Guestcentric Systems, SA

GuestCentric is the all-in-one hotel digital marketing solution: website design, social & mobile marketing, booking engine and channel managements.

http://www.guestcentric.com

Archive for the ‘GuestCentric Service’ Category

Booking engine revamp

Friday, September 16th, 2011

Better conversions from even better booking engine

Our award-winning booking engine is in continuous fine-tuning. We regularly run usability tests to maximize conversion. This latest update has the following changes:
1- Action-oriented color palette with blue selections and highlights
2- Cleaner rates+availability calendar provides better readability and selection
3- Larger titles for Room Types and Promotions
4- Seamless tablet integration in terms of selection, scrolling and zooming, namely with iPad which now represents almost 5% of total web traffic.
5- Credit card numbers can be entered in a format with blank spaces

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Mobile website SEO for Google Mobile

Thursday, July 28th, 2011

Mobile SEO

All GuestCentric mobile websites have been optimized to be crawled and indexed by Google Mobile. A combination of tags and site maps has been used to ensure top ranking when using Google from a mobile device like a smartphone.

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New media manager

Tuesday, July 19th, 2011

Media manager more scalable

In the last 12 months we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of photos stored by our customers on our servers. The average number of pictures per customer is now well over 30, which led us to redo the media manager to make it more user-friendly in terms of photo management:
1- Pagination and filtering allows for easy access to the specific pictures you may be looking for.
2- Image size auto-selection based on the defined criteria for banners, sidebars, etc.
3- Autocrop features for faster set up of properties.
4- Multi-selection allows bulk handling of photos.
5- Drag-and-drop upload mechanisms that make uploading pictures much easier.

Enjoy the new media manager and as always feel free to feedback by clicking the “Make a wish” button in the application.

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Reservations like email

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

Improved reservations area

With the introduction of channel management, reservations can now arrive at the GuestCentric extranet from a multitude of channels and with different conditions (e.g. with warnings because credit card information is missing, or with errors because the channel has booked a reservation for a date that may not be available anymore).

Hence, we upgraded the reservations management area to make it even more similar to email.

Reservations that previously appeared with UNREAD status are now displayed with NEW status and highlighted in bold until opened by the user. When a NEW reservation is opened, the system automatically moves the specific reservation from the UNREAD folder to the ALL reservations folder, available on the left navigation panel. In case you wish, you can mark a reservation as unread, so it goes back to the UNREAD filter.

By providing this extra level of control, you should be able to manage channel management and website reservations in a breeze.

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Summer 2011

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

The new Summer Edition is now live! This edition is a major release with lots of new features to improve your online business and to simplify your life.

Booking.com connector

GuestCentric© now provides full control over Booking.com pricing and availabilities and centralizes all your reservations in one platform. Changing daily pricing and availabilities and making sure they get updated in your channels is one click away.

3 Summer 2011

Mobile in one Tap

If your hotel website is anything like most of our customers, chances are that 3% to 8% of your visitors come from mobile devices like smartphones and iPads. GuestCentric enables you to target those high-value users. No extra work needed. No maintenance hassles. Consider it “automagic”.

Stunning pages for
facebookers

Your hotel will look great on facebook with stunning pages for facebookers: Display a big, beautiful hotel page inside facebook. No extra work needed. No maintenance hassles. Consider it “automagic”.

5 Summer 2011

Language selector

We keep on pushing usability to improve your conversion ratings. Visitors are now able to change the language directly on the booking engine. Faster and simpler.

CVV Security Code

It is now possible to collect credit card security codes, commonly known as CVV or CSC, to authorize transactions using your Point of Sales terminal.

7 Summer 2011

Improved support: Muy bueno!

Because we want to serve you better we have improved our GuestCentric Help page with more e-commerce cards, more videos and a new search engine to make your life easier. All this is now also available in Spanish!

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New Mobile Commerce for Small Hotels

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

GuestCentric Introduces Mobile Commerce for Small Hotels

Boutique and economy properties with less than 120 rooms adopting mobile technology at unprecedented speed

Fairfield, NJ — Jun 08, 2011 / (http://www.guestcentric.com/) — GuestCentric Systems, the all-in-one cloud provider of commerce solutions for the independent hotel industry announced today the launch of leading-edge mobile features that advance small independent hotels’ web presence way beyond those of many larger competing properties. Mobile traffic has been growing explosively, with Google claiming that 19% of all hotel queries come from mobile devices.

