Background
The Flatrock Group includes six hotels in the stunning Ceredigion area of West Wales. Its flagship 76 bedroom Cliff Hotel and Spa includes a 9 hole golf course, three bars, a restaurant and a number of event suites; there’s also The Gwbert Hotel & Flatrock Bistro, The Angel, The Grosvenor, the famed Harbourmaster Hotel in Aberaeron, and their latest addition, The Black Lion in Cardigan.
“We migrated from Avondata’s server-based system Hotel Executive, so it was a big change – we took advantage of the Covid downtime to move over,” explained Cath Garcia, Managing Director of the Group. “Here in West Wales, our connectivity can be poor, so this was a worry – but in fact it has been fine. We started with our smallest hotel, knowing Rezcontrol was new, and also to be sure of getting it right on a smaller scale before progressing to a larger property, with multiple integrations.”
Having already recently introduced Newbridge Software as their Food & Beverage EPOS system, the Group migrated to Rezcontrol in April 2020 and followed up with ResDiary and SmartGift in short succession.
The Group followed up with ResDiary and SmartGift in short succession, migrating in April 2020
The problem
The old server-based system couldn’t manage bookings across the Group
The server based system couldn’t easily integrate all of the properties, so it was difficult to view all the hotels at the same time, managing bookings and availability across the Group. Far more processes were manual, and there weren’t the required integrations for events, restaurant bookings and the EPOS till system.
“Knowing that Avondata were investing and developing their service by introducing Rezcontrol which would address a number of the restrictions in the server based PMS system, we knew we had to take the plunge,” said Cath.
The solution
“Rezcontrol’s group dashboard is excellent - it has made life so much easier”
In addition to the training and communication success, the Group especially values the group dashboard, which enables them to see how many rooms they can sell across all four sites at a click, while coordinating areas as disparate as housekeeping, maintenance and events.
“We can just toggle across our sites to check or report on anything, follow up with the progress of an event, or log a maintenance issue,” said Cath. “It has made life so much easier.”
“We really feel we are partners on a journey, which continues to progress” concluded Cath. “And we can do so much now that we couldn’t do before.
The benefits of Rezcontrol
Easy onboarding - fantastic communication
Avondata made it as easy as possible to bring the Flatrock Group’s teams on board, with detailed training videos which are used to this day for new starters.
“We hadn’t worked with training videos before, and had reservations for the remote onboarding, but the training was very good and is a really efficient and cost effective way to educate the team” said Cath. “And if we have any problems, we just pick up the phone – the tech support team is very responsive.”
The Group particularly appreciates the way they are kept abreast of new developments and updates to the system. “Communication with Avondata through their in-system announcements is great,” said Cath.