InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) says it's moving into phase two in the development of its Guest Reservation System (GRS).
The company says the GRS, which has been developed over past four years with Amadeus, is now rolled out across its full estate.
Alongside price optimization technology, the reservation system now sits on IHG Concerto, the company’s cloud-based hotel technology platform.
The thinking behind the GRS was to enable hotels to be able to sell rooms in a more flexible way.
According to IHG, the next phase of GRS is the “development and piloting of attribute pricing,” which will enable guests to make bookings based on the attributes that are relevant to them.
IHG also believes the technology will boost its direct bookings as the functionality will only be available to IHG Reward Club members booking via direct channels.
The technology is being piloted this year with an expectation to begin extending it to a number of properties towards the end of 2019.
Rival hotel companies have made similar comments around direct bookings as the relationship with online travel agencies continues to be an uneasy one.
Most recently, Hilton boss Chris Nassetta said growth of its direct web channels were outstripping other channels and that the company was focused on driving the "direct relationship" with customers.
Once the rollout is underway for IHG, the plan is for further updates and release two to four times a year.
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IHG chief executive Keith Barr talked of Concerto as being designed to “future proof our technology platform” while GRS is about opportunity for “more sophisticated yield management and pricing optimization."
Barr was speaking as the company announced fourth quarter and full-year results for 2018.
Revenue for the company increased 6% to $1.8 billion year-on-year with operating profit also up 6% to $805 million.