TDA Face-to-Face: Jennifer Ranno, EZYield
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Jennifer Ranno, Vice President of Global Sales & Marketing, EZYield
1) Can you tell our readers a little about EZYield’s products and services?
In 2002, EZYield revolutionised the global hospitality industry with the world’s first automated channel management technology. Since that time, EZYield has become the undisputed leader in online distribution and integrated connectivity solutions. Today, more than 3,700 hotels in 96 countries utilise our cloud-based channel management solution to streamline the distribution of rates and inventory to over 600 channels in multiple languages and currencies, consistently providing the highest yielding accuracy in the industry. EZYield’s innovative suite of web-based solutions also includes website booking capabilities and integrated hotel reservation solutions. EZYield maintains regional offices in Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Americas, providing continuous customer support to our clients around the world.
2) How strong is your penetration in the Asia Pacific region, and what are you doing to increase this?
In what has become the fastest growing travel market in the world, Asia Pacific has long been an area of focus for EZYield. As we continue to expand globally, it remains a key growth market for us and we are looking to increase our already strong presence in the region. Several of the most prestigious and successful APAC-based hotel groups in the Middle East are loyal EZYield clients. In fact, we have over 50 properties in Dubai alone! Among our existing clientele are Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts, The Park Hotels India and Langham Hotels International.
3) You recently achieved the highest payment card security rating. How significant is this, and what does it mean for your company?
EZYield is the only channel management provider to have achieved Level 1 PCI certification for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS); this is extremely important in ensuring the security of our clients’ online data and that of their guests. We were certified by a third-party auditor for our entire end-to-end hotel reservations processing system. A significant step beyond mere compliance, this certification by an unbiased auditor demonstrates EZYield’s commitment to transactional security, and to providing the highest-quality service in the online distribution management sector.
4) What is EZYield doing to enable hoteliers to make rate and other updates via their smartphones?
Yielding to onward distribution channels via smartphone browsers is certainly a growing trend globally. Unlike other server-based systems, however, EZYield has always been a Web-based solution, so we were ahead of the curve. With EZYield, hotel revenue managers can remotely yield rates and inventory using the iPhone and other popular smartphone browsers. Because it was designed from the beginning as a SaaS solution, it requires no software downloads or licensing rights.
As more and more companies develop new software applications to reach smartphone users, it reinforces our original decision to develop EZYield as a SaaS platform. This is a huge difference, not only for users of specific types of smartphones, but also for the amount of integration needed to create a seamless experience.
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5) What new developments can we expect to see from EZYield in 2011?
In 2011, EZYield is expanding our suite of technology solutions to include even more integrated connectivity for hoteliers, such as a two-way, state-of-the-art reservation delivery platform. Our solution connects both legacy and industry leading central reservation systems (CRS) and property management systems (PMS) to multiple distribution channels, including third party websites and traditional wholesalers.
This seamless connectivity means that hoteliers no longer have to worry about input errors when manually transferring reservations booked from an EZYield partner channel. The interface eliminates common mistakes, ensuring that their guests aren’t inconvenienced by missing reservations or incorrect data.
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