Mobile in one tap

For the first time, properties with less than 120 rooms can enter the World of mobile with no extra effort. The new mobile commerce feature is included for all GuestCentric customers, and enabling it is just one click.
“I got an email from GuestCentric saying that a new mobile commerce feature was available.” said Kristi Steiert at the Pony Express Motel in Jackson Hole, WY. “It took me literally one minute to get the upgrade request in, and once I republished my website I got my first mobile reservation the very next day!”

GuestCentric’s mobile commerce puts independent hotels’ websites in the pockets of always-on warriors, allowing them mobile-optimized access to content wherever they are. With a simple multi-touch interface, hotel guests can be serviced on the road, whether trying to book, or getting information en-route to the hotel. Hotel address and phone numbers are prominently displayed on the hotels’ mobile websites. Two of the most used features are tap to call and directions at fingertip leveraging the power of Google Maps in Android and iPhones.

Even though they are on the road, mobile users can still experience the properties’ look and feel as GuestCentric’s mobile sites display high-quality pictures optimized for mobile devices.

“The GuestCentric mobile site and booking engine have an application quality to them that I had never seen before.” said Heleen Uitenbroek at Chiado 16, a small luxury guesthouse that recently won a Hermes and an IMA award. “I was actively looking at a mobile strategy for my property. Now that I have a wonderful mobile site from GuestCentric it does not make sense to build a mobile application for iPhone or Android any longer.”

Across GuestCentric’s user base, mobile devices like smartphones and iPads represent already 3% to 8% of visitors, and traffic is growing exponentially every month.

“We have seen tremendous growth of mobile usage across hundreds of our customers’ sites since November 2010. Once we spotted this trend we set out to build the best possible mobile experience that a hotel can provide to its users.” said Pedro Colaco, President and CEO of GuestCentric. “Reception by our boutique and economy customers has been overwhelming. Over 20% of GuestCentric’s users enabled the new feature on their websites just in the first three days of the feature being available.”

Additional pricing information and details on signing up for a 14 day free trial, available at: www.guestcentric.com/pricing

Tags: booking engine, hotel website, ipads, mobile features, mobile shopping, mobile strategy
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Spring 2011

Friday, March 11th, 2011




Spring 2011 The new Spring 2011 Edition is now live! This release should make your life easier and paves the way to make your online presence as strong as ever: Your official website is now faster and more powerful Your booking engine converts even more The revenue area is more powerful to prepare the certification of channel management with booking.com and expedia.com Over 180 usability changes with a focus on your requests for operational efficiency Additionally, we are introducing three new products to extend the reach of the GuestCentric platform: Multi-property booking engines and portals for small chains Website design services for premium properties with high quality pictures IT services with email and domain hosting For more information on these products please contact your e-commerce manager or contact us.
Faster, more powerful official Hotel Website
	AJAX banners for compatibility with iPhone and iPad Ability to insert Facebook Like Faster publishing More reliable publishing to external FTP servers

More control and better SEO
	More control: Menu items can now be links, e.g. to the booking engine or an external blog, insert images of all sizes and quality and other enhancements. Better SEO: Pictures are SEO with hotel name Rooms page includes link “Click to enlarge” on pictures

Total control over price changes
	Confirm before changing prices with the new Review and publish option Set a minimum selling price to avoid common-made rate mistakes Verify who did what with a log history of revenue changes Please review the updates to the new revenue area

Revenue area: more features, more performance
	New workflow in preparation for the channel management release Faster loading At-a-glance restrictions overview calendar

Booking engine converts even more
	Additional payment methods: Paypal, Google Checkout, Bill Me Later Offline payments: Wire transfer, other Promo codes enables locked promotions Ability to type credit cards with spaces

More portable, slicker look
	Selective offers in the booking engine allows you to have multiple booking engines with targeted offers A cleaner payment page for the booking engine Notes and special requests are now prominently displayed in the booking engine

Your requests turned into features
	Mechanism to delete reservation inquiries Rates can now be manually overridden when editing reservations in the back-office Reservations are “Unread” instead of “Pending”. Cancellation reasons for reservations, incl. no-shows

	Chrome and Safari support in the back-office Different skins for booking engine insertion 72 additional currencies, all major currencies are supported And a way to keep the feedback going with the “Make a wish” feedback box.

