Kokopo Village Resorts, Papua New Guinea Addressing IT Challenges in the Developing World

From Gaming & Leisure Magazine

Fall 2011, 10th Anniversary Issue

www.gamingandleisuremagazine.com

Lying just south of the equator, 160km (100 miles) north of Australia, Papua New Guinea (PNG) is part of a great arc of mountains stretching from Asia, through Indonesia and into the South Pacific.   With more than 600 islands, 860 languages and a population of less than 7 million, PNG’s indigenous population is one of the most diverse in the world.

PNG has several thousand separate communities, most with only a few hundred people. Divided by language, customs, and tradition, some of these communities, until recently, were unaware of the existence of neighboring groups only a few kilometers away. The diversity, reflected in a folk saying, "For each village, a different culture," is perhaps best shown in the local languages.

With per capita annual income level at US$ 1180, and an “Ease of Doing Business” ranking of 103 (out of 183 countries) it can be difficult for local businesses, hotels and resorts to find suitable technology partners.   With a smaller pool of technology professionals to draw from, a successful systems implementation can be a significantly greater challenge than we’re used to in the west.

The following is a study of how the Kokopo Village Resort in Papua New Guinea was able to address these challenges and was empowered to achieve their full potential:

Doing business better

Hospitality enterprises often deal with multiple vendors to address varied technology requirements throughout their properties. The result: lack of a centralized, unified, information management system; multiple vendor coordination issues and disjointed processes and views.

When Kokopo Village Resorts decided to adopt a technology solution to keep their business agile and growing, they found a simple answer to this challenge: IDS FortuneNEXT Enterprise. This single, comprehensive offering catered to their multiple functional and departmental needs, helped usher in smarter processes, and improve productivity.

Changing with the times

Kokopo Village Resorts is a beautiful holiday destination in the idyllic settings of Papua New Guinea’s East Britain Province. This holiday home, known for excellent service and customer-friendly practices, was a popular choice with tourists.

However, once Kokopo Town began to emerge prominently on the tourism map, it saw a sharp increase in the number of hospitality ventures. Suddenly, there were more hotels, resorts, cafes and eateries. Kokopo Village Resorts had to rethink their competitive advantage. They decided to automate processes to enhance efficiency and dramatically impact customer experience.

Meeting operational challenges with smart technology

“The competition was increasing in our town and we needed more information then just financial data,” says Douglas Pidi, Kokopo Resort. There were a host of other similar, operational challenges, including:

·        Tracking inventory and tracing material costs;

·        Finding business details such as precise occupancy rates and customer spending;

·        Tracking room availability along with room revenue;

·        Reducing manual efforts and time taken to do the above.

The Resort decided to embrace smart technology to make a difference. While there were many vendors who took a piece-meal approach to solving these challenges, few had a holistic view of the business and technology requirements. Few could provide a seamless solution, which not just countered these issues, but also empowered the business to grow.

A single solution for multiple issues

IDS FortuneNEXT Enterprise emerged as the right-fit solution, with its unique ability to cover all aspects and functions of the Resort’s operations. From managing reservations to tracking inventory, this comprehensive property management solution became a centralized, efficient way of keeping the Resort’s personnel and customers happy.

Additional features that helped the Resort stay future-ready included:

·   Strong reporting and control functions

·   Compliance with local regulatory requirements

·   Plug-and-play interfaces for third-party products to enable seamless hotel automation

·   An easy-to-maintain technical build, which supports faster updates, and greater security

·   100% application uptime and complete scalability

·   No unique hardware investments

·   24x7, live, multi-lingual support, and free user training

Gains, gains, and more gains

Kokopo Village Resort realized the benefits of having a single vendor deploy a comprehensive solution to cover all their requirements. With IDS FortuneNEXT Enterprise, they gained from:

·        Improved profitability. Greater control over everyday operations, which has led to enhanced profitability. Drag-and-drop check-in and check-out, multi-window bill split option, revenue management tools, enhanced audit modules including a night audit feature, and other such intelligent features have also boosted enterprise productivity by an overall 18%. Food and Beverage gross margins have increased by 18.5%.

·        A single, unified view of data for gathering business intelligence. They can now access relevant information based on criteria such as market segments and business sources with a mouse-click, to make critical decisions quickly.

·        Simplified, integrated processes and operations across departments. A single, central solution has resulted in standardized practices across all departments, and a smoother information sharing experience. It has eliminated data redundancies, stand-alone processes, and subsequent confusions. 

·        Better customer acquisition and retention, with more nuanced view of guest profiles and behavior. The Resort can easily see who is a repeat guest, know how much a customer has spent, and go the extra mile to make the stay a memorable one.  Faster processes and ready access to data also means quick responses to queries and requests.

·        Reduced time and increased accuracy in completing essential tasks. An easy-to-use interface, customizable parameters, SMS alerts engine to remind staff of bills and room activities, and other such features has made it simple to navigate through modules and optimize the solution. 

Kokopo Village Resort was able to overcome the obstacles facing a remote resort based in a developing country.  The resort was successful in finding a solution capable of providing for their needs while overcoming technical support issues typically addressing similar markets.

We would like to thank Kokopo Village Resort for their participation in this review.

Kokopo Village Resort website:  www.kokoporesort.com.pg
IDS Softwares website: www.idsnext.com