JC Penney Telemarketing installs xenon©CRS software for central reservations.

Multi-chain SQL Server and NT based central reservations software supplied by Hotel Data Systems Norwalk, CT, USA: Hotel Data Systems (HDS) announced today that JC Penney Telemarketing has installed the xenon©CRS central reservation software for its hotel reservations processing services, and has cut over for live operations.

JC Penney Telemarketing is a well-known and established provider of telemarketing services, and a pioneer in furnishing reservation services for the hospitality industry. Over the years, JC Penney Telemarketing has provided voice reservation services for many well-known hotel companies. The xenon©CRS will be used by JC Penney to provide reservations services to their hotel clients.

The decision to convert to the latest release of the Windows based xenon©CRS from HDS was made after evaluating various options. JC Penney provides reservation services to many diverse hotel companies and wanted to ensure that the software would meet their needs, and fit into the corporate database standardization process. The company was also being faced with Year 2000 restrictions placed by the legacy system, a problem being faced by companies across the globe. Like many progressive companies, JC Penney wanted to make sure that their new Windows NT based CRS platform would take them beyond the year 2000 in terms of reservation capability. The software had to be flexible enough to easily accommodate the existing reservation Agents, with minimal training, and be able to meet powerful transaction and response time requirements of a multi-chain environment, with potential GDS interfaces using the optional xenon©GDS interface. Finally, the software had to be Windows NT based using the powerful SQL Server database.

The installation of the database independent xenon©CRS, a highly advanced and sophisticated NT-based Client/server solution, is expected to put JC Penney Telemarketing at the cutting edge of central reservations technology with the ability to manage and exchange information instantly, precisely and efficiently. The xenon©CRS can consolidate all marketing and reservation point-of-sale data for detailed analysis and customizable reporting and is expected to provide detailed reporting for better forecasting. The installation of this powerful new system will immediately impact the reservation conversion rate through the availability of many new revenue and occupancy maximization tools. The system allows for high level and detailed reporting and even more important, can provide a further increase in overall customer service through the ability to track service calls, always an important issue for hotel companies. Future enhancements, which JC Penney may utilize, are the newly released Internet based xenon©WEB tools, which allow for a reservation link between the reservation system and the Web server.

Commenting on this agreement, Paul Firos, President of HDS said, "JC Penney's decision to convert their reservation operations to the xenon©CRS says a lot for our software, the support,and the company. . Although there are a number of other reservations systems available on the market, the decision by JC Penney to invest in a long term relationship with us is based on our providing a solid software product backed by company stability and security."

Hotel Data Systems, Inc., headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, USA is a highly specialized and unique software firm dedicated to the development of sophisticated information technology, customized for hotel central reservation call centers worldwide. Established in 1976, the company has been known for its software design and pragmatic ability to customize software for customers.