set and then automatically control rates for real-time bookings.

In a market where an easily navigated booking engine translates into conversion rates, Ramada Jarvis enjoyed an increase in revenue and were so satisfied with our work that they've been with us since 2007. At Equator, we're the big numbers agency; so we're interested on turning 4 years into 5, and then some.

The Potential with Village Hotels

VILLAGE Hotels operate 23 very uniquely styled hotels all over the UK. When they came to us and asked us to improve their booking functionality, we jumped at the challenge. Our brief was to design and develop online tools that would improve functionality to better reflect the facilities they offer and they wanted to do this through, yes you've guessed it - Opera's PMS. Areas they wanted to specifically focus on included general online bookings, corporate bookings and a unique room availability tool.

The Solution

We stepped up to ensure that Opera could be used in order to up-sell packages to guests and to offer room rates and availability options in a clear format, unique to VILLAGE Hotels.

We also launched a corporate booking tool for the hotel's site; allowing VILLAGE Hotels to cater for multiple corporate bookings online, something that previously could only be done via their call centre. Having eliminated the middle man - we provided corporate clients with personal logins so they could manage the specific requirements of their stay. Things like bookings for meeting rooms, reservations at the hotel restaurant and their preferred payment method are now controlled by this unique system. The hotel also gained greater control of managing corporate bookings thanks to the creation of the guest profiles attached to each room, allowing them to anticipate guests' needs.

In 2010, we went even further in streamlining the VILLAGE Hotels website, by creating the Calendar tool which allowed hotels to promote availability for key promotional rates. The calendar showed real-time availability with prices and the number of rooms remaining for each date. Results were instantaneous.

Although each hotel offered a wide range of different facilities at various locations around the UK, we were able to help both hotels maximise the efficiency of Opera, optimising their booking engines and increasing online reservations across the board.