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An Established Brand With New Promise
Postillion, a well-known hotel chain in the Netherlands, was first established in the 1950s. Their great success led to growth, and they were acquired by Accor (the largest hospitality company in Europe) in the 1990s.
Refounded in 2010, Postillion is now focused on the MICE market and overnight stays. This is reflected in their properties; of their 8 locations in the Netherlands, 4 are convention centers and 7 are hotels. Across all of their properties, they have 150 available meeting rooms, as well as 886 guestrooms.
Upgrading The Tech Stack
In 2017, the leadership team at Postillion had a goal: to break down siloes and increase visibility across the entirety of the customer journey. This meant that they needed to ensure that customer data was visible across then disparate systems.
As part of this effort, Postillion implemented the Mews property management system. This helped them optimize sales & revenue, but it didn’t do much to break down siloes.
Missing The Big Picture
Despite the technological upgrades, Postillion's data problems persisted. They didn’t have much data on lead time or market segmentation. To find this data, they would have to “dump” it all into excel. This was not a practical solution and made analysis next to impossible.
Their CRM and S&C systems also weren’t connected, meaning that they had to look in 3 locations to see all of their data. As a lean, busy team, they simply didn’t have time to do that. Unfortunately, this meant they were missing the big picture - and their customer service suffered because of it.
All in all, these problems left the Postillion team feeling desperate for a solution that would give them a better understanding of their properties’ performance in real-time, based on data.
Breaking Down Barriers
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the hospitality industry suffered. However, Postillion saw it as an opportunity to address their growing operational problems. With the extra time afforded them because of reduced travel and country restrictions, their team began working to optimize business processes across all of their operations.
Postillion’s current systems were certainly functional, but their lack of synchronization with one another was a problem. They needed a solution that allowed them to see all of their data in one place, even though it was stored in different systems.
Then, Postillion found Thynk. Thynk offered real-time, out-of-the-box integrations with the systems that Postillion already used, promising reduced siloes and the “big picture” perspective that their team so desperately needed.
As Postillion onboarded with Thynk, the pandemic gave them the luxury of time; time to ensure there was a mutual fit between the two organizations, time to improve their processes, and time to thoroughly train their team to increase adoption. Because of their deliberate, thoughtful approach, Postillion emerged from the worst moments of the pandemic a stronger and more efficient team.
Sustainable Growth In The Face Of Uncertainty
Today, the Postillion team begins each morning by reviewing their new revenue dashboards in Thynk. They focus their sales and support teams on areas of high demand or need, respectively, based on the information they see there. It also allows company leadership to increase resources as necessary to mitigate weaknesses or take advantage of growth opportunities.
As Postilion moves to optimize marketing to accelerate opening new properties in 2022 and beyond, they can feel confident that they’re making decisions based on all the available data with the help of Thynk.
