Welcome to the paperless hotel — Frasers Hospitality

This is the fourth in our blog series spotlighting the winners of our 2019 Infor Customer Excellence Awards , and sharing their success stories.

Wouldn’t a paperless hotel be great? Paperless check-in, paperless e-sign, paperless payments, mobile housekeeping. Frasers Hospitality Australia thought so.

Frasers Hospitality Australia (FHA) is continuously innovating in all areas of the guest experience and operations across its four luxury service apartment properties in Sydney, Perth, and Brisbane. And FHA management had a vision for a paperless hotel.

“Innovation is a core value of the FHA global brand and when it comes to IT, we like to be at the forefront,” said Matthew Rubie, country general manager - Australia.

The initial motivation behind the Paperless Hotel Initiative was to make everyday tasks run more smoothly and seamlessly for both customers and employees. FHA commissioned a focus group and identified four key issues: check-in inefficiencies, excessive paperwork, tedious payment process, risk of fraudulent credit cards — and a need for an overall technology upgrade.

FHA chose Infor as its technology partner, and implemented Infor Hospitality Management Solution (HMS), Infor Mobile Check-In, Infor HMS Housekeeping Mobile.

“We were looking for a vendor who would really listen and consider how we can grow,” Rubie says. “Infor is a company that can take your feedback and put it into production.”

Business benefits

Since the innovative changes, four key initiatives have been implemented: paperless check-in, paperless e-sign, paperless payments, and mobile housekeeping.

• FHA became the first hotel group to achieve 100% paperless check-in, and end-to-end payment card industry (PCI) compliance.
• Achieved paperless check-in, paperless e-sign, paperless payments — improving accuracy and efficiency
• 40% reduction in check-in time
• Reduced agreement lead times from up to 3 business days to just minutes
• 50% reduction in printing costs
• 80% improvement in housekeeping operational productivity

“Infor has really changed the way we see things from a technology point of view, and knowing what’s possible is a game-changer for us,” said Jack Leung, Frasers head of finance. “Infor HMS is peace of mind.”

Paperless check-in

The Infor HMS Electronic Registration Card app and the Infor HMS Mobile Guest Service app were commissioned by FHA and is the first of its kind in Australia.

At reception, guests check their details on a tablet while the deposit charge is authorized. The guests’ data is linked directly into the hotel’s Infor HMS solution, and this simple push-to-view and sign concept is then captured as a digital document, thus eliminating the need for printed registration cards.

Since the roll-out of paperless check-in at Fraser Suites Sydney, check-in efficiency has doubled and the storage of registration cards together with guests’ personal information is no longer a security concern. This innovation alone has reduced check-in time by 40%.

“We reduced check-in time from 3 minutes to 1.5 minutes, and that is a significant ROI from a staff utilization point of view,” Rubie said.

The customers love it, too. No need to have pieces of paper folded up, put in an envelope, and handed over to them. They just want it in an email if they need it.

“As long as it’s a quick and seamless process, you’ve got a happy customer,” says Rubie.

Paperless E-sign

FHA introduced Infor HMS’ Electronic Registration Card application to further reduce the paperwork and approvals that represented a large portion of the business compliance processes. This process means authority forms, as well as sales and conference contracts, are now digitally sent to customers for signature. Customers can now authorize contracts and charges without the extra steps of printing, then scanning, emailing or faxing documents back to the hotel.

With e-sign, clients can click and sign a document on any device within seconds.

“By going digital, we have reduced agreement lead times from up to three business days to now receiving completed agreements within minutes,” Leung said.

Paperless payment

The Paperless Hotel concept also reaches to the payment gateway, which FHA engaged in late 2016 to deploy Australia’s first-to-market tokenization portal for the hotel industry. Hotel staff can now send a payment token to save into a guest’s booking and validate all credit cards, essentially eliminating all manual paperwork. This tokenization technology has enabled FHA properties to leverage banking-grade protection and adopt secure ways to process credit cards without being exposed to a guest’s full information.

This more efficient process has also improved credit card accuracy. With the payment gateway validating all credit cards, it prevents the loss of revenue from fake cards or data. Since developing SimplePay, Fraser Place Melbourne has not experienced a single fraudulent card case.

The paperless processes have brought a significant reduction in printing of between 30% and 40%.

Mobile housekeeping

FHA has also significantly decreased turnaround time in the housekeeping department since introducing the Infor HMS Mobile Housekeeping app. From the moment a room is released by the front desk, a message is pushed through digitally to the housekeeping teams, so rooms are getting cleaned and made available to new guests a lot quicker.

“We knew the potential was there to perform to a higher standard in hotel technology,” Rubie said. “Now, thanks to the new PMS developed by Infor, we are an Australian market leader in the high-tech hotel space.”

These impressive results recently earned the company an Infor Customer Excellence Award in the Hospitality category. The awards are given each year to customers that drive innovation and exceptional results with Infor solutions. Eight winners were announced at Inforum 2019, Infor’s annual customer conference held in New Orleans, Sept 23-26.

“We chose Infor for its ability to be scalable, sustainable, and adaptable,” Leung said. “This journey is continuing. It’s never-ending, and Infor will be a part of that.”

Read success stories of other Customer Excellence Award winners, too.