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20 | April 7, 2015 | hotelbusiness.com

By Matthew MarinAssociate Editor

LAS VEGAS—With the recent devel-opment of its patent-pending ABreez cloud-based mobile app, Mobile Simple provides an operating solution for the hospitality industry to better streamline minibar and in-room amenities opera-tions. ABreez enables hotels to capture more revenue, increase guest satisfac-tion and improve staff productivity, ac-cording to the company based here.

“In the hospitality industry, hoteliers are struggling to manage in-room amenities,” said Christelle Pigeat, Mobile Simple’s CEO and VP of sales & marketing. “Whether hotels have a manual minibar, dry snacks or souve-nirs, we wanted to offer the best mo-bile management tool to simplify the reporting and restocking of in-room product operations.”

Those who manage minibars—food and beverage directors, housekeeping managers, in-room service managers, IT managers, procurement officers, room attendants or front-desk staff—traditionally have had only two options: manual or automatic door detection, observed Pigeat.

“It does not allow for charge adjust-ments or optimizing refill workflow, nor does it facilitate dynamic room-status listings,” said Pigeat. “Trying to de-termine an item’s sales performance is difficult, tracking expiration dates of products is complex, and offering

updates is challenging.” The company’s cofounders—Pigeat

and Vincent Tessier—combined their professional expertise to de-vise ABreez. Pigeat has experience in staff-facing mobile applications, while Tessier has expertise in minibar operations. “Mobile Simple is making minibar operations a breeze by offering the best return on investment [ROI] of any minibar solution in the market,” said Pigeat.

Prior to the introduction of ABreez last June, no other management soft-ware existed that could address the entire in-room amenity management process, leveraging both mobile devic-es and the cloud, according to Mobile Simple. The company wanted to devel-op and design a software solution that was simple to deploy, manage and use.

The ABreez mobile app communicates via the cloud with the ABreez back-office tool and posts charges on the guest’s folio via a PMS interface. Hotels that once managed their in-room products manually can now improve on the accuracy of guest-consumption postings.

Hotel employees will receive their own room dispatch in real time on the mobile device. The room listing automatically re-freshes at every check-in/checkout processed by the front-desk staff. The mobile app monitors the refill

status, handles special guest requests, manages minibar offerings and flags products nearing their expiration date.

“It is the perfect the tool for hotels that are equipped with manual minibars,” said Pigeat. “It’s a cloud-based solution, so there is no need to send an engineer to the property to install the solution. It’s simple, intuitive and affordable.”

Because ABreez operates in the cloud, Mobile Simple provides full vis-ibility in real time of not just one prop-erty but the entire enterprise. “ABreez is a powerful, intuitive and simple-to-use in-room management tool,” said Pigeat. “Operational, financial and productivity reports are always avail-able, giving managers full visibility over the department’s activities.”

ABreez provides consolidated, de-tailed financial and operational reports that can be easily accessed by any de-partment with authorized credentials. The app identifies which products are top sellers and enables management to stock items that best correspond with guests’ needs. Additionally, Mobile Simple has developed an ROI Simula-tor, indicating how the app would boost each property’s minibar department’s bottom line.

ABreez also reduces the risk of billing errors, according to the company. Bill-ing is controlled by the minibar atten-dant through the app as opposed to the automatic minibar, in which guest-trig-gered sensors initiate charges. The sys-tem is designed to better control guests’ actual consumption and reduce com-plaints related to overbilling errors.

Additional features of ABreez include the monitoring of in-room product shelf life. By identifying low-rotation prod-ucts, the system flags those items close to expiration date,

and guests are ensured fresh offerings in their room. The system also facili-tates the delivery of special requests via a notes feature to ensure that guests re-ceive these products in a timely fashion.

“ABreez has truly streamlined the minibar and in-room amenities oper-ation at the Peninsula Beverly Hills,” said Michael Ploetz, the hotel’s F&B director. “The system’s ability to cus-tomize the amenities we offer in each room is outstanding. In a luxury hotel environment, guests have discerning tastes and they expect certain products in their rooms. A one-size-fits-all men-tality doesn’t work at our hotel. With ABreez, we can track all custom setups very easily to ensure that they are meet-ing guests’ demands. Having the ability to offer streamlined customization is extremely important.”

Because the solution is managed above-property, on-site installation would not be required. Hoteliers would avoid additional costs of implementing premises-based applications. Without having the need to purchase, build and maintain an IT infrastructure to sup-port the technology, ABreez facilitates immediate deployment via the Internet in a highly secured environment, ac-cording to the company.

Once signed up, Mobile Simple can have a property’s minibar department running within 24 hours. ABreez frees hoteliers from the confines of in-room hardware as the mobile app works with all types of fridges and snack trays.

Mobile Simple offers the lodging in-dustry a free, 30-day trial to evaluate the benefits of the mobile app. ABreez is available in multiple languages, suited for international properties. For hoteliers concerned about environmen-

tal issues, ABreez eliminates the printing of refill reports.

“The best part of ABreez was our ability to try it without any capital expense before we decided to adopt it,” said Ploetz. “Not every system works in the luxury environ-ment because our needs—and those of our guests—are unique. The financial benefit from ABreez was instant, and making the decision to buy ABreez was easy.” HB

Cloud-based mobile app makes minibar management a breeze

ABreez can post charges on a guest’s folio via a PMS interface and monitor in-room product shelf life.

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