…and over 180 usability enhancements

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Premium website

Tuesday, January 18th, 2011

The web has become a powerful search engine tool for travelers. In order to have a successful online business, Hoteliers must make sure that their website communicates credibility and professionalism tied with a sleek, modern design to engage visitors.

The home page of your website is your business card as it’s the first contact visitors have with your property and it’s the one that needs to engage visitors.

Due to two main factors GuestCentric has now launched a new design product which is the Premium website design.

A rise in more demanding customers since our Webaward, allows clients more flexibility in their website design selection.
Due to partnership with BLLA (Boutique & Lifestyle Lodging Association) GuestCentric found the need to present product suitable for the Boutique segment with the possibility to add striking images as background amongst other things.

Start the New Year with a new, modern, fresh look for your hotel!

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Developers Cloud

Monday, September 20th, 2010

GuestCentric introduces Developers Cloud to drive hotel e-commerce innovation marketplace

The platform fosters collaborative development and distribution of new and innovative social cloud applications for the hotel industry

GuestCentric Systems http://www.guestcentric.com the social cloud provider of e-commerce solutions for the independent hotel industry announced the launch of the Developers Cloud to independent web designers and software developers around the world at http://developers.guestcentric.com. By joining the Developers Cloud, independent web designers and developers are going to be able to provide an end-to-end solution to their customers based on a leading hotel e-commerce cloud.

“Opening our cloud to web designers and developers around the world provides them the opportunity to take advantage of GuestCentric’s leading web-based platform tailored to the hotel industry, This unprecedented access to the cloud will allow designers and developers to come up with new ideas and innovations that may not have been previously considered or thought possible.” Said Filipe Machaz, VP of Product Management at GuestCentric “The launching of the new developer’s cloud community reinforces GuestCentric’s position as a leading force in driving e-commerce and social marketing innovation in the hotel industry.”

The opening of GuestCentric’s cloud will not only bring enhancements to GuestCentric’s platform, but it will also give web designers and developers the opportunity to deepen their market share in the hotel industry by adding top-notch e-commerce solutions to their offer. For the first time, web designers are going to be able to deliver fully integrated hotel websites with e-commerce included, without having go through a tedious requirements gathering and development process.

The launch of the Developers Cloud is the second step in opening the GuestCentric community for designers and developers and follows the successful launch of the WordPress booking engine plug-in and Joomla! booking engine module.

“Since we moved our website development to the GuestCentric cloud, we were able to deliver top-notch solutions to our customers with very limited effort, since GuestCentric provides a complete e-commerce and social marketing platform, and have been able to focus on what we do best: innovate.” Said Rodrigo Costa, managing partner at Monday Interactive Marketing. “We are now in the process of developing a mobile reservations application based on the GuestCentric API that will provide our customers a powerful way to engage guests on the day of check-in and GuestCentric already showed interest in potentially reselling it to their growing customer base of properties around the world.” finished Rodrigo

Joining the Developers Cloud will enable designers and developers to:

Integrate GuestCentric’s social distribution platform into existing or new sites via readily available snipplets, widgets and plug-ins;
Develop custom websites based on GuestCentric’s award-winning Content Management System and host them at SAS 70 Type II facilities.
Develop web and mobile applications and plug-ins customer engagement and reservations management via GuestCentric API.
The Developers Cloud will also provide extensive access to technical documentation, news and resources, namely:

Access to a sandbox to test GuestCentric’s snipplets, widgets and plug-ins;
Submission of web design templates for sale through GuestCentric and other cloud members;
Submission of applications for sale through GuestCentric and other cloud members;
An open forum that discusses best practices in hotel website design and development;
Support from GuestCentric’s web design and engineering team.

