How we helped a hotel chain automate voucher management and eliminate dozens of manual steps

Hotel information systems tend to be very good at what they were designed to do. They manage bookings, room occupancy, guest stays, invoicing and reception operations. However, as soon as a company begins to expand beyond its original scope, processes emerge that an off-the-shelf system can no longer accommodate. It was precisely this challenge that led Amenity Hotels & Resorts to approach us.

Every resort in the Amenity group uses the Agnis hotel management system. This reliably manages the day-to-day operations of all eight hotels; however, the individual installations are separate from one another and do not share data. This ceased to be satisfactory when Amenity wanted to further develop the sale of gift vouchers and use them as a fully-fledged marketing tool. The sales process itself was straightforward. The customer would select a design and the voucher amount on the website, make the payment, and receive a PDF within moments. The most complex part, however, only began once the voucher had been sold.

From process mapping to centralised voucher management

A single voucher required around twenty administrative steps. It had to be registered, correctly linked to a specific resort, prepared for future use and ensured that all the information reached the right place. The situation was further complicated by the fact that Amenity also works with a number of business partners who sell their stays through their own B2B channels. As a result, some of the records did not exist in the hotel system at all, but were kept in separate Excel spreadsheets. Staff had to transcribe data between several tools, check its accuracy, and a large part of the entire process relied solely on human diligence.

At the start of the project, we therefore focused not on the technology, but on the process itself. Together with the client, we went through the entire lifecycle of a voucher, from its creation in the online shop, through administration, to its redemption at reception. The aim was not to create yet another standalone application, but to eliminate all the unnecessary steps that had accumulated over the years around the original system.

Less red tape, more oversight 

The result is a central voucher management application, which now serves as the single source of truth for all departments. The e-shop automatically records newly sold vouchers in the system, whilst the Agnis hotel system automatically retrieves the necessary information from it when the reception desk is processing bookings. Staff no longer need to search for data across several different systems or manually check Excel spreadsheets. A guest arrives at reception, provides their voucher number, the receptionist enters it into the system, and within a few tens of seconds has full details of its value, validity and usage history.

The solution also includes features that the original system did not support at all. The most significant of these is the ability to use vouchers in instalments. For example, if a customer has a voucher worth ten thousand crowns and uses only three thousand during their first visit, the system automatically records the remaining value and, on their next visit, picks up exactly where it left off. The voucher thus acts as a digital wallet, without the reception staff having to do any calculations or make manual entries.

The new application has also taken over all the records that were previously kept outside the main systems. Management can now see, in one place, how many vouchers are currently in circulation, what their total value is, how much has already been spent, and how much remains to be used. At the same time, they can easily amend business rules – such as the validity period of vouchers or the way they are redeemed – without needing to intervene in individual hotel systems.

Efficient automation instead of time-consuming manual work

However, the greatest benefit of the project is not the application itself. It is the elimination of the manual work involved in handling vouchers. A process that was previously spread across several systems and Excel spreadsheets – and involved around twenty administrative steps – now runs automatically. Reception works with a single interface, management has an immediate overview of the entire flow of vouchers across all departments, and the sales department has gained a tool that allows it to develop the voucher programme without being constrained by the original hotel system.