Westfalenhallen choose Hogatex as Software Partner

Only a couple of days ago contractors decided that the Parkhotel Westfalenhallen - next to the POS solution - is going to use the property management system (PMS) Hogatex Starlight Front Office as well. Installation is due by the end of July. Live operation is scheduled for middle of August.

Due to the neighbourhood to the Messe Westfalenhallen Dortmund (fair grounds Dortmund) the Parkhotel Westfalenhallen GmbH specialised in complete service and events: "At times we're working with 100 temporary workers simultaneously. As you can imagine, under such conditions an extreme degree of user-friendlyness is a must. In this respect InfoGenesis Revelation, the POS solution offered by Hogatex, clearly surpassed their competitors", says Westfalenhallen CEO Ralph Huber.

Parkhotel Westfalenhallen Purchase Director Peter Keil makes it a point for every caterer and manager in the foodservice industry to be very careful when it comes down to picking the right POS solution: "We can only advise every caterer to thoroughly check on the POS suppliers and make them 'prove' performance of the most important features in a live presentation directly on the product." And he adds, "What really thrilled us about Hogatex' team of specialists was, that they gave us the feeling of entirely understanding our business. Not only did they meet our requirements specification but they also contributed a lot of new, innovative and thus valuable ideas."

Talking about the evaluation process, Peter Keil says, "One after the other we screened five of the best-known suppliers at the German market - including the German and international market leader. We had eight of our employees from different departments participating in the selection process."

"First thing we noticed: InfoGenesis, the POS system offered by Hogatex, is by far not one of the low-priced solutions, at least not from a first investment point of view", Peter Keil reports his evaluation results. And he adds, "But nonetheless the system did convince us before, during and after the installation of having made the right decision. Cost savings gained during live operation plus the professional opportunities in terms of generating turnover do compensate the higher starting investment really fast. We can honestly say that so far all our expectations have been entirely fulfilled."

As to hardware the Parkhotel Westfalenhallen GmbH managed to use even fewer terminals than originally planned. Grace to the mobility, flexible offline-functionality and easy-to-configure-manageability of InfoGenesis POS terminals, some terminals are used as so-called ZBVs - a German abbreviation for "Zur besonderen Verfügung" - meaning "for special disposal."

Daniel Schikowski, managing IT in the Westfallenhallen as a system administrator, shows enthusiasm, saying, "It just happened that we had several other new and old partners in house for various installation projects. None of them did a job as excellent as the Hogatex team lead by their project manager Christian Wagner in terms of professional planning and installation. Installation of the POS solution can only be called a full success."

An equally positive response was received from the supplier to this project, where Christian Steinkampf, Director InfoGenesis EMEA overlooks all sales of the food & beverage product suite and summarizes the cooperation as follows, "Right from the start during our first evaluation meeting it was clear, that a successful installation and integration of an ultra-modern e-POS system ensuring that the customer learns how to benefit from the system's power completely, would need very close teamwork from Hogatex and the Westfalenhallen team. The latter consisted of F&B manager, IT representatives, managers operations and representatives of the financial department. Altogether it was just a great project."

Hogatex is one of the world's leading providers of premium solutions in the hotel and foodservice industry. Renowned customers include Accor, the European market leader and one of the world's largest hotel groups with 3,500 hotels, as well as Astron, Meritus Hotels & Resorts, the luxury group Beachcomber, Howard Johnson Argentina, the Swiss Hapimag group and Restel, one of the biggest hotel chains in Finland. Further hotels working with Hogatex solutions include the Palace Hotel Gstaad, Wenzhou Guo Mao Grand Hotel, Noah Resort & Convention Center, Hainan, Beverly Plaza Macau and the Montecasino, Johannesburg. Among well-known users of our Corporate Conference Manager solution are E.on Düsseldorf, the Unique Airport Conference Center in Zurich and the FIFA Fédération Internationale de Football Association, Zurich.