Goodbye 2020 — Booking a better year in ’21

We hospitality people are so ready to check out of this worst year ever

By Jason Floyd, Senior Vice-President and General Manager, Infor Hospitality

Goodbye, 2020 — parting is not such sweet sorrow. Although the year started with great hope and promise, it soon devolved with a global pandemic, city- and country-wide lockdowns, and a staggering economic recession. As travel and tourism ground to a halt, 2020 cemented its standing as the vilest year the hospitality industry has ever experienced.

The year did have some bright moments. Before the rolling global lockdowns began, Infor was able to host two of our three International Hospitality Customer Days — in Prague and New Orleans — a great opportunity for quality time with many of our users.

I had to rush home from France quicker than planned when airports and borders started closing to international visitors, and the US imposed mandatory quarantine for returning Americans. This led me, my wife and our friends to play a mad game of trains, planes and automobiles as we rushed to find any available flight before the deadline was imposed. Whew!

Another 2020 silver lining is that Infor Hospitality was able to aggressively introduce some amazing new product innovations:

• With Infor Revenue Management System (RMS), we implemented some profound enhancements to our algorithm engines. We are also refining the user experience (look, feel and flow of the application) across the RMS suite.
• The Infor Hotel Management System (HMS) team introduced new guest mobility features to accommodate social-distancing requirements, along with making check-in and check-out processes as touchless as possible. The team also introduced new housekeeping functionality to satisfy Covid-19 sanitation and expanded room-rotation demands.
• The Infor Point of Sale (POS) team introduced Infor OrderNow, a new mobile ordering platform for restaurants and food & beverage operations. They also added a round-up feature to optionally increase a customer check total to the next whole dollar for those restaurant chains that sponsor worthy causes through customer donations. This little feature has been a tremendous win for those who help folks in need by making charitable gift-giving easy, fast and seamless.
• RMS technical specialists also teamed with their Infor Sales & Catering group counterparts to begin to design and create a new function-space optimization mechanism for meeting room venues. The Sales & Catering development team also put in a lot of creative time and effort to deliver new online ordering portals and some jaw-dropping new function book features.

Our development teams continue to surprise and delight. I am excited to see what they are planning to bring to the world in the New Year.

2020 has been enormously challenging for all our hospitality customers, yet I have been impressed again and again by your resilience—taking this down-time to accommodate the new demands of the present and innovate for the future. Here are just a few examples:

• Apex Hotels Goes on Point with Infor — Flagship London property deploys Infor Hospitality platform following 100% remote implementation
• Suitcase Hospitality Optimizes Revenue Management with Infor — Infor EzRMS solution to help increase revenue from room sales through intelligent, self-learning features
• Hotel Alhambra Palace Checks in with Infor for World-Class Customer Service — Five-star Spanish hospitality leader set to standardise with Infor Hospitality
• McDreams Optimizes Revenue Management with Infor — Long-standing customer introducing Infor EzRMS
• IZB Residence CAMPUS AT HOME Moves to Infor Cloud for Better Guest Experience — Munich hotel introduces Infor HMS and Infor Sales & Catering for hotel and restaurant management

With vaccines becoming available now, I truly believe 2021 will be a happier year for us all. Until we can safely see each other again in-person, I ask for you and yours to remain safe.

Happy holidays to all!

— Jason