GDH Experts Deliver Cost Savings and Efficiency in Fastest Tech Rollout for the Hospitality Industry
Upgrading software systems for large organizations can be a huge undertaking, not just from the systems perspective, but also from a human resource perspective. All system upgrades need to be agile especially for a company with thousands of locations and tens of thousands of employees.
When GDH was tasked with upgrading the outdated property management system of a major global hospitality chain, they hit the ground running. Rising to the challenge, GDH was able to implement one of the fastest property management migrations, with nearly 2,000 hotels already migrated and 3,000 more property migrations expected by the end of 2024.
Key Takeaways
- 2,000+ Hotels Migrated Since 2020
- 2024 Goal is 3,000+ Hotels
- Training Time Reduced From 40+ Hours to 4 Hours
- Hardware Costs Reduced 10x
- One of the Fastest Technology Rollouts Ever in Hospitality
Challenge
When a major hospitality company decided to upgrade their property management system, they soon found a huge problem – they didn’t have a team in place to effectively implement the upgrade. They needed help and GDH was asked to find talent to help support a major migration from an outdated, hardware-based property management system to a cloud-based online system for a large international hotel chain with thousands of locations.
Each hotel would need to be upgraded individually to the new system, with staff being trained to use the new system after the old hardware was decommissioned and the new system installed and implemented.
If conducted effectively, the migration intended to improve guest satisfaction, personalize guest services, provide targeted marketing, and handle loyalty rewards–
all at a lower cost that would provide a significant savings for each property and for the brand overall.
Solution
GDH provided pre-implementation team who knew or would learn the existing system and become subject matter experts on the new system. Implementation of the new system was the main task of the GDH team. In addition, GDH provided post-implementation teams to handle troubleshooting and issues as they occurred.
GDH began to work with this hotel brand early in the process, bringing in IT talent to train and work onsite to migrate the first hotels. The hotel brand had some personnel but needed to approximately double its workforce for the project.
After some time working on site, the COVID-19 pandemic forced teams to go remote rather than being able to work onsite. As a result of this massive shift, GDH was able to source talent from all over the U.S. This increased the talent pool greatly, and the initial teams could train additional teams, further increasing the pace of migration.
Result
GDH’s implementation teams were successful because they allowed new hires to familiarize themselves with all aspects of the migration and join the team that best fit their strengths and interests. This kept engagement high throughout the project and
maximized the effectiveness of each team.
Teams became more efficient as they completed more migrations and streamlined their methods, which helped to accelerate the project. The timeline of the project has seen a ramp up from proof of concept in 2020 to 2,000+ migrations in 2023, this included major disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The increase in output from remote work led to one of the fastest known hospitality property management migrations. The roll out was so successful that the global
hospitality chain also accepted Hotel Visionary’s 2022 Enterprise Innovation Winner award.
Is your company facing a critical need that existing staffing or professional services partners can’t fulfill? GDH is here to assist. Workforce solutions made easy.
