Hogatex on Danish Television
In Denmark, Hogatex - one of the world's leading software specialists for hospitality solutions - is meanwhile well-known to almost a million audiences. 925'000 people watch "Hotellet" once a week. That is 18.5% of the Danish population. Thus "Hotellet" is the most popular series of channel TV 2, Denmark's second largest TV station. The weekly series about the ups and downs of the fictitious family-run property "Hotel Faber" ranks on number 7...
The production company Jarowskij visited numerous hotels and trade shows for the equipment casting. At the Hotel Imperial they found what they'd been looking for in terms of software. So it was clear: "Hotel Faber" would work with Hogatex Software! The Windows-based, pleasant screen design and the easy usability were so convincing, that the production company right away contacted IT 2000 - Hogatex partner for sales in Denmark - and invited them to participate in the series.
In July 2000 the first episodes were taped already. With 2000 square meters within an old factory building the TV set is the biggest one that has ever been built for a Danish TV production.
October 12, the first episode of "Hotellet" was shown on Danish television - a meeting platform for more than two dozen hospitality industry suppliers, such as companies like Sony, Lavazza, Bodu, Coca Cola and L'Oreal to name just a few of them.
The first 20 episodes out of 60 have been taped. Six episodes were shown so far. Topics: Protect the family-run hotel against the creditors. And of course: Sex, crime and intrigues amongst family members and hotel guests.
"That was a training completely different from the daily routine", says Sanni Reimer Hansen, Training & Support Consultant at Hogatex Partner IT 2000. "We've spent 15 hours at the set, installed Hogatex, specified system parameters (rooms, room rates, guest files etc.) and trained some of the actors on Hogatex."
Hogatex has even been introduced to the script writer, since the stories details reflect on it in certain episodes. The actors thus actually call the hotline of IT 2000 if there's a software problem in the script. Hogatex does play a central role:
The hotel is located on some old ruins - so in every episode something "spooky" happens: light turns off, strange noises are heard and one time ... one time the name of the ghost "Jens Kirch" appears on the Hogatex guest file screen and can't be removed ... Kim Jacobsen from IT 2000 wrote a little program just to make the ghost become alive within the Hogatex program and thus follow the screen-play. Whether, at the end, the ghost can be exorcised from the Hogatex guest file ... - we won't tell you. Because it is planned to sell the series to European foreign countries as well.
Operating worldwide, Hogatex is software partner of individual hotels and hotel chains. Among the renowned customers are Accor - with 3'500 hotels market leader in Europe and one of the biggest hotel chains in the world, as well as German hotel groups Astron and Günnewig, the Swiss Hapimag concern and Restel, one of the biggest hotel chains in Finland. Beyond individual hotels, Hogatex provides customers like Parkhotel Bremen, Schindlerhof, Palace Hotel Gstaad, Hotel Regina in Paris, Shanghai Galaxy and for the time being the biggest hotel in the world: Burj al Arab in Dubai.