Amway Grand Plaza Hotel Banks on POS for In-House Gift Card/Loyalty Program and More
The AAA Four Diamond Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids, Michigan, announces a recent partnership with Volanté Systems in a multi-phase hotel POS installation comprising of 54 terminals throughout the property.
In addition to providing POS terminals to all the food and beverage outlets within the hotel, the installation also includes 12 terminals in the adjoining convention center, The Devos Place. Future plans include expansion into the hotel's retail operations.
The Amway Grand Plaza Hotel installation marks the first hotel & convention center for Volanté. Previous clients have included casinos, stadiums, fine dining and casual/quick serve restaurants, pizza chains, universities and theme parks.
The entire system at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel runs on a Linux platform. Volanté has been built around open standards to keep both costs down and integration seamless.
An integrated gift card/rewards system
"Volanté brought a lot to the table as far as what it was offering," says Todd Krapp, computer systems coordinator for the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel. "Volanté has a lot of integrated features, whereas other POS systems are kind of a la carte, you have to shop around to find another vendor to do something else for you. We were especially intrigued by the integrated gift card/rewards system that Volanté offers. To find a point of sale company that does gift cards is very difficult. We do a lot of gift card business, and to have someone do it out of house, the per-transaction expense becomes quite significant. With Volanté, we can manage everything in-house, control it and maintain it."
In addition to gift card/loyalty programs, customer relationship management, and integrated debit and credit capabilities, Volanté offers on-demand, real time access to data, and system reliability through a network of peer-to-peer terminals, a feature that is unique in the point of sale industry.
Peer-to-peer POS technology means that each terminal runs independently from the main server, and in the case of a system crash, each terminal will continue to operate without any loss of data. In regards to Volanté's peer-to-peer component, Krapp mentions, "It certainly gives me peace of mind. I don't know if the Outlet Managers fully comprehend that yet, but as far as the network going down, they're not going to pad and paper in case of a system crash. That's not a problem anymore. With Volanté, we've quite literally moved into the 21st century."
Volanté also offers a full data-reporting suite to aid management in decision-making.