Seco promotes digital platform of Zurich City Hotels
The Synergy Board, a digital platform for knowledge transfer of Zürch City Hotels, was able to secure the Innotour grant from Seco. There is talk of a six-figure amount.
"In the beginning, there was a desire for an interactive, digital platform for our hotel cooperation that facilitates and promotes communication and interaction between members, thereby maximizing synergies," says Matthias Ramer, President Zurich City Hotels. "We quickly realized the potential of such a novel platform for our country, which will be used as a white label for other hotel cooperation partners throughout Switzerland after its launch. With our Synergy Board, as the portal is called, we are creating an impact-oriented and future-proof solution for the sustainable promotion of knowledge transfer within cooperations. Individual small businesses get access to a broad (service) offer and network that transforms daily tasks and work from the analog world into the digital one and thus contributes to the increase in quality and efficiency of each individual hotel," Ramer continues.
Six-figure amount for two years
The Synergy Board promises a digital transformation in terms of the exchange of competence and expertise with clear, measurable objectives in the areas of increasing quality and efficiency, promoting sustainability and communication while reducing costs in various areas. The platform can be expanded as needed and will meet the future challenges of smaller and larger hotel cooperatives. "This is in line with the federal government's tourism strategy, which also focuses on innovative, scalable, digital solutions in project funding and knowledge transfer." Says Mireille Corger-Lattion, deputy head of Innotour, which is supporting the project with a six-figure Swiss franc sum over the next two years.
Once the financing has been secured, the go-ahead will be given in January 2023 for the construction of the basic framework of the web-based portal, which will use the latest technologies. Based on the in-depth needs analysis of Zürich City Hotels, the platform will cover the following key areas: Human Resources, Pricing & Sales, Internal Communication and Suppliers & Collaborations. Clear goals were defined for each area based on individual needs.
"We are convinced that future-proof hotel cooperations need a holistic, digital solution that allows their members (individual small hotels) to make optimal use of synergies in crucial areas in order to remain marketable. We are looking forward to an exciting and empty development phase," says Matthias Ramer on behalf of the Zurich City Hotels project team and Nicoletta Müller from Innovation, Sales and Marketing, who has been closely accompanying the project with her team since the brainstorming.
