Opera v5.6 Upgrade Deployment to Begin in Mid-2020
As referenced in the 2020 Budget Overview & Notable Items, Marriott will upgrade Opera Property Management System (PMS) and Sales and Catering (S&C) from v5.4 (or earlier) to v5.6 beginning mid-2020 through mid-2021. Following are program details to be aware of as hotels begin to prepare for deployment.
OVERVIEW:
The Opera v5.6 upgrade provides desirable operational and compliance improvements. The upgrade will provide technical solutions needed to meet security and local compliance requirements, including:
- Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards 3.2.1
- Personal Identifiable Information (PII) Data Privacy requirements
- New legal and fiscal requirements
While the upgrade is critical due to technical requirements, v5.6 also provides desirable functional enhancements, including:
- Creating Efficiency: Groups/blocks will only need to be created in Opera PMS and no longer in both MARSHA and Opera PMS.
- Enabling Real-Time Redemptions: Associates will have the ability to look up redemption certificates in real-time.
- Making Balancing for Reservations Easier: A new Balancing Tool will compare reservations in MARSHA to reservations in Opera PMS, making balancing for transient and group reservations easier.
COST:
The Opera v5.6 upgrade costs were included in the 2020 Budget Guidelines; however, the cost to upgrade will vary based on the complexity of the hotel’s Opera environment. Hotels on Opera v5.4 should budget based on the approximate costs below:
|
Brand |
Fixed |
+ Per Room |
|
RIBM |
$6K |
$6 |
|
FF, MOXY |
$6K |
$13 |
|
ACBM, AH, CY, ELMT, FP |
$7K |
$22 |
|
AUTO, LC, TRB |
$11K |
$45 |
|
DHR |
$12K |
$38 |
|
LM, MHR, MVCI, RH, SHER, WSTN |
$12K |
$51 |
|
ED, RCC, RITZ, SR, W |
$14K |
$68 |
Note: these costs, shown in USD, assume that hotels implement within the 12-month deployment timeline. Costs for hotels that upgrade outside of this window may be greater.
DEPLOYMENT TIMELINE:
Given the upgrade is mandatory for all Opera hotels, the v5.6 system will be deployed and supported centrally by a dedicated team that will schedule properties‘ launch. The individual property upgrades will be performed within a 12-month window starting in mid-2020 and continuing into 2021. Based on what’s changing and what’s required of properties to deploy the upgrade, we anticipate that the upgrade will primarily impact on-property associates in Operations and iT. Over the next few months, we will finalize the deployment schedule and identify specific upgrade dates for each hotel. The schedule will be posted on the Opera v5.6 MGS page in Q1 2020 to provide details on when hotels will be scheduled to convert.
PROPERTY ACTION REQUIRED:
- To help us plan our overall deployment and collect scheduling criteria for the upcoming upgrade, an initial Opera v5.6 Data Collection Survey will be distributed to hotels on November 25. We recommend General Managers partner with their property iT contact to complete the survey by December 6. The expected level of effort to complete the survey is 90 minutes.
- For franchised hotels: please also note two central monitoring tools will be deployed to properties in Q1 2020 to support future data collection needs and reduce manual efforts on property required to provide the data. There is no cost for the tools, and they will benefit properties during the Opera v5.6 upgrade as well as other future iT initiatives. Additional information will be provided on the following tools closer to the deployment date:
- Splunk: Supports acquiring property hardware configuration information for Opera v5.6.
- Remote Opera Management Application (ROMA): Gathers property information on Opera configuration.
- Splunk: Supports acquiring property hardware configuration information for Opera v5.6.
For more information, please view the Opera v5.6 Upgrade MGS page.
