A part of the Global Premium Hotels brand, Fragrance Hotels is Singapore’s second largest budget hotel chain with 21 properties and more than 1,200 rooms. Since 1998, it has offered affordable quality accommodation to travellers with the goal of providing “smart comfort”.
In late 2015, Fragrance Hotels said it had seen a 40% rise in group-wide bookings since partnering with SiteMinder just 12 months prior.
The Singapore Stock Exchange-listed hotel group uses SiteMinder’s Channel Manager to power its online distribution and deliver its room rates, availability and reservations in real-time between its integrated property management system, Pyxis, and its online channels.
Learning to tend to guests, not technology
“Managing more than twenty of the most sought-after budget accommodation options in Singapore is very difficult – in fact, impossible – to manage without good and reliable technology like SiteMinder’s,” says Chan Chi Ho, Assistant E-Commerce Manager at Fragrance Hotels.
According to HRS’ Hotel Price Radar for 2014 and the first half of 2015, Singapore has one of the four most expensive average hotel room rates in the Asia Pacific.
Mr Chan says: “In 2014, we realised we needed to stop spending time and manpower on updating our online channels’ extranets and actually focus on looking after our guests! At the time, we would receive in excess of 100 online bookings on any given day, and making sure those bookings were updated in Pyxis, and that the rates and availability of our rooms were updated across all our channels, was a full-time role. And one we could no longer do manually.”
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Increasing bookings while saving 120 hours of manpower each month
Since partnering with SiteMinder in late 2014, bookings for the group are up 40%. And, for each month that passes, the Fragrance business is saving approximately 120 hours of manpower.
Says Mr Chan:
“Using SiteMinder’s channel manager has helped us to focus more on our other tasks and less on managing our rooms online. We’re saving about 120 hours of manpower per month. Ultimately, it’s allowed us to maximise our online revenue right up to the last room.”
In addition to its savings in manpower used, the streamlining of the group’s administrative costs has enabled significant cost savings and a tremendous return on investment.
“SiteMinder’s technology is not only affordable and user-friendly, it is stable and we have full trust in its connectivity,” Mr Chan says.
