‘Check into hotel, enhance cybersecurity’

Justin Borkovetz, Director of Operations, Zucchetti, in an interview with TRAVTALK, shares his view on resort properties, water parks and cybersecurity, which play a pivotal role in the overall guest satisfaction and monetising the businesses. Cybersecurity takes centre stage, as it can be boon or bane when it comes to a bleisure holiday.

TT Bureau

How could a property improve the ticketing and reservations for its on-site waterpark to maximize revenue and guest satisfaction?

One of the best ways to improve the operational efficiency, profitability and guest experience for your resort’s waterpark is to implement an integrated ticketing and reservation management solution—ideally, within the PMS — enabling easy monitoring of all room and waterpark reservations, payments and related activities. First and foremost, having the waterpark ticketing and hotel booking engine integrated is a benefit to guests as they can book and pay for their rooms and waterpark tickets at the same time. Centralized payment processing streamlines the check-out process for guests, which can lead to a drop in cart abandonment rates. For hoteliers, it also enables more targeted and effective marketing, as they can promote the waterpark within the room booking process and/or offer discounted packages when guests buy both, driving additional revenue and further enhancing the guest booking experience. While improving the booking experience for the guest, the integration of the two systems also makes it easier for your reservations team to make updates to either type of booking for the guest, as both are stored within your PMS, easily accessible from a single dashboard, reducing the need for manual data entry and minimizing errors.

How can hotels effectively manage operations of multiple on-site restaurants to ensure a variety of dining experiences?

When you have multiple restaurant or retail stores on-site, it can prove complicated to manage your operations and financial transactions without an innovative, integrated Point of Sale (POS) system. A sophisticated POS will offer customizable terminals for each restaurant and retail outlet, all of which are accessible via a single dashboard, enabling you to toggle between each terminal for ease-of-use and overall visibility of each retail location. This innovative feature will streamline the check-out process and accentuate the visibility of the items being sold, ensuring a more efficient and engaging transaction experience. In addition, you can create individual event specific menus or retail offerings in each individual POS terminal, making it simple to offer promotions or special offers through an individual restaurant or retail outlet, without any accounting confusion.

Finally, a robust POS will enable you to manage and oversee the performance and metrics of each individual terminal, as well as a holistic, 360-view of all purchases made, site-wide. This makes it easy to identify where improvements could be made to maximize revenues or to identify new revenue opportunities, on a terminal-by-terminal basis, and from a high strategic level.

How can resorts maximize the cybersecurity defences of its operational technology?

While streamlining your reservation process, your CRS/ PMS will also strengthen your cybersecurity defences, minimizing the risk of your guests’ data being compromised. Centralizing your reservation data, guest information and other booking engine data in one system makes it easier to protect guests’ data. Of course, a CRS must connect to your PMS, channel manager, RMS and other operational systems, so the quality of the interface is an important consideration as well; a sophisticated CRS uses strong encryption to protect your guests’ data during the transfer process. Your CRS/ PMS gives you the ability to control who has access to what type of data within your system, and by ensuring that you give full access to only necessary employees. Finally, your CRS/ PMS should offer secure payment processing through an integrated booking engine and POS.