Partner news

This week’s Partner News is highlighted by Outrigger Hospitality Group naming Avery Aoki its new CFO, Comcast awarding grants to Black small business owners in the state of Washington and OTA Insight partnering with PredictHQ. Read about all that and more below.

Avery Aoki appointed CFO at Outrigger Hospitality Group
Outrigger Hospitality Group has promoted Avery Aoki from VP, finance to CFO. He succeeds David Nadeau, who will help to ensure a smooth transition for Outrigger’s financial team before retiring at the end of this year.

As CFO, Aoki will serve as a key member of Outrigger’s executive team, furthering the company as a best-in-class revenue operator and partner while assisting with its mission to be The Premier Beach Resort Brand in the World through fiscal support of new acquisitions and property elevations, according to the company.

For more than three decades, Aoki has had a notable career with Outrigger, joining the company in 1986 as controller. In 1990, he was promoted to director of finance, followed by VP, finance and accounting in 1996. He was pivotal in helping to navigate global accounting and financial operations as the Outrigger portfolio grew worldwide, including working in the company’s Phuket, Thailand, office for nearly five years. He continues to provide invaluable leadership in creating and implementing greater efficiency across the company’s operations in Hawaii and Asia-Pacific as well as financial reporting, audits, transitions, contract negotiations, financial modeling and analysis.

Comcast to award grants to WA-area small businesses owned by minorities
Comcast will award $1 million in grants to 100 small businesses owned by people of color in King and Pierce Counties in the state of Washington, as well as technology and marketing resources to eligible businesses in the area. The counties are among six markets that also include Houston; Miami; Oakland, CA; the Twin Cities; and Washington, DC, that were selected to award a $10,000 grant to 100 local businesses from the Comcast RISE Investment Fund, for a total of $5 million across 600 businesses.

From Oct. 1-14, eligible businesses can apply for Comcast RISE monetary grants and/or marketing and technology services at ComcastRISE.com. Winners will be notified in November.

To help drive awareness about the program and provide additional support and training in King and Pierce Counties, Comcast is partnering with the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, Seattle Latino Chamber of Commerce, Seattle Southside Chamber of Commerce, Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce and Greater Seattle Business Association (GSBA).

OTA Insight partners with PredictHQ
OTA Insight, the cloud-based data intelligence platform for the hospitality industry, has formed a partnership with PredictHQ, the demand intelligence company. PredictHQ’s intelligent event data is used by many of the world’s leading hotel brands, and elements of it are now part of OTA Insight’s solutions.

The partnership has expanded OTA Insight’s sources of intelligent event data, allowing hoteliers using either Market Insight, Rate Insight and Revenue Insight to take advantage of a broader range of more accurate event insights, incorporating more geographical regions. This will enable hoteliers to better predict traveler demand as the world recovers towards a new normal.

The King and Prince Beach & Golf Resort implements Agilysys SaaS solutions
Agilysys Inc. has revealed that The King and Prince Beach & Golf Resort on St. Simons Island, GA, has implemented the company’s InfoGenesis POS solution as well as its modern cloud-native SaaS Agilysys Pay secure payment processing solution.

InfoGenesis POS is a comprehensive point-of-sale system that combines easy-to-use terminal and mobile tablet touchscreen applications supporting Windows, Android and iOS devices. Its strong reporting and analysis features, enterprise-grade menu and item configuration capabilities, and multi-language support drive service flexibility and increased operational efficiency. The cloud-based deployment of InfoGenesis will allow the property to be more cost-effective in its operations, avoiding the resources and space needed to maintain the system on-site.

Agilysys Pay is a cloud-native SaaS secure payment processing solution that provides access to validated P2PE, EMV payment gateways. With Agilysys Pay customers can secure guest confidence and reduce risk of data loss. Agilysys Pay provides maximum credit card protection with the support of payment terminals for every scenario, including counter-service, mobile and signature capture.

Settlers Hospitality chooses IDeaS’ G3 RMS
Settlers Hospitality has selected IDeaS’ G3 Revenue Management System (RMS) for its five historic, boutique properties in Pennsylvania after a competitive evaluation period.

IDeaS has also committed to providing customized consulting services pre- and post-implementation to ensure the legacy hospitality business successfully adopts the new technology and instills an organizational culture of revenue optimization.

Moving from manual revenue management to machine-learning automation, IDeaS provides immense time savings, allowing Settlers Hospitality to be more strategically focused with a more sophisticated approach to revenue optimization. Within 60 days of implementation, Settlers has already seen measurable results with yield up 9.5 points along with a more consistent ADR up 11 points.

New Zealand hotel taps OPERA Cloud PMS
The newly-built Ramada Suites by Wyndham Taranaki Street Wellington in New Zealand has implemented Oracle Hospitality’s OPERA Cloud property management system. The cloud-based PMS eliminated the need for an on-premises server and orchestrated the work demands of the entire staff.

OPERA Cloud offers a host of operational enhancements and efficiencies that not only help our owners deliver a better guest experience but lowers their IT costs by getting rid of expensive and difficult-to-maintain, on-site hardware.

One of the biggest benefits of using OPERA Cloud is the direct, two-way interface between the hotel PMS and Wyndham’s central reservations system. Through OPERA Cloud, hotels can directly manage their rates, inventory and stay restrictions that are synched with the CRS, which means such data is instantly pushed to Oracle’s many distribution channels and partners.