hetras stretches the definition of new generation hotel management with wunderkind Mauricio Schaul

From its inception, hetras has always been the choice of new generation hoteliers. To hetras, “new generation” meant forward-thinking people who drive hotel management in new directions. But the most recent hotel manager to select hetras shows that “new generation” can be taken quite literally.

Mauricio Schaul is a real estate fund manager, an airline operations specialist, a financial analyst, and a new media expert. Oh yes, and he’s also general manager of a 52 room resort hotel.

Did we mention that Mr. Schaul is only 23 years old?

iPad Generation

“I never had formal hotel management training, but I think I picked it up rather quickly,” said the dynamic entrepreneur. My real estate fund includes the Hotel Bellevue Kärnten Seeboden and I thought it would be an interesting challenge to manage it myself.” Frequently on the road, Mr. Schaul needs access to the hotel data on short notice. “I definitely belong to the iPad generation. For me, iPad access from anywhere in the world is a must. That narrowed down my choices of a hotel management system quickly. But I took the search for a hotel management system quite seriously. I analyzed most of the relevant software vendors over a 2-year period and chose hetras in the end. Not only do I like the product but the hetras mentality fits well with my style.”

Hotel Bellevue has an ideal location on an idyllic Austrian lake and an excellent foundation for a successful hotel business. But the hotel had fallen behind its competition due to lack of investment and renovation. It then found its way into Schaul’s family fund and is now undergoing – piece by piece – a complete modernization into a resort of international standard.

New direct channels

Schaul added: “I looked closely at the commissions we had been paying to third party reservation providers. This may be OK in low season but inacceptable in times of high demand. So I put a stop to that. We’re now working on a number of new types of direct channels, including couponing, incentives, loyalty programs and special partnerships. We’re making a large investment in our website and our booking engine and exploring opportunities in search engine optimization and search engine marketing.”

Petra Soller of hetras’ professional service team said “It’s great to work with someone with such a refreshing mind as Mauricio. He calls into question processes that hoteliers have followed for years without really thinking about them. We love his ideas for the hetras product and hope to include them in future releases.”

Five new interfaces

In order to meet the connectivity requirements of the hotel, hetras developed and released several new features: the Comm-Unity interface sends registration data to the local tourist office as well as the national agency for statistics; an interface to Kunleysis, a CRM and customer loyalty system; an integration of DailyDeals in the web booking engine so that guests can access special rates via coupon codes; Aastra PBX interface; and an enhanced interface to IDeaS revenue management system, which now sends optimized rates and pro-person supplemental charges to hetras on an hourly basis.

Schaul said: “I’m learning every day, but my staff, many of whom have been working in this industry for longer than I have been alive, are adjusting well to my unorthodox management style. In any case, we all agree that hetras was a great choice.”