::NEWS LETTER::

Mehboob Hamza

Seven Seas has been invited by Riung Priangan Association of Star Rated Hotels Bandung, Indonesia to present the award winning software momentohs® sprint on 9th June, 2009 at Sari Ater Hotel, Bandung, Indonesia at 1.30 pm. There will be a brief 15 minute introduction by Mehboob Hamza on "What Hospitality Professionals Should Understand About Integrated Hospitality Management Systems (HMS) v/s Inter-faced PMS." This will be followed by a one hour overview of momentohs® sprint by our Project Leader, Carlos Thinakaran and then 15 minutes Q&A. General Managers of start rated hotels in Bandung will be attending.

Energy Management

Energy is the second largest operating expense for hotels and the opportunity to substantially reduce these costs exists when the guests leave their room without turning down the heat /AC or turning off the lights, TV, etc. According to ASHRAE standards, every 1° F reduction in HVAC operating temperature set point will result in a 3% to 5% reduction in energy consumption.

The estimated annual cost per square foot for heating and cooling a hotel room depending on climate can vary from $1.60 to $1.90. Averaging 350 sq.ft. per guestroom, the resulting annual cost is expected to be between $560 and $665. An average saving of at least 30% per annum based on an average cost of $608, could mean a $203 per room per year. These figures are based on USA metrics.

Hotel without air-con…that's because it's made out of ice!

The ICEHOTEL in the village of Jukkasjärvi, about 17 km from Kiruna, Sweden was the world's first ice hotel. In 1989, Japanese ice artists visited the area and created an exhibition of ice art. In spring 1990, French artist Jannot Derid held an exhibition in a cylinder-shaped igloo in the area. One night there were no rooms available in the town, so some of the visitors asked for permission to spend the night in the exhibition hall. They slept in sleeping bags on top of reindeer skin - the first guests of the "hotel".

The entire hotel is made out of snow and ice blocks taken from the Torne River - even the glasses in the bar are made of ice. Each spring, around March, ICEHOTEL harvests tons of ice from the frozen Torne River and stores it in a nearby production hall with room for over 10,000 tons of ice and 30,000 tons of snow. The ice is used for creating Ice bar designs and ice glasses, for ice sculpting classes, events and product launches all over the world and the snow is used for building a strong structure for the building. About 1,000 tons of what is left, is used in the construction of the next ICEHOTEL.

Documentaries on this hotel can be seen from time to time on Discovery Channel and National Geographic.

$ or Dollars: Effects of Menu-price Formats on Restaurant Checks

Empirical research on menu design and price presentation has focused primarily on menus' effects on consumers' attitudes, and not necessarily on actual purchase behavior. A recent study at Cornell University, School of Hotel Administration examines how customers reacted to menus' price formatting in terms of actual sales, as measured by check totals for lunch at St. Andrew's, the restaurant at the Culinary Institute of America, in Hyde Park, New York. Price formats tested in the study were a dollars and cents numerical format with a dollar sign ($00.00), a numerical format without a dollar sign (00.), and scripted or written-out prices (zero dollars). While the numerical manipulation did not significantly affect total spending when compared to such non-menu factors as party size or length of time at the table, the price formats did show noticeable differences. Contrary to expectations, guests given the numeral-only menu spent significantly more than those who received a menu with prices showing a dollar sign or those whose menus had prices written out in words. Psychological theory, by contrast, predicted that the scripted format would draw higher sales. Although these findings may apply only to lunch at this particular restaurant, they indicate that menu-price formats do influence customers' spending, both in terms of total check and spending per cover.

momentohs® Guest experience monitor (GEM) is a business to guest customer relationship management module. You can deliver unparallel guest experience through instant knowledge, recall and 360° view on real time basis across the property as well as throughout the chain.

momentohs® GEM enables synchronized performance across various modules including Front office, Point of Sale (POS), Event Management and SPA for managing Guest relationships. momentohs® GEM provide central guest profiling that gives a comprehensive view of guest details and helps you to create a 360º view of each guest's behavior that can help you to take advantage of the next interaction. With better insights into the guest's buying patterns, preferences, dislikes and prospects, it is easy to design customized campaigns & promotions targeted at their specific needs. momentohs® Gem helps you increase your ability to up-sell and cross-sell during each interaction. momentohs® GEM enhances guest recognition and loyalty programs, automate personalized greetings, thank-you, confirmation and cancellation messages via mail merging. You can improve the quality of service through the various complaint/resolution and feedback analysis methods.

Knowing your guest is 9/10th's of the law. Imagine what momentohs® GEM can do when every service agent has information at their finger tips. Think of the amazing levels of guest experience you can deliver, which could be translated into billings. Customer loyalty and maintaining it can be frustrating at best. With momentohs® GEM, that is a thing of the past.

Santhosh Kumar
Business Solution Services
email : Santhosh@sscomp.ae
Direct : +971 4 308 3620
Mobile : +971 50 442 2037

Kanchana Gopalakrishnan
Account Manager - Enterprise Business
Email : kgopalakrishnan@sscomp.ae
Direct : +971 4 308 3640
Mobile : +971 50 718 7309