Sonesta's Swift Loyalty Overhaul: Streamlined Operations, Enhanced Guest Experience
In 2022, Sonesta embarked on a transformative Loyalty System Replacement project, aiming to replace a legacy 15-year-old loyalty system with a modern commercial off-the-shelf software. The success of the project hinged on three key goals. First, the new system had to be flexible and scalable to accommodate Sonesta's rapid growth. Second, it needed to communicate seamlessly with multiple Property Management Systems (PMS's), a departure from the previous single PMS integration. This was especially important because Sonesta has more than 10 different PMS systems throughout the enterprise and each PMS has its own data model. Finally, Sonesta aimed to establish its own data platform, the Customer Data Platform (CDP), to gain a unified view of customer data across the organization for enhanced service delivery.
A Three-Pronged Approach
The comprehensive strategy kicked off with the selection of Tally, a robust system capable of calculating earned and redeemed points for Sonesta's expansive Travel Pass membership base. Tally not only provided the desired flexibility for custom promotions but also demonstrated scalability to handle the vast volume of Travel Pass members by allowing Sonesta to store millions of data points from millions of Travel Pass members.
To tackle the challenge of integrating with multiple PMS's, Sonesta opted for the vendor HAPI, whose existing integration solutions with popular PMS's saved significant time and resources that would have been spent developing a proprietary solution. This strategic choice ensured a swift and efficient integration process, aligning with Sonesta's commitment to timely project completion.
[For an in-depth look at the Sonesta/HAPI partnership, check out this case study detailing the particulars.]
The last piece of the puzzle was the development of the Customer Data Platform (CDP), hosted on Azure and interfaced through an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). As guests checked out of its properties, HAPI seamlessly pushed stay data from the property management system to the ESB, triggering a series of automated processes. The stay data was stored in raw format in the data lake for future AI/ML opportunities, aggregated in the data warehouse for reporting, and inserted into the CDP. The CDP not only illustrated the relationships among members and non-members but also automatically matched reservation details to Travel Pass members.
The ESB then facilitated the transfer of stay data from the CDP to Tally for automated points calculation, which, in turn, were sent back to the CDP. This closed-loop system allowed guests to view their earned Travel Pass points accurately and more expeditiously through Sonesta's website, mobile app, or call center.
“One of the most important decisions we made at Sonesta was realizing we needed to own and secure our own data and define the standards on how data is shared with our various vendors,” explains Shaun Wood, Head of Enterprise Architecture and Technology, Sonesta International Hotels. “This was the genesis behind us developing our own Enterprise Service Bus in Azure with a CDP which is hosted on Azure SQL. Having our own ESB allows us to standardize how all vendors can securely access our data. The CDP is giving us invaluable insights of the behaviors of our guests as they use our products and services.
“Before we did this project, we had data spread across many different systems and vendors that made analysis and reporting extremely tedious,” he added. “The CDP allows us to store all of our data in one common platform, making analysis and reporting a breeze. And with the ESB sitting behind it, we know any data being pushed to the CDP or Tally is clean and secure.”
Sonesta Scores with Loyalty
Sonesta's meticulous Loyalty Replacement project, encompassing Tally, HAPI, and the Customer Data Platform, has not only streamlined loyalty operations but also provided guests with a seamless and transparent experience across various touchpoints. This project eliminated the need for costly, time-intensive system integrations between large and small technology vendors (which can take up to 18 months to materialize and come with “hefty” certification fees). It increased operational efficiency with streamlined API access from many PMS instances, whether on-premises or in the cloud. Reports can now be developed and run more quickly and easily since the brand’s data is centralized in the CDP and data warehouse. It integrated Sonesta’s existing portfolio and brought new hotels online within days as they expanded across North America, allowing for faster ramp up times for future projects. Sonesta has more than 700 hotels connected, resulting in reservations and stay data that is populate in near-time to it’s data warehouse and CDP.
To watch Sonesta's own Shaun Wood discuss this winning initiative in person at Hotel Technology Forum 2023, click on the video below!