Background
Malvina House is a unique proposition for Rezcontrol, as they are based in Stanley, the capital of the Falkland Islands, where visitor patterns are very different from in the UK. Guests tend to fall into two categories – visiting professionals, be they medical, infrastructure or science, who stay for a minimum of a few weeks – and ‘round the world’ or ‘trip of a lifetime’ tourists, often with an interest in ornithology, photography or both.
The hotel is the biggest on the island, with 70 rooms, while it also caters for far more restaurant covers than it does residents, as cruise ships heading to Antarctica stop off for the day. They may well cater over 100 lunches when a ship is in, as well as being the focal point for the local business community.
The problem
“We knew we needed to move to the cloud but were worried about connectivity”
Carl Stroud, General Manager, says the company also runs an on-island travel agent Falkland Islands Holiday to cater for onward bookings for his guests, who will often book trips to other islands during their stay.
All these factors mean that Malvina House uses Rezcontrol quite differently to most of our customers – while still highly valuing its features, functionality and accessibility.
The hotel used our previous server-based PMS, Hotel Executive, for many years and migrated earlier in 2024. They could see the advantages of cloud PMS, with anywhere, anytime access, automatic updates, security and a host of additional features, but worried about the system going offline due to poor internet.
“In fact, it has been fine,” said Carl, “and we haven’t lost any data or bookings due to an outage. The system works very smoothly and tech support is always there when needed!”
The solution
“We love not having to set rates manually - and the reporting is excellent”
One of the best things about Rezcontrol for Malvina House is the direct booking system, as so many of their guests automatically book direct. The hotel has also connected Rezcontrol with OTAs such as Booking.com, and set parameters to automatically manage rates without the need for manual adjustments.
“The reporting, both in terms of financials, operations and our occupancy rates, margins and so forth also works very well for us,” said Carl. “We always know exactly where we are – and bearing in mind that in this remote location, we have to order supplies many months in advance, this is vital to help us understand both our financial and stock position.”
The benefits of Rezcontrol
“The planner is our bible, and really helps us manage our large group bookings”
Malvina House finds Rezcontrol extremely user-friendly, with most operations coming off the planner page. “It’s great for our large groups – as we can get a lot of them through the season – and we also benefit from the marketing automations, though we could use these more!” said Carl.
“We find Rezcontrol to be a smooth system which does everything we need it to do – and the onboarding, account management and tech support teams are so helpful,” said Carl.