Cristal Hotels Group Portugal moves to Bookassist strategy & technology

Bookassist's Madrid office announces the signing of Portugal's Cristal Hotel Group to the Bookassist platform.

The Cristal Hotel Group (www.hotelscristal.com) is a diversified group of 4 and 3 star hotels. The properties are strategically located in the centre of Portugal – Vieira Beach, Marinha Grande and Caldas da Rainha, all properties approximately equidistant from the primary cities of Lisbon and Oporto.

Cristal Hotel Group is currently using the Bookassist group booking engine system, incorporating search by hotel or search by location. The Group has also implemented into its official site the dynamic visual search or "book by map" service from Bookassist so users may view in one step the exact location of all hotels together with live price and availability for each property.

"Cristal Hotel Group needed a solution to empower their own website and build their own brand online. With Bookassist, they recognised the perfect tool for building revenue on their site and for significantly increasing both conversion and return on investment in a transparent way" according to Ismael García-Ortega, Senior Sales Manager for Bookassist in Spain and Portugal.

Bookassist® creates and manages online strategies for hotels and groups and is the industry-leading hotel booking engine and online marketing provider in Ireland. A Deloitte Fast 50 Technology Company in Ireland and in the Top 100 Deloitte Technology Companies in Europe, Bookassist has received numerous awards in Online Trade, Online Marketing, and Technological Innovation including the Irish Internet Association’s NetVisionary Award for online trade.

Bewley's Hotels show dramatic business increase with Bookassist

The Bewley's Hotels Group (bewleyshotels.com) has recorded a sharp increase in direct online booking revenue in the final quarter of 2009, the group announced today. The change has coincided with the group's adoption of Bookassist booking technology and online marketing strategy in October 2009.

Commenting on the results to date, Tracey Moran, Communications Director with Bewley's Hotel Group said: "We began working with Bookassist in October and in this short space of time have seen immediate growth in online revenue and particularly in average booking value. Furthermore, introducing Bookassist's eCommerce integration with Google Analytics has helped us to reduce our online marketing costs and to achieve a significantly better return on investment. Although it is still early days we are delighted with the progress and the speed at which it was achieved."

"Switching Bewley's to Bookassist's suite of technology and services has shown immediate dividends", according to Paul Dooley, Director of Client Services at Bookassist's Ireland office. "Our booking technology in particular has one of the highest conversion rates in the industry. We expect further performance growth through 2010 and we are confident that some of our exciting new technology releases in the first quarter of 2010 will accelerate this."


Bookassist products and services in use with the group include Booking Engine, with visual search and interactive booking map technology; Traffic Builder online marketing with Google Analytics eCommerce connectivity; Site Builder content management system website; Corporate booking and loyalty system; online electronic voucher purchase system.

Installation of a direct connection between Bookassist's booking engine system and the hotel group's property management system (PMS) was also facilitated. Bookassist's standard OTA/XML interface allows connections to PMS systems with ease, saving hotels the time and effort of transferring reservations between systems.

Bewley's Hotel Group have four hotels in Dublin - at Ballsbridge, Leopardstown, Newland's Cross and Dublin Airport - together with UK hotels at Manchester Airport and in Leeds. The Group, headquartered at the Red Cow Complex in Dublin, is a sister group of Moran Hotels.

Bookassist® creates and manages online strategies for hotels and groups and is the industry-leading hotel booking engine and online marketing provider in Ireland. A Deloitte Fast 50 Technology Company in Ireland and in the Top 100 Deloitte Technology Companies in Europe, Bookassist has received numerous awards in Online Trade, Online Marketing, and Technological Innovation including the Irish Internet Association’s NetVisionary Award for online trade.

CPI Hotels Czech Republic moves to Bookassist

Bookassist announces that Czech Republic hotel group CPI Hotels has signed to Bookassist for online strategy services and booking technology. The agreement also includes Bookassist's Site Builder content management technology for 13 websites.

CPI Hotels currently has 12 properties and operates the Clarion and Fortuna brands in the Czech Republic, as well as the flagship Buddha Bar 5 star Hotel in Prague.

Speaking about this latest acquisition, Jaromir Pazout, Director of Operations in Bookassist's Prague office said: "CPI required comprehensive online booking technology that can display the entire group of hotels together in easy-to-book format, but also be flexible enough to deal with a range from 5 star to long-term apartment sales. Bookassist is that solution. The ease of management of the system, with comprehensive reporting, as well as Bookassist's strategic vision for the online marketplace represented the best solution for CPI Hotels and we are very happy to be their online strategic partner for the coming years".

Apart from booking engine technology, CPI Hotels will also avail of Bookassist's other core products such as Site Builder web development content management system, Traffic Builder online marketing service and tracking technology, and Corporate and Loyalty systems as part of the hotel booking engine suite.

The partnership with CPI Hotels follows Bookassist's recent group agreements such as the Austrian ARCOTEL Hotels Group, Dublin-based Bewleys Hotel Group, Portuguese and Brazilian Eurosol Group and the Spanish Citymar Hotel group.

"This latest success with CPI Hotels underlines the fact that our strategy for online growth is working for hotels and is increasingly valued by them. We continue to push strongly into multiple markets and have rapidly expanded our staffing, our client base and our revenue through 2009 despite the downturn that many experienced in our industry. We are well poised for acceleration through 2010", said Dr Des O'Mahony, Bookassist CEO and Founder.

Bookassist® creates and manages online strategies for hotels and groups and is the industry-leading hotel booking engine and online marketing provider in Ireland. A Deloitte Fast 50 Technology Company in Ireland and in the Top 100 Deloitte Technology Companies in Europe, Bookassist has received numerous awards in Online Trade, Online Marketing, and Technological Innovation including the Irish Internet Association’s NetVisionary Award for online trade.

Hotel Hastal Prague gets best online performance award for second year

Hotel Hastal Prague Old Town (www.hotelhastalprague.com), has been working with Bookassist for almost 2 years. During this period the number of reservations made on the website has increased by 70% and shows consistent growth. Hotel Hastal has again been awarded the Best-Selling Independent Hotel in the Czech Republic for 2009, having previously won the award also for 2008.

Our congratulations to Patrick and Kristian for their success in working with Bookassist on best online strategies.


From left to right:
Des O'Mahony & Yahya Fetchati of Bookassist; Patrick Rieger, Hotel Hastal; Jaroslav Tibitanzl, Bookassist; Kristian Hanslik, Hotel Hastal; Jaromir Pazout, Bookassist.

Bookassist congratulates Karma Enduro charity trek!

Bookassist congratulates the Karma Enduro team for completing their trek! Imogen Murphy and Caroline Malone were the sole Irish team taking part in the 14-day charity car rally through Southern India to raise money for two fantastic children’s charities, Unicef and Rainbow Trust. Bookassist sponsored the team's car and has followed the progress through November.





For a diary of the event, see http://karmaenduro.weebly.com/blog.html

Bookassist appoints new regional Account Manager in Madrid office

Bookassist welcomes Carmen Lorenzo as the latest addition to the Spain and Portugal team at Bookassist's Madrid office. Carmen takes over direct online strategy management for a wide part of the company's customers across Spain and Portugal, working directly with them to increase conversion and online revenue.

Carmen's background is in the world of tourism and she brings expertise in customer service to the company. She has previously been involved in management and sales support for hotels with online company Restel and, more recently, with Tradyso.