Article written for By KARA O’CONNOR, The Stamford Times Web service gives exposure to independent hotels
STAMFORD — GuestCentric is closing the gap between mainstream and independent hotels with its new online booking platform, said the company’s president and CEO, Pedro Colaco.
“The whole idea behind this Web site is to level the playing field between larger, better known hotels and the smaller guys,” said Colaco about http://www.guestcentric.com/es. “This is a simple web site that will increase occupancy in smaller hotels.”
GuestCentric is a new Internet-based business headquarted in Stamford that develops and markets Web services to independent hotels. Colaco and vice president Filipe Tappenbeck came up with the idea for GuestCentric in October of 2006, after realizing that the market for independent hotels was in desperate need of help with online marketing.
“Filipe’s family has worked in the hotel business forever and I worked in Ireland at a marketing company,” said Colaco. “We started thinking about starting up a Web service and realized that smaller hotels were a market that was not served very well. We then came to the conclusion that starting a Web site for smaller to mid-sized hotels would be an interesting marketing opportunity.”
The interactive GuestCentric Web site launched in May of 2008, and six weeks later, independent hotels from more than 150 countries were using the company’s new service, said Colaco.
“(The) Internet has made the world flat,” said Colaco. “We have hotels from so many different countries, but our biggest market is the United States — although we have yet to get any hotels from Connecticut, but we will.”
Since almost everyone uses the Internet to find information, said Tappenbeck, it is very important for hotels to have a professional looking Web site.
“Smaller hotels don’t always have the knowledge or time to put into making a professional looking Web site,” said Tappenbeck. “That is where we come in. It is very important to look professional, because if you don’t, you can easily drive a potential customer away.”
The reason the Web service is so popular, said Colaco, is because GuestCentric has opened up the two barriers that have been holding back independent hotels from operating their own Internet sites — technology and cost.
“Technology is quite complex and I found that it is hard for smaller hotels to use it on their own,’ said Colaco. “Another thing holding smaller hotels back was the fact that they don’t have enough staff or funds to operate a Web site for their hotel. GuestCentric created a simple, sophisticated and cheap tool that fixes these problems.”
GuestCentric allows hotels to register online for a fee of $70, $250 or $500 per month, depending on what features the hotel wants on its Web site. Guest Centric has custom design reservation and booking features available, such as guest profiling and the ability to recognize returning visitors. Every hotel is unique, so every Web page will be unique to the hotel, said Tappenbeck.
“There are so many different ways you can market a hotel,” said Tappenbeck. “The wonderful thing about GuestCentric is that it is a simple … solution to provide an inexpensive but professional looking Web site so hotels can drive traffic to their site and eventually more business to their hotel.”
Because of the current economy crisis, less people are traveling, said Colaco, making it harder for hotels to fill their rooms. But GuestCentric has helped smaller hotels fix this issue, he said.
“The Web service lets people know that the hotel is out there and it is easier for people to book a room,” said Colaco. “I have heard from several hotels that after they started up a Web site using GuestCentric, their occupancy levels have increased, even in these hard economic times.”
At the moment, GuestCentric is strictly focusing on independent hotels, but may go into other areas of hospitality in the future, said Colaco. “We want to focus on smaller hotels and making sure that we can make our service as best we can for them,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s nice to know that we have brought smaller hotels into the Internet savvy world to better their businesses.”
