Connecting Red Lion

SPOKANE, WA— WestCoast Hospitality is using a sophisticated technology platform to support its decision to rebrand the bulk of its WestCoast hotels. The company, which bought Red Lion from Hilton Hotels Corp. late last year, recently decided to convert more than 20 WestCoast properties after nine months of market research indicated the Red Lion brand had more penetration in the marketplace than originally believed. “Our strategy was to double in size, and when we looked at Houston, Denver, Kansas City and St. Louis, at markets we knew we would have to be in, we concluded that the Red Lion brand had deeper roots than WestCoast Hotels,” Donald Barbieri, chairman, president/CEO of WestCoast Hospitality told HOTEL BUSINESS®. The company initially decided to use a dual-branded strategy for both Red Lion and WestCoast, Barbieri said. Talk earlier this year was even that Red Lion could potentially be used as a more down-market flag. Even though Red Lion will become the predominant brand for the company, the WestCoast name will not go away. Instead, independent properties within the company’s portfolio will carry a “WestCoast Signature Hotels” tagline. Upon completion of the 20-plus WestCoast-branded properties to Red Lions, the Red Lion portfolio will be 65 strong, with plans to expand to 100 in the near future, with growth focusing on the Midwest and East Coast. Supporting this growth will be a new CRO reservations system, selected after two months of research led by WestCoast Hospitality’s vp/CIO, David Barbieri. The system, which will go live when the company has completed its conversion process in several months, is provided by Micros Fidelio and is part of their suite of products. The company is interfacing the reservations platform with its existing property management system (PMS), and may switch over to the system provided by Micros as it sees fit, said David Barbieri. “We like the flexibility the suite will offer us in the future,” he said, describing the CRO as “state of the art and Oracle based,” providing single-image inventory ability, he said. The system that WestCoast Hospitality will be using for Red Lion and the WestCoast Signature Hotels is actually the result of a partnership between WestCoast, Micros and Newtrade, which was just purchased by Expedia, he added. Newtrade competes with Pegasus, said David Barbieri, and offers an alternative switching system. The system uses XML and OTA standards, he added. “It will give us the ability to interface directly with other GDS,” he said, noting that the company will be able to manage its property rates in the CRS, and move them right into the GDS. “This streamlines our distribution channel,” said David Barbieri. “It doesn’t eliminate the GDS. Travel agents are a big part of big picture for us,” David Barbieri said. Because the system allows WestCoast to directly connect with multiple channels, it will cut back on the company’s costs to manage those rates, he added. Another way WestCoast will sell rooms is through its proprietary website, which is also being revamped. Plans are to complement the website’s offerings with WestCoast’s TicketsWest subsidiary, through which it sells admission to entertainment events in a variety of states. As a result, when customers come to the company’s website in the near future, they will be asked whether they want to purchase tickets for events in the cities in which they are purchasing room nights. Plans are also to focus heavily on a customer information system, which is not a full CRM system, “but close.” With all this technological support in place, the Red Lion brand will be relaunched as a solid, midmarket, three- to four-star level product, whose typical property averages 160 rooms and over 6,000 square feet of meeting space, said Sharon Sanchez, executive vp/operations for WestCoast, who has been with the brand through its many transitions. The hotels that are being converted average more than 200 rooms and almost