Starlight Hotels Group moves to Bookassist for Online Reservations and Strategy

Vienna-based Starlight Suites (starlighthotels.com) has announced a partnership agreement with Bookassist to avail of the company's online strategy services and products.

The Starlight Suites Hotels is a modern and high class hotel group with six 4 star suites-only hotels; three in Austria, two in Budapest, Hungary and one in Bucharest, Romania. The properties are strategically well located in the city-centres.

Starlight Suites Hotels are currently using the Bookassist group booking engine system, incorporating search by location and are also availing of Bookassist's Trafficbuilder online strategy services, to increase their online visitors and brand awareness.

"The Starlight Suites Hotels were looking not only for a booking tool, but a strategy which supports their online brand advertising needs and which stands for significantly increasing conversion and return on investment in a transparent way. With Bookassist, they found the perfect partner with strong local presence in Vienna and top-rated support in Austria", according to Gerd Weingrill, Sales Manager Austria. "We are proud to be picked from amongst various high profile competitors."

Mr. Dieter Jöbstl, the CEO of Starlighthotels is "looking forward to a win-win partnership for both" and sees "Direct Online Distribution" as the long-term future model for his services and products.


Pictured at the training session for Starlight Suites are:
[back from left] Mario Clemente (Bookassist Austria, Account Manager) , Gerd Weingrill (Bookassist Austria, Sales Manager) , Robert Jöbstl (Owner) and Dieter Jöbstl (Owner & CEO)
[front from left] Barbara Koller (Manager Starlight Hotel Heumarkt, Vienna) , Manuela Schön (Manager Starlight Hotel Renngasse, Vienna) , Ivana Majstorowic (Manager Starlight Hotel Salzgries, Vienna)


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.

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.

Austria's ARCOTEL Hotels & Resorts GmbH signs to Bookassist for Strategy and Online Technology

Dublin-based hotel online strategy and technology firm Bookassist is pleased to announce a new partnership with the Vienna-based international ARCOTEL Hotels group (www.arcotel.at), which has chosen Bookassist's strategy and technology platform for direct online business.

Bookassist will provide its award-winning online booking technology to the group as well as its industry-leading e-commerce integration with Google Analytics for pay-per-click tracking. Direct integration with the group's Protel property management system as well as Channel Management updating services are also being provided by Bookassist as part of the initial 2-year contract with the group.


The ARCOTEL Hotels & Resorts GmbH is one of the biggest family-held tourism enterprises in Austria. The group has a long history of success and is currently celebrates its 20th anniversary. With five hotels in Austria and one in Croatia, expansion has mainly focused on Germany in the past few years with the ARCOTEL Velvet Berlin, the ARCOTEL Rubin Hamburg, ARCOTEL Camino Stuttgart and the ARCOTEL John F Berlin. The ARCOTEL Onyx Hamburg hotel is due to open its doors in 2011. ARCOTEL hotels have currently over 1600 rooms throughout the group with an annual turnover of EUR 50 million in 2008. "We are looking forward to co-operation with Bookassist, as the company offers us an overall solution for the online booking process as well as excellent service quality. This is, what we expect from a competent partner", explains Manfred Mayer, ARCOTEL Hotel AG CEO.

"With ARCOTEL Hotels, you have top quality products in ideal locations. Their appeal on the internet is already high and Bookassist will help them to achieve their online sales targets and grow their online business even further in the coming years", said Dr. Des O'Mahony, Bookassist CEO.

"We are delighted that ARCOTEL Hotels has chosen Bookassist from among all the major players in this arena", said Yahya Fetchati, Head of Business & Operations at Bookassist. "Beyond the online expertise and technology, Bookassist excels and out-performs everyone when it comes to customer support and client satisfaction. This has been an important factor in the decision for ARCOTEL Hotels."



Pictured at the recent Bookassist training session in Vienna for Arcotel Hotels Reservation managers were, from the left, Martin Grabner (Revenue Manager, Arcotel Hotels), Patricia Oehner (Director of Reservations, Arcotel Hotels) and Gerd Weingrill (Bookassist Austria Representative).


Bookassist® creates and manages online strategies for hotels and groups and is the industry-leading hotel booking engine and online marketing provider in Ireland. Bookassist is expanding rapidly abroad with additional offices in Spain, France, Czech Republic, Scotland, Italy, Poland and Austria and a client base of over 2000 hotels. 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.

Spanish and Portuguese groups move to Bookassist

Market-leading booking technology company Bookassist announces that two large hotel groups in Portugal and Spain have signed to the Bookassist platform for booking technology, support systems and online marketing. The groups will be managed from Bookassist's Madrid office.

Portuguese hotel group Eurosol hotels (eurosol.pt) includes 9 hotels in Portugal and a further 2 hotels in Brazil. All hotels will use the system and avail of Bookassist's multilingual and multicurrency booking technology. Corporate booking facilities and Loyalty systems, as well as Traffic Builder online marketing services are also available as part of the Bookassist suite of services.

Citymar hotels and apartments (citymar.com) comprises 15 hotels across the south of Spain in Granada, Almeria, Cadiz and Toledo. The hotels offer a mix of beach, golf, ski and city properties. The versatility of the Bookassist booking engine is ideal for the group, allowing for configurations for standard sale, family rooms, apartments with special sale conditions etc.

The Citymar group will use Corporate booking and Loyalty systems, as well as Traffic Builder online marketing services and additionally avails of Bookassist's GDS Manager service to give them a complete platform solution.

With a suite of integrated products forming a complete online transaction platform for groups, Bookassist is increasingly providing the exact solutions that groups and chains need to switch the majority of their business to direct online bookings, reducing their cost of sale and building their brand online.

Bookassist® creates and manages online strategies for hotels and groups and is the industry-leading hotel booking engine and online marketing provider in Ireland. Bookassist is expanding rapidly abroad with additional offices in Spain, France, Czech Republic, Scotland, Italy, Poland and Austria and a client base of over 2000 hotels. 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.