Background
The Old Barn Inn dates back to the early 1750s and is imbued with rustic heritage and charm. Located within a few miles of the Celtic Manor Resort, it boasts 15 unique individual rooms and suites.
It specialises in weddings for up to 140 guests, having won the Welsh National Wedding Awards three times in recent years, and upgraded from Avondata’s previous server-based system in order to benefit from the cloud.
Tom Herbert, the hotel’s IT manager, explained: “We knew we needed to upgrade our PMS – and that moving to the cloud would provide any time, anywhere access as well as numerous other benefits and automatic updates.”
The problem
“Our old server was passing its sell-by date.”
“Our old server was passing its sell-by date, and as well as becoming clunky, it was increasingly inconvenient and expensive if it went down,” said Tom.
They knew they wanted to be able to access their PMS anywhere, from any device, and to enjoy the peace of mind of knowing that all updates would be taken care of; that it would be scalable and constantly improving without us having to manage it.
Therefore it was the obvious choice to stay with Avondata, as they had enjoyed the company’s Hotel Executive system, but move to the cloud with Rezcontrol.
The solution
“Migrating was so easy, and the system is so stable”
The Old Barn Inn appreciates the comprehensive nature of Rezcontrol, but like many customers, feel the icing on the cake is the personal customer service.
The transition was painless, even though The Old Barn Inn was one of the very first to move to the new solution, migrating from Hotel Executive shortly before the pandemic.
“Most of all, we continue to appreciate the user experience,” he said. “It’s so stable. While the system keeps being updated and improved, the interface remains the same, and is highly intuitive and easy to use.”
The benefits of Rezcontrol
“We love the way the till system integrates with room bookings”
The Old Barn Inn uses our POS integration, Newbridge, and finds this especially useful. “Table bills are allocated directly to the room account,” said Tom. “This saves hours of admin, as well as ensuring accuracy.”
“We really appreciate the audit trail and payment services as well as the direct bookings and marketing automations”
The team also loves the accessible audit trail provided by the system as a whole, which prevents the need to trawl through paperwork for shared information, and provides accountability on user activity.
RezPay is another firm favourite, as it features chip and PIN pre-authorisation, auto-scheduled payments and self check-out. These functionalities combine to offer a smoother guest experience and protect against chargebacks.
The hotel has also started to use our marketing automations, sometimes using confirmation emails to communicate special offers. This function helps establish their brand presence as well as boosting revenue.
Next steps – events and revenue management
The constant element The Old Barn Inn especially value is the stream of new features and functions, whether these are integral to the system or integrations which Rezcontrol manages on the hotels’ behalf.
“We don’t yet use the event management module, as the hotel owner likes to keep these separate, but we would be keen to see the benefits, and we know we could do more with revenue management too,” said Tom.
“However, for us, the one single factor which surpasses everything Rezcontrol offers is the amazing customer service and tech support. I’ve personally got to know most of the team as individuals, and you can’t say that about many property management systems!”
“I’ve personally got to know most of the team as individuals, and you can’t say that about many property management systems!”