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How Delphi Resort modernised its operations with hosted HotSoft and embedded payments from Planet
Large enterprises
How Delphi Resort modernised its operations with hosted HotSoft and embedded payments from Planet
At a glance
- Moved HotSoft off an ageing on-premises server and into Planet’s hosted solution, the same trusted software, without the on-premises constraints, and with no disruption,
- Payments are now built into the PMS, with one click sending a payment straight to the terminal, removing manual entry and eliminating reconciliation errors.
- HotSoft’s open ecosystem connects with SiteMinder, Canary, TablePath, Volante and other solutions they need, so every part of the business works in harmony.
The challenge
Delphi Resort is a 300-acre destination on Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way, combining a four-star hotel, an on-site hostel, a spa, bar, restaurant and café, and an adventure centre. At the height of summer, up to 150 staff run the estate across housekeeping, maintenance, finance, front-of-house and reservations, spa, adventure and food & beverage, several distinct teams under one roof delivering seamless guest experiences.
Delphi Resort has run HotSoft as its property management system for years. The software is well-liked, but it lived on an on-premises server that was starting to hold the business back. As the resort added new tools, the on-site server made them harder to connect. “The ageing on-premises server infrastructure required increasing maintenance and was becoming more difficult to support”, explained Zeb, and was prone to crashes and restarts that disrupted operations. On top of that, each server refresh carried a heavy price tag, roughly €20,000 every seven years, plus software licenses, migration downtime, ongoing maintenance and the energy cost to run “power-hungry” hardware.
Payments were just as manual. Staff keyed transaction amounts into card machines by hand, which occasionally created discrepancies and forced finance and F&B teams to chase mismatched transactions across departments.
The solution
Working with Planet, Delphi Resort migrated from its on-premise Hotsoft solution to hosted HotSoft. The move itself was straightforward – no data migration to manage and no staff retraining, as the HotSoft database and application simply moved into Planet’s datacentres. Zeb describes the result as seamless – “now, as long as you have internet, you have access, and it’s very light”. Hosted HotSoft runs as smoothly as locally installed software, without the drag of a heavy remote-desktop connection. Just as importantly, moving to hosting removed the security worries and integration friction of the old server and allowed Delphi Resort to outsource day-to-day IT resilience to Planet.
Delphi Resort also brought its payments together with Planet. Because payments are integrated directly into HotSoft, a single click sends the amount straight to the terminal. There’s no manual keying, and with one provider behind both the software and the payments, the two work as one.
Crucially, HotSoft is an open platform with a growing ecosystem of deeply integrated partners, so Delphi Resort has been able to pick from best-of-breed solutions. This includes the likes of SiteMinder for channel management, Canary for automated guest messaging and TablePath for restaurant and bar reservations.
Delphi Resort also benefits from Planet's expertise in securing payment flows – pay-by-link is integrated with HotSoft, and card tokenization protects stored cards for bookings, incidentals and no-shows.
The result
For Delphi Resort, moving to hosting was “the best decision that we had made.” The resort has shed the cost and risk of the on-premises server, ending €20,000+ refresh cycles and improving system reliability, all while lowering energy and maintenance bills and gaining anywhere-access and Planet-managed resilience.
Zeb's advice to his peers is clear – “if you are thinking about moving to Planet for payments and PMS hosting, don't do it in a month’s time, do it today.”
Integrated payments have all but removed reconciliation errors. Where manual entry once left totals “a little up or down,” the “room for error is basically equal to negligible now.” End-of-day figures now match automatically between the till and the card machine, giving accountants, managers and shift staff “peace of mind that everything is reconciled”, and giving finance and F&B teams back the hours they used to lose chasing discrepancies across departments.
And the open ecosystem keeps paying off. The deciding question now for any new tool at Delphi Resort is simple – “does it integrate with HotSoft?” The answer is “usually yes.” That openness lets the resort connect systems that have been designed to work in harmony, cutting manual work and labour cost in what Zeb calls “a win-win situation for basically everyone.”
“I would tell any peer considering Planet to go for it, and go all in. I would encourage any hospitality business considering hosted HotSoft and integrated payments to explore the options available through Planet. For Delphi Resort, bringing the PMS, payments and compatible integrations together has made processes easier and more efficient across the business.” - Nouman Zeb, General Manager, Delphi Resort
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