Travel Tech Case Study: Torch & Hotelfone

Identifying the right tools to improve business strategy

Traveltech for Scotland: Supporting business challenges through collaboration

Hotelfone

Hotelfone is a market leader in providing bespoke reservation services for​​ Independent Luxury Hotels and Resorts throughout the UK & Europe. The company uses highly experienced reservation and sales agents to capture the telephone calls and revenue that would otherwise be missed.

Despite a number of companies offering a phone support service, Hotelfone is the only provider with a team of core hotel specialists, carefully trained to deal with the Independent Hotel sector at the luxury end of the market. Owner Roddy Whiteford says, “Call traffic is erratic. You can’t anticipate when a customer is going to call. And, if you don’t answer your phone, the customer will call somebody else – perhaps your competitor.”

Traveltech for Scotland Business Support

Community members Hotelfone had originally made contact with Traveltech for Scotland to seek guidance around the potential of new software in the marketplace. The company was looking to identify better business strategies for how they accessed and used their own company data. Following a review of Hotelfone’s requirements, the team at Traveltech for Scotland recommended a deep-dive to evaluate Hotelfone’s current positioning and the challenges they were facing, which resulted in an introduction to the team at Torch.

Joshua Ryan-Saha, Director of Traveltech for Scotland says, “The services that TORCH offer are critically important for the tourism and traveltech sector. It’s difficult getting started with and making the most of your data. Hotelfone are an established Traveltech company that has been providing great services to hoteliers for many years. They saw the opportunity that data could The offer for their business and their collaboration with TORCH will help them grow and innovate in the future. I’d encourage any tourism or traveltech business to do the same.”

TORCH Business Advisory Service

The Data Lab TORCH Business Advisory Service is designed to support businesses which are already leveraging their data, but want to take those next transformational steps. The Data Lab experts and specialist supplier organisations translates their strategies into practical actions, using the methods and technologies most suited to their needs.

TORCH Solutions Architects were asked to review Hotelfone’s current business technology landscape and (in particular) its support of their business strategy. The team worked with Hotelfone to understand its existing systems landscape, identify the value of the information captured by Hotelfone when servicing its client hotels’ customers. The Torch team’s focus was to deliver a clear path to transforming the Hotelfone Agents’ day to day user experience and productivity and to improve the flow of key information around the wider business. In addition to this, Torch would look at validating and documenting the scope and requirements for updating and extending the Hotelfone application suite and identify suitable partners to undertake this work.

Identifying Solutions through Collaboration

Working with Torch, Hotelfone was able to implement a number of changes and recommendations immediately. With a roadmap put in place, Hotelfone was also able to engage with four potential supplier businesses based on TORCH recommendations and make a final decision on the recommendations.

The new system will provide opportunity to improve business performance, but also to demonstrate the impact Hotelfone is having on its client’s service. The software will also allow the business to demonstrate the full capability of its new live chat services and the power of revenue capture from this.

Owner Roddy Whiteford says,“ Going through the process with TORCH, the more we discussed things, looked at what was required, the more confidence we had in being able to go out and explain and define what was required as part of our software requirements.”

“What TORCH provided was exemplary in my mind – as an understanding, evaluation and recommendation of where our business was, where it needs to go, and how the parts of the jigsaw need to fit into place to make it really work. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend.”

Read the full Case Study

Read the full Torch and Hotelfone Case Study and find out how Torch can help you make better data-driven decisions for your business.