October 12, 2018 Owner & Franchise Communications

New Automated Front Office Tool Available for FSPMS Hotels

A new tool was launched for FSPMS Hotels in the U.S. & Canada with the goal of achieving quick improvements in the arrival process, specifically creating operations tools and solutions that complement current systems. Enhancements to the PMS include automation, as well as scripting that will use tools such as Secure CRT, the program hotels use to access their FSPMS, and Excel to process data and emulate key strokes in FSPMS for time-consuming, manual or repetitive tasks. The intent is to create more capacity for front desk associates to serve guests.

Available functionality/tools in the first release will allow the Front Office to:

Late Cancellation Fee: Automatically identify and post cancellation fee and payment to reservations that have been cancelled within the cancellation penalty period. This should allow hotels to collect a significant amount of incremental revenue*.
Mobile Check-In and Key Inserts: Quickly process mobile check-ins and create mobile key-packet inserts to create an enhanced mobile-arrival experience.
Advance Deposit: Automatically clear MARSHA Q/45, the queue where advance deposit reservations sit within MARSHA, and post full room and tax deposit in FSPMS.
Arrival Audit: Audit arrivals for today or tomorrow to check for common reservation errors in FSPMS and notate reservations with remarks specific to the reservation to highlight hotel initiatives at the front desk.
Report Generator – Excel: Export an existing report generator (reservations or reservation changes) to Excel to further manipulate the data for analysis and planning.

*Cancellation Revenue collection remains a top priority and since the transition to a 48-hour cancellation policy, FSPMS hotels left approximately $23 million uncollected. To support FSPMS hotels with the multiple steps needed to complete this task, the above-mentioned functionality/tool has been developed to create, build, run and validate different tasks within the PMS. In July and August a pilot was conducted with 32 FSPMS hotels using the Late Cancellation tool. Over this time, results yielded an increase of ~45% in YoY Cancellation Revenue.

With the success of the pilot and the efforts placed on Cancellation Revenue collections, all Managed by Marriott (MxM) FSPMS hotels will be required to install the late cancellation automation tools. The additional tools are strongly encouraged to install and use. Franchised hotels are strongly encouraged to install and use all tools, though are not required. There is no cost to hotels for this new tool.

Hotels must use the self-service instructions on MGS to install this update. These instructions and job aids on how to install will be communicated to hotels via the Oct. 15 edition of the Weekly Update.