18-12-06 Four Stars for RedSky IT and Zonal

AB Hotels, who operate two four-star properties - Five Lakes (a Hotel, Golf and Country Club and Spa) and Sopwell House - has recently invested in a complete IT solution to enhance its future Hotel business model. All front of house procedures are now streamlined into a single global process that will undoubtedly benefit the company's plans to develop their prestige hotel operation.

Charles Morgan, Group Operations Director for AB Hotels, said: “We needed to update our existing front of house processes, which previously operated independently at each property, with a solution that would be sophisticated enough to communicate relevant data from the point-of-sale directly into the Property Management System (PMS). The system also had to be very easy to use by a variety of different staff with varying levels of ability.”

AB Hotels chose Zonal's Hotel partner, RedSky IT to implement its Entirety front and back office PMS system, interfaced to the Aztec electronic point of sale (EPoS) software and hardware to provide a fully interfaced system that covers its entire operation. With the new solution in place, the hotel group can now accurately report on its food and beverage revenues and identify accurate costings for both properties. This in turn will significantly improve stock control and the quality of customer service.

Zonal's Aztec is installed in all food and beverage areas within Sopwell House and Five Lakes, including the conference and banqueting facilities and the golf club. The information gained from Aztec enables both properties to monitor profit margins more effectively and highlight the products that are selling best and during which periods.

Morgan said, "For the past three years we were unable to accurately identify the split between our food and beverage revenue. Not being able to recognise which revenue belongs to which code made beverage control and accurate food costing very difficult for us. Now that we have Entirety and Aztec in place, I am confident that we have more than rectified this problem."