Miss Tam Chiak

Location:

Singapore

Partnership period:

2022-2023

Industry:

Restaurants

Technologies:

Laravel, Wordpress, Bootstrap, PHP, MySQL, Python, HTML, jQuery, Woocommerce, RestAPI, Javascript, Application, SaaS Solutions,

Team Size:

1 Project Manager, 2 Full Stack Developer, 3 Backend Developer, 4 Frontend Developer, 2 Database Engineer

Competitive Environment

The boutique hotel space is filled with small independent properties trying to differentiate themselves through unique personalized services and boutique experiences compared to large chains. However, lacking modern systems and processes further commoditizes these hotels, making competing harder. Their dated infrastructure constrains their ability to deliver frictionless guest experiences expected by today's consumers. Without integrated systems, these hotels also struggle to gather holistic guest data for personalization and have limited visibility into their operations.

Miss Tam Chiak found themselves in a similar situation, relying on fragmented systems making it operationally challenging to scale up services without expanding headcount exponentially. Their lack of direct booking channels also resulted in heavy dependence on OTAs, yielding control and profits. Though the market offered multiple hospitality tech software services, for a 20-room boutique property like Miss Tam Chiak, the solutions were often too complex and expensive. They needed an affordable customized solution catered to their niche needs.

Problem Statement

Miss Tam Chiak Hotel wanted to improve its operational efficiency, guest services, and direct booking revenues. However, their existing systems were decentralized across multiple tools and dashboards:

Room inventory tracked manually
Reservation management via OTA partners
Guest details in an outdated on-premise system
No integration across systems

This lack of consolidation resulted in:

Poor visibility into upcoming occupancy and availability
Manual verification across systems results in overbookings at times
Tedious operations and communications between departments
High dependency on OTA channels with commissions up to 25%
Limited ability to personalize for repeat guests

The hotel needed an integrated solution to centralize all information and processes critical to delivering exceptional service and driving more direct bookings.

Solution and Objectives

Our team proposed a 3 phase roadmap to build custom platforms focused on the specific needs of small boutique hotels like Miss Tam Chiak:

Central Reservations Management System: To enable direct bookings, bypassing OTAs
Unified Property Management System: To manage reservations, check-ins, guest services, and housekeeping operations from a single dashboard
Operational Modules: To facilitate daily functions like billing, requests management

The primary goal was the consolidation of information and workflows to deliver a frictionless, informed guest experience by empowering hotel staff through technology.

Some key objectives included:

20% cost savings from lower OTA commissions
10x better visibility into room availability
Faster service through process automation
360-degree guest profiles for personalization
Higher repeat visits through loyalty programs

Technology Planning

An agile delivery approach was adopted given the custom nature of the build. A prioritized backlog was jointly created with the client based on business impact. Given the iterative process, long-term planning was kept flexible to incorporate regular feedback.

The 12-month engagement was broken into 3 releases, each further broken into 2 weekly sprints. Sprint planning involved:

User story estimation
Task breakdown and assignment
Capacity planning across client and agency team members

The core team comprised of "a Project Manager, a Full Stack Developer, a Backend Developer, and a Frontend Developer."

Team members were allocated depending on the priority feature scope. The technical architecture and APIs were established upfront ensuring uniformity across modules.

Regular sprint reviews and retrospective meetings were scheduled for demonstrations, feedback, and improvisation alignment.

The technology platforms were built leveraging:

WordPress: For UI and booking workflows
Woocommerce: For order management integration
Laravel: For API development
MySQL: For databases

Phases

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

Conclusion and Results

With the 3 phase implementation complete, Miss Tam Chiak benefited from:

20% cost savings driven by 35% direct bookings growth
Increased occupancy by 10% from global distribution through agents
Higher efficiency enabling redeployment of 4 FTEs to customer-facing roles

For the guests themselves, the transformation was evident through:

Faster service with seamless information availability
Better recognition and personalization for returning visitors
More transparency from pre to post-stay engagement

With these uniquely customized platforms tuned exactly to their niche operational environment, Miss Tam Chiak outpaced competing boutique hotels. Leveraging the integrated data and streamlined workflows, they raised the bar for boutique hospitality.

Their example has since inspired other independent properties to reimagine technology's role in empowering them to punch above their weight. We are privileged to have partnered with Miss Tam Chiak in their pioneering journey.

Key Challenge

A significant challenge was ensuring the human touch of a boutique establishment didn’t get diluted in our pursuit of efficiency through technology. For smaller properties, optimizing guest experience depends heavily on the personal relationships built during each visit driving loyalty. In designing the platforms, we had to creatively embed the processes allowing staff accessibility to guest preferences, enabling them to maintain the bespoke element while automating the repetitive tasks.

The iterative approach was key to shaping workflows based on observing ground staff interactions and feedback.

Next Steps

Having realized immense value from Phase 1 of core reservations and property management, Miss Tam Chiak wants to double down on customer intelligence. Some prospective ideas include:

Building a guest preference-driven database for true personalization
Enable push notifications to mobile apps to drive direct bookings
Integrate AI to match guest profiles with room suggestions
Voice-based assistance for rooms

We look forward to growing capabilities tailored to Miss Tam Chiak’s increasing ambition of creating unmatched boutique experiences.

Miss Tam Chiak

Miss Tam Chiak

Competitive Environment

Problem Statement

Solution and Objectives

Technology Planning