Recently a “prospective Client” asked if I could join in a conference call, the prospective Client had already had a demo of our RMS (OutPerform-RMS), given by the owner of one of the most knowledgeable and prestigious Revenue Management Companies in Europe, who happens to use OutPerform and is a very close Business Partner and friend of mine.

The prospective Client represents a Hotel Chain with over 50 Hotels so I asked my CIO and Customer Support Boss to join the call as well, and of course my Business Partner who had given the first presentation.

The Client presented themselves, were very knowledgeable in the whole domain of Revenue Management (in as far as I can judge), and what followed was a very interesting discussion, a few detailed questions about OutPerform, but more the general theme of Revenue Management Systems, PMS’s today etc. I have a very clear straight forward way of communicating, “call a spade a spade”, not too much philosophy about abstract “possible ways of changing algo’s etc”.

I informed the Client that we are still astonished that even some “Professional Revenue Management Specialists” seem to rush Hotel set ups sometimes (let alone normal Hotels), we obviously check whether our clients are doing this properly, because as my CIO always says, in the end it’s mathematics, so the only thing that is sure, if you don’t set up the Hotel up properly, the price recommendations will be just as in accurate. Now if you mix this up a little with the totally non-optimal connectivity landscape (PMS’s), which believe you me, is totally non-optimal, and of course I have the advantage that we build interfaces to all the major players, both “legacy systems” and all the new “kid’s on the block(s)”, for our own applications and for a lot of other Hospitality Tech providers.

Anyway the prospective Client shared they had already looked at various systems (in fact, some systems also built by my Company for other Hospitality Tech providers).

The prospective Client was pretty well informed and knew some of the Companies we work for / with and asked, “is this not a conflict of interests”?

I answered immediately, “no….absolutely not, when we build solutions for Clients they generally have their own dedicated teams, in fact these developers only work for the specific client / project they are assigned to”.

What this does mean, is an unbelievable depth of knowledge, obviously I would love to shout from the roof tops about all the Hotels, Hotel Chains, Hotel Management Companies, powered by HSDS technology directly or indirectly, it’s really rather impressive. C’ést la Vie!

I see it as a rather luxury position, as the solutions we build for third Parties never “clash” with our own branded solutions, so if a client needs something else, in most cases I can simply pass them on to the Clients we provide these solutions to.

Intrinsically we are a Software Development Company for the Hospitality Industry, so it’s only through our relationships with our Clients be it, Revenue Management Companies, Hotel Chains, Hotel Management Companies and third Party Hospitality Tech Providers that we manage to address the “here and now” what needs resolving now, and how can this be resolved in the future with the ever changing technological possibilities.

BTW, after the Conf call, I called the Owner of the Third Party Tech Provider (my client and friend) and shared that I had been asked to join a call for a Company they had also done a demo for. Whatever the clients decide it’s good for HSDS.

It’s a small world after all!

by Adriaan Kleingeld – CEO / HSDS