Hotelcracy Apps
Integrated system dedicated to the accommodation sector

Challenge

For more than two decades, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been prominent in the management of hotel and similar facilities, especially through the use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems specialized and sectorial, usually denominated, Property Management System (PMS). However, more recently have been identified limitations of these IT systems, especially regarding the support of all the processes of the accommodation business and the rapid and agile monitoring of new needs in the market. In response to these constraints, hotel companies have adopted a growing number of specific complementary solutions, whose integration with existing ones is not always assured. The lack of integration of information and processes is reflected in the loss of competitiveness, inefficiency of performing certain operations and lack of access to aggregate global data in real time. In addition there have been identified difficulties of inter-organizational integration, especially with travel agencies, a business which is essentially inter-organizational in its distribution and dependent on fast, reliable and secure exchange of information that allows the promotion and commercialization in different sale points.

Solution

Main Objective:
To strengthen research, technological development and innovation.

Hotelcracy Apps project aims to create a Software-as-a-Service platform which allowed to a hotel manager to select a range of best-of-breed cloud solutions of third parties and to integrate them in a transparent way, using a homogeneous interface which standardizes the user experience and abstracts the user from the underlying complexity. The various solutions to be integrated will be chosen from a Marketplace, having the possibility to be swapped individually every time the business demands, being guaranteed the migration of all information.
Acting as a broker between solutions for the hotel sector and its users, and not just like another application’s supplier to this market, the platform proposed gains strength every time new applications for travel and subsistence appear or evolve.

Objectives, Activities and Results expected / achieved

Expected results:
• Research, development and validation of a solution designed to act as a broker for the various stakeholders in the hotel sector;

• Publication of the project's scientific results in relevant scientific journals or conferences.

Final results:
• Development and validation in a pilot context of a Software-as-a-Service system that acts as a broker between solutions for the hotel industry and its stakeholders;

• Publication and presentation of the scientific article “A Cloud Service Integration Architecture for the Hospitality Sector” at the “28th International Conference on Information Systems Development (ISD2019)”;

• Publication of 3 Master's theses by Master students from the Department of Computer Engineering at the Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Coimbra.