Once again technology bring revolutionary changes to the hospitality industry. The Internet, through both websites and email protocol, is connecting people as quickly and cheaply as the telephone, and can be as rich as satellite TV. Many studies have proved how the hotel industry has continuously benefited from the Internet, since its early days. A recent study by the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research states that in 2005, 1 out of 5 reservations will be made online, while only 1 in 12 used the Internet in 2003. If online reservation contribution is increasing, the next question to ask is it from Hotel's website?

In response to this new technological opportunity, Pelican Hotel Reservation Management System today offers advanced online architecture for hoteliers to incorporate into their websites, potentially enriching them. Pelican System features not only help the hotelier in managing reservations but also assist in maintaining a client database, providing access to all potential customers online – and contain many more benefits.

Firstly, making online reservation through a hotel website with instant confirmation. While many hotels seem to offer online reservations, these are in fact only reservation requests – no reservation is actually made and no room is actually sold! This is because conventional systems are unable to track room and rate availability for a particular date requested, so what the potential guest does is to send in a request with all necessary information, and then wait until a hotel staff person gets back to him/her by email or phone.

Therefore, Pelican System fills a crucial need, providing an instant confirmation for every online reservation made. The system will track the room type and rate availability, according to what has been set by the hotel, displaying it to the potential guest in less than 1 minute, followed by instant confirmation, once the reservation is submitted.

A hotel's own website is actually the cheapest and fastest way to store and access as much hotel information as necessary. Thus, the second astonishing feature that Pelican System offers is to provide access to all potential clients: not only end users, but also travel agents and corporate clients, segments definitely making a large contribution to room sales. This is known as "online contracting".

Due to the massive number of agents that hotels customarily deal with, unfortunately, many only devote their energy and attention to a few select productive agents or their intermediaries. As a result, hotels come to depend heavily on them, whereas many other travel agents are urgently in need of room rates and allotments from hotels – but can get no allotment portion. An enterprising hotelier really must start considering those "ignored" travel agents, ones who might contribute many room sales, making reservations for other parties. This condition also applies to corporate clients.

Following the direct access benefit outlined in the previous paragraph, hotels will not be flooded, with massive numbers of travel agents/corporate clients signing in. Pelican System also offers selective features enabling clients to control their productivity easily, i.e. productivity reports, while maximizing the available database, i.e., email distribution and insufficient room inventory reports.

With all the feature of Pelican System described above, along with numerous others not mentioned here, Pelican offers an extremely user-friendly system. A hotel is able to display and manage its logo, banner, package pictures, newsletter and room allotment and rate assignment with firm and accurate control. For the guest, comprehensive and necessary information is clearly and attractively displayed, to make the reservation the first gateway of their stay.

About Pelican System
Pelican is an Internet-based reservation system designed to manage all types of bookings, whether made directly by guests or through travel agents and corporate clients.

For Internet users (direct guests) Pelican will provide instant confirmation of reservations made through the hotel web site, and will notify the hotel' reservation department though automatically generated e-mail messages.

For travel agents and corporate clients Pelican offers a feature called "Online Contracting," which eliminates the need for paper-based, fixed-term contracts, allowing the hotel to set and adjust rates and allotments instantly according to seasonal period, special events, or unexpected demand.

Pelican system provides a secure link to agents and clients, allowing hotels to distribute confidential trade rates to pre-authorized recipients, and to share allotments among many agents and clients on a "first-come-first-served" basis. Each agent or client accesses the system directly from the hotel's own web site with a unique login/password combination, allowing the hotel to assign each user to a specific group, and to determine the information and privileges each group will receive.

With Pelican system, the hotel has complete control at all times, and can easily monitor activity through instantly generated summaries and full reports.

For more information please visit www.pelicansystem.com

Author:
Linda Husin
R&D Manager
linda@pelicansystem.com