How Wyndham’s technology improvements can upgrade its franchisees’ ROI

ANAHEIM, California – Before the $275 million in technology upgrades that Wyndham Hotels & Resorts announced on Wednesday, the company’s CIO admits the company was on a “dog’s breakfast” of systems that connected the world’s largest network of hotel franchises.

“We had five central reservation systems, we have multiple web platforms, we had 12 different property management systems,” said Scott Strickland, EVP and CIO for Wyndham. “So, as part of this investment, we consolidated onto a single central reservation system. We’re one of the only in the industry that’s on a single central reservation system for all of our hotels. We’re in the process of getting to two property management systems. We’re on one digital system globally, in 95 countries, and I think six languages right now.”

Strickland said much of the investment was on standardizing the company’s platform and began as a Salesforce investment over five years ago. It has evolved into something the company is calling Wyndham Community.

“It gives us a 360-view of our franchisees, our customers. Because we get to see here’s how we’re servicing them. Here’s how we’re marketing for them. Here’s who their customers are. And now, with Community, here’s how they’re accessing our system.”

That’s incredible. Given our scale and what we’re offering here, you’re getting a 7x return per year on that investment.

Scott Strickland

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The Community piece of this technology rolled out two weeks ago. Strickland said it had 12,000 logins on the first day and consistently over 18,000 logins right now.

But Strickland said he expects the adoption rate for this technology to grow quickly and to be in the 90% range by the end of the year.

Strickland admits he’s confident about that number because franchisees will have to use the system to pay Wyndham, resolve any cases, or work with the company’s field operations. This is why the company worked so hard to retire its old legacy systems.

He said the ROI on the technology upgrades for Wyndham’s owners can be complicated to calculate because it depends on how many of the tools the franchisees use (the company is big on letting them opt-in vs. being mandated.)

Strickland cites an example of an owner using the company’s Saber property management system (SynXis Property Hub), which also bundles with a revenue management system. Strickland said the company has calculated that owners using that setup will make $46,000 more annually in additional gross revenue.

“That’s incredible. Given our scale and what we’re offering here, you’re getting a 7x return per year on that investment,” Strickland said.

Lisa Checchio is EVP and Chief Marketing Officer for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts

Lisa Checchio, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer for Wyndham, said the platform was built so everyone is speaking the same technology language.

“We’ve built it so that all of our field operations teams, all of our revenue managers, all of our global sellers, all of our franchisee sellers, all of our IT support teams are using the same interface,” Checchio said. “So they can see what our franchisees are seeing.”

Checchio said the company has built the community interface over the last 18 months with feedback from franchisees and Wyndham’s field operations staff.

“I think simplicity is probably one of the biggest pieces of feedback that we get because technology can be overcomplicated,” she said.

Having all the company’s data in one central place also raises cybersecurity and privacy concerns. Strickland said the company has been working with San Francisco-based Okta to layer a security system on top of Salesforce. Strickland said Okta is also helping meet data privacy requirements for the global company because, often, property management systems need to be housed in the localities they are serving.