"Technology Is Driven By Customer Demands"

With a view to providing better services to guests and to remain ahead of other players in the hospitality sector, Lemon Tree Hotels is leveraging its IT infrastructure. Rahul Pandit, VP, Operations, The Lemon Tree Hotels Company, shares his vision for the company’s IT-enabled expansion in an interview with Biztech2.0.

How important is the role of technology at Lemon Tree Hotels?

Technology today is no longer a differentiator, it’s an enabler. It is important for us to deliver integrated products to our guests both on the communication and content platforms. Technology also acts as a force multiplier by ensuring that various systems talk to each other intelligently to deliver tangible outputs. This is the expansion phase for Lemon Tree; we have planned to extend our presence to 36 locations across India. Technology is important for us in this phase on account of two factors: it provides good value for money and it helps us to create a positive impact on our guests.

Do you think the solutions and applications available in the Indian market today are sufficient for the hospitality sector?

India currently has less than 1 percent share of the world travel market, though the country has huge potential. The Indian market is now catching the attention of the global hospitality solutions and applications industry. We have partnered with American company Synxis for GDS distribution; our Property Management Solution (PMS) is now going to be powered by German company Protel which specialises in centrally hosted, multi-property solutions; our business intelligence applications will be driven by Italian company Serenissima Informatica; the servicing and integration of all these key applications will be done by British company Xn Hotel Systems; and finally our web presence will be driven by American company, Milestone Internet Marketing. So it’s like a huge technological convergence of multiple world players.

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At the same time, looking at India’s inherent technological capability, I am sure that Indian vendors will soon establish regional parity with global providers, especially in the field of solutions that require a high level of customisation to local conditions.

What are the applications currently running at Lemon Tree Hotels?

Though we started our operations just a few years ago, we have been actively deploying IT solutions to reap maximum business benefits out of the same. We have deployed a Human Resource Management (HRM) solution from Polaris and are now planning to deploy certain financial solutions from an Italian company. We have taken 1,000 users for the HR solution and secured 20 hotel licenses for the Property Management Solution. To manage our materials in a cost-effective way, we have implemented materials management.

In the long run, we also planned to deploy a good CRM solution. It is always better to have a good solution in place that requires minimal human intervention. As we venture into the area of budget hotels, we plan to leverage much of our technology investments to reduce our costs of operation. We have allocated a budget of approximately Rs 6.5 crore in the current year to boost our IT infrastructure. We also plan to centralise our database with these deployments and, additionally, integrate the data of our online partners.

Lemon Tree is well known in the service industry for its online marketing initiatives. Could you elaborate on your e-business strategies?

We have extensive, country-specific distribution plans in conjunction with international OTAs (Online Travel Agents). Our distribution in North America, Europe and Latin America is executed via Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity respectively; the Japan distribution is managed through Rakuten; the South East Asia distribution works through Zuji; the Australia distribution through Wotif; and the India distribution is implemented through OTAs like MakeMyTrip, Desiya, TravelGuru, Yatra, Ezeego and Cleartrip.

Representation on all GDSes (i.e. Sabre, Galileo, Amadeus and Worldspan) is managed through international collaboration with Pegasus and Synxis. We execute ‘focused selling’ through our website, which currently yields 26 percent of our electronic distribution volume. We also distribute through the websites of Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines. The intent of these relationships is to encourage both ‘word-of-mouth’ and ‘word-of-mouse’ distribution. We are currently the only hotel company in India that provides customers direct access to third-party, unbiased hotel reviews managed by TripAdvisor – all available on our website.

In addition to the above, we are working at strengthening our brand presence and driving loyalty to our website by using SEO and SEM. We are also looking at partnering with country-specific meta search engines and content drivers, especially in the non-English-speaking niche travel markets.

What are the upcoming technology trends in the hotel industry?

The hotel sub-sector is increasingly dependent on IT, which is used for a variety of functions to facilitate business operations, ranging from reservations to cook-chill processes. Technology investment is going to be driven by customer demands of seamless communication capabilities. Customers will want time-shift access to local content even as they travel globally, and on-the-move customers will demand easy and seamless connectivity of communication and entertainment devices at the same levels they are used to in their homes and offices.

Moving beyond automation of services and room reservation, the hotel industry is likely to witness huge technology deployment in other business areas.