GenaRes has been selected as the AAHOA preferred hotel reservations system provider.
Under the agreement, GenaRes’ central reservation system (CRS) has been configured especially for AAHOA’s members, and is now available under the moniker “AIRS,” an acronym for “AAHOA Independent Reservation System.”  The system was designed specifically for the AAHOA member properties that are independent and not affiliated with any franchise hotel company CRSs.

“Since so many of our members own independent hotels, finding a reliable independent, non-franchise-affiliated CRS for our members was an absolute must,” said Nash Patel, AAHOA’s 2004 chairman.  “We had been looking at systems for three or four years, and finally came to the conclusion that GenaRes’ CRS was the best system on the market for our members.  The GenaRes system will undoubtedly benefit hoteliers who don’t have access to a franchise hotel company CRS.  It’s the first step in their self-sufficiency,” Patel said.
According to incoming AAHOA 2005 Chairman Manhar “M.P” Rama, many of the AAHOA independent hotels have been tracking their reservations manually for years, with virtually no automation.  “Now, these hoteliers will not only be able to track their reservations more efficiently, but they will now be on a more level playing field with their franchised competitors because their properties will now be available for travel agents to book via the GDSs (global distribution systems) such as Sabre and Galileo, as well as by consumers worldwide via the Internet.”  Travel agents will be able to easily book and identify the AAHOA member hotels under the new GDS chain code “IM.” As a result of GenaRes’ connection to the Pegasus Solutions (NASDAQ: PEGS ) Distribution Switch, AAHOA members that use the system will now be available for online booking via thousands of Web sites around the world.

AAHOA Chairman Rama commented, “Since we proposed this decision at our annual conference in March, we have seen a tremendous amount of interest among our members to join the GenaRes AIRS system.”  During the annual AAHOA convention, which had a record 3,500 attendees, the attendees had the opportunity to vote on a variety of issues on site through the use of handheld machines.  According to AAHOA officials, 92 percent of the attending members supported the new independent reservation system, which will be available on a per-reservation transaction fee basis.  “By the end of this year, we’d like to see at least 800 of our members’ propertie s live on the system,” Rama said.

GenaRes President Eugene Harris noted, “Our CRS is scalable from a 20-room bed and breakfast property to a 4,000-room hotel.  Any AAHOA member can use the system; there’s no minimum requirement on how many hotels each AAHOA member must add to the system, nor a minimum number of reservations they must generate.  It would be very difficult for many of these properties and smaller hotel companies to find this kind of deal out in the market on their own.  But as part of the larger AAHOA organization, they can now afford to have access to a world-class reservations system to help them better compete with franchised properties on their own turf.” 

The AAHOA members will be able to use the AIRS CRS for managing their room inventories across all distribution channels.  AAHOA member properties’ hotel managers and reservations staff can easily and securely access the AIRS CRS via any PC with Internet access.  GenaRes’ state-of-the-art Web-based user interface allows AAHOA’s members to login and easily upload new rate plans, change availability, modify property descriptions, upload property pictures and more.
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