It is widely accepted that the world emerging from the current crisis, will be one shaped by the new norms and cultural evolutions that are taking place today. Hoteliers who are ready to welcome guests in an environment that emphasizes their safety and personal value will be the first to recover. In the meantime, pragmatic solutions that empower hotels to 'do more with less' will help them weather the storm and strengthen short and long-term margins as the industry returns to growth. At Agilysys, our continually growing investment in R&D is being utilized to modernize the existing product portfolio and creating new products that enable hoteliers to leverage technology to enhance the guest experience. Many products we have released in the past year are no longer "nice to have" but are now "must-have" solutions.

Guest Mobility And Self Service
Evolving service delivery into a mobile approach for every stage of the guest journey will streamline efficiency whilst instilling guest confidence in a safer, more comfortable path to travel. At the same time - it introduces a level of convenience and accessibility that will readily become a guest expectation as we emerge into the new normal. Products like Agilysys OnDemand for mobile F&B ordering and contactless payment, rGuest Service which enables 2-way messaging between guests and hotel staff, and rGuest Express Mobile and Kiosk for self-service check-in and check-out, all give the guest options to manage and personalize their experience. Instant access to a hotel's amenities and services, as well as intelligently timed upsell opportunities, will provide an increased revenue stream. Service times will be reduced, resulting in improved guest satisfaction that will resonate in repeat and word-of-mouth business.

Personalization
Hotels and Resorts will benefit from personalizing the guest experience, driving loyalty, and incentive guest spend on amenities and services. Systems that share a single view of the guest across all facets of your operation - be it the hotel, restaurant, spa or golf course - power these unique service and marketing opportunities. It is not sufficient to simply understand each guest more fully. Rather, the tools you have need to translate this knowledge into a personalized experience for the guest. The strategy driving our product innovation is building technology solutions to support various interaction points in a hospitality environment, creating a single guest profile that identifies preferences, frequency, and spend. It all comes together via the Agilysys Engage Platform, a comprehensive set of loyalty and promotions products that tightly integrates with our core solutions. Targeted marketing campaigns with personalized offers incentivize direct bookings that lower your cost of acquisition and relevant offers extended at each stage of the guest journey, from pre-arrival through to check-out, tailored to the nature of their trip. With the recovery expected to be gradual in most segments - capturing the greatest portion of market and wallet-share will depend on these opportunities.

Solutions that Improve Efficiency and Margin
The secret to maximizing cost and service benefits of your solutions, is looking for partners who have thought through every aspect of the end-to-end experience for both the guest and operations perspectives. These partners must work to provide automations that deliver efficiencies with measurable bottom-line improvements to costs and service response times. Agilysys rGuest Service is a widely configurable solution that manages housekeeping, maintenance, valet services, food runners, and more with the additional capability for guests to communicate directly with the hotel staff. With all these types of solutions we are creating a very tightly integrated ecosystem of products that simply work very well together. Loosely connected systems that require manual user interventions do not deliver cost-efficiency. As an example - a mobile room service request that requires an agent to physically monitor one system before manually entering the order into a separate POS system has added burden, not efficiency, to your operations. Our OnDemand Web Enabled mobile F&B ordering solution solves that problem. Hoteliers need to consult with solutions partners that have thought through the end to end experience, from both the guest and hoteliers' perspectives.

Cloud-Native And On-Premise Options
Flexible deployment options allow hoteliers to choose the cost-structure that works most efficiently for their operations. With Agilysys, On-Premise or Cloud is your choice, not ours. Having the option of deployment models that scale cost-effectively to your operations is an asset to each provider.

As technology partners, we need to proactively embrace and deliver innovations tuned to these new realities. A 'Property Management System' is foundational to a hotel's operation. We must accept the responsibility this bestows upon us and empower hoteliers, and guests, with the ecosystem of tools they need to navigate through a challenging landscape. At Agilysys, we are committed to empowering our customers and delivering true innovation that prepares them for the new normal.

About Agilysys

Agilysys is well known for its long heritage of hospitality-focused technology innovation. The Company delivers modular and integrated software solutions and expertise to businesses seeking to maximize Return on Experience (ROE) through hospitality encounters that are both personal and profitable. Over time, customers achieve High Return Hospitality by consistently delighting guests, retaining staff and growing margins. Customers around the world include: branded and independent hotels; multi-amenity resort properties; casinos; property, hotel and resort management companies; cruise lines; corporate dining providers; higher education campus dining providers; food service management companies; hospitals; lifestyle communities; senior living facilities; stadiums; and theme parks. The Agilysys Hospitality Cloud™ combines core operational systems for property management (PMS), point of sale (POS) and inventory and procurement (I&P) with Experience Enhancers™ that meaningfully improve interactions for guests and for employees across dimensions such as digital access, mobile convenience, self-service control, personal choice, payment options, service coverage and real-time insights to improve decisions. Core solutions and Experience Enhancers are selectively combined in Hospitality Solution Studios™ tailored to specific hospitality settings and business needs. Agilysys operates across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia-Pacific, and India with headquarters located in Alpharetta, GA. For more information visit Agilysys.com 

Robert Shecterle
Director of Product Marketing
+1 770 810 6046
Agilysys