“As a digital communication agency focused on innovation, we are pleased to see that leader companies like GuestCentric allow us to take our work to the next level by providing us with powerful, yet easy-to-use tools. Delivering solutions based on GuestCentric’s integrated e-commerce and social marketing Cloud will clearly contribute to the expansion of our brand and allow us to enter a new market segment with a strong and differentiated offer.“ Said Nuno Silva Partner at Wiz Interactive – 2010 Digital Agency of the year and multiple web award winner.

To ensure that GuestCentric’s services are used appropriately and productively GuestCentric will approve interested web designers and developers. Learn more at: http://developers.guestcentric.com

Posted in GuestCentric Blog, GuestCentric Service, Press Releases | 1 Comment »

GuestCentric Summer’10 edition

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010



	Hi, The new Summer Edition is now live! This edition is a major release with many new features to make your online presence as strong as ever. This Summer 2010 release focuses on three vectors: Usability and performance enhancements to better serve a rapidly growing user base Incentives to book mean more reservations for you Social Media enhancements for Facebook and Google Buzz

	In detail:


Usability and performance enhancements to better serve a rapidly growing user base

	Easier Revenue management Same features, simpler process, better overview. After extensive usability tests, we rebuilt the entire revenue management area in a way that is more intuitive and easier to work with. It supports all features that you are familiar with, allowing you to manage your hotel prices and availability in a simpler way, saving you precious time. This is a major change so we invite you to click here to learn more

	Notification Bar We want you to be always informed about what is going on with your online business. To accomplish this we added a notification bar at the footer of your back-end. This discreet collapsible area gives you real time information about tasks that require your attention.

	Even better support We have no shortage of positive feedback from our customers about our support but still we want to improve. We want our customers, you, to use our platform more extensively and take more advantage of what it has to offer. The new help website, introduces you to all key areas from the back-end, allowing you to instantly clarify any doubt or question you may have about the back-office usage. Check it out at http://help.guestcentric.com/

	Improved infrastructure to serve you better We just finalized a massive upgrade to our infrastructure and optimized loading times in order to provide you a better experience with our application. The application runs now quicker and more reliable than ever in a SAS 70 Type II certified infrastructure.

Incentives to book mean more reservations for you

	Dynamic low availability information Now your guests can see in the booking gadget real time warnings of low availability per room type so booking decision process gets faster and bookings higher.

	Best rate guarantee stamp We added a “Best rate guarantee” stamp in the Booking gadget to firmly establish the hotel’s direct online channel as the centerpiece of your marketing strategy. Maintain strict rate parity across all marketing channels and keep your best rate guarantee.

	A picture’s worth a thousand words Now you can show larger images of your room types in the booking engine so guests can better understand what are they actually booking.

	Reservation inquiry form New enhanced reservations inquiry functionality that enables hoteliers to transform generic contacts in booking offers. In one simple click you can send offers to your contacts. This reduces the probabilities of expensive errors and also increases the booking conversions.

	Booking engine usability enhancements We recently concluded a study with the Charleston College in support of our continuous effort to improve booking ratios. Based on the conclusions of the study we performed some updates to the calendar color scheme, label order and price/taxes information as well as other minor adjustments to maximize booking ratios.

	Website banner enhancements Now you can insert an appealing promotion gadget to the website banner to increase the visibility of your special offers and conversion ratios.

Social Media enhancements for Facebook and Google Buzz

	Social booking engine Engage your guests directly via social media, now it’s possible for the guest have a simple communication with friends and “share” specific offers with others over email, Facebook or Twitter.

	Facebook promotion Create your Facebook community and reward them with special promotions exclusively available for Facebook followers. Start your Facebook community by creating special offers that are exclusively available for your Facebook friends. Your brand exposure will increase and you will increase your hotel loyalty programs.

	Reservations Source You now can see where your reservations were initiated and have a better understanding the source that drives reservations to your hotel in order to base your strategic marketing decisions on real data.

	Sharing reservation information as calendar invites In order to better manage their schedule the guests will receive the reservation confirmation email with a calendar invite.

We also want to hear from your experience and we invite you to become part of our Voice of Customer Community and share your comments at http://getsatisfaction.com/guestcentric or just drop us an e-mail to suggestions@guestcentric.com.