Type of project: IBE RFP
Supporting Danubius’ IBE vendor selection process
ABOUT THE CLIENT
The Danubius Hotels Group, based in Hungary, currently operates 43 hotels. The group’s characteristically high-standard city hotels and health and wellness resorts are located in Hungary, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania. H2c’ first Danubius project started in 2009 with a Distribution Workshop in Budapest. Since then, h2c has been supporting various Danubius projects, mainly focusing on distribution optimization.
CLIENTS’ OPINION
This was the first time we decided to involve a consultancy company in an IBE vendor selection process. As we have been working with h2c for many years on several different fields of the digital landscape, there was no doubt, that h2c was the right partner to support the project.
Their experience helped a lot. They were very well prepared in terms of the criteria set, key players on the market, the evaluation process, as well as with respect to the whole project management including the presentation of the outcome to the management. As our friends at h2c have known Danubius Hotels for almost a decade now, the whole project was very smooth, we spoke the same language, they immediately anticipated our needs and therefore were able to customise the process to achieve our goal.
Zoltán Bogár, Group Director of Revenue Management and Distribution
OBJECTIVE
Danubius approached h2c to assist in the IBE RFP process replacing their customized Internet Booking Engine (IBE) solution. The customized IBE required many resources and time for maintaining and continuously updating the IBE GUI/ technology in order to stay up-to-date with essential functionalities. Therefore, the objective of the RFP was to select a state-of-the-art standard IBE solution meeting Danubius’ requirements.
CHALLENGES
- Review current market leaders with regards to innovative functionalities and best integration options for Danubius’ current system landscape
- Find an IBE provider who has the capabilities and expertise to independently (without extensive support of Danubius) develop new functionalities to keep up with changing customer needs while still being open for suggestions made by Danubius
- Increase electronic bookings via the Internet Booking Engine (and metasearch channels) as well as improve conversion rates
- Reduce maintenance and development efforts (in comparison to customized IBE solution currently in place) and increase uptime of IBE
- Offer more functionalities to customers (especially loyal customers, groups and corporates)
WORK
- Joint definition of functionalities, scope of services, terms and conditions for the new standard IBE
- Identification of interface requirements to existing systems
- Support of RFP process, RFP coordination and vendor communication
- Consolidation and evaluation of RFP responses including assessment of provider functionalities/services and cost
RESULTS
- In-depth overview of vendors’ strengths and weaknesses as well as cost-benefits of each provider
- Based on the outcome, Danubius selected a new standard IBE provider that is able to provide the required functionalities for a state-of-the-art IBE
- Danubius implemented the new IBE in March 2017
