Pegasus, the US-based accommodation technology specialist, is putting simplicity at the heart of its strategy and has admitted it made mistakes in the past by trying to be a software company.
Chris Wichers, chief sales officer, said its new focus was on delivering the solutions and services to hotel customers in the hospitality sector and providing added value above the technology.
“David [Millili, Pegasus chief executive] and I have taken a company that is well known and well established which perhaps squandered some resources over the years and made some software decisions that have not panned out very well. Our efforts today are to simplify and deliver better.
“We have both been hoteliers all of our lives and simplicity is important in a very complex world. We try to deliver the core services with GDS connectivity and access to all OTA channels as well as delivering a bundle of other services that help hoteliers generate revenue into hotels.”
Wichers said Pegasus has added 1,000 properties to its reservations technology in the last 15 months with particular success coming from Asian markets and northern European countries like the UK, Germany and Denmark but southern Europe has proved more problematic.
At WTM the Pegasus stand carried the firm’s new marketing strapline The Hotel People which Wichers said underscored its new approach.
“In my view we are a hospitality services delivery company. Delivering software alone is not enough. We have to provide added value. The mistake we made was that we thought we were a software company. That means you are competing against Google, Microsoft and Apple. That kind of the standards in front of you.”