Summary: HeBS Digital’s innovative website technology platform, the smartCMS v7, was nominated one of North America’s Leading Travel Merchandising Solution Providers for 2016 by the World Travel Awards™. If the smartCMS v7 wins the award, it would come in addition to the technology’s recent Gold Stevie® Award. Voting runs through June 26, 2016, at worldtravelawards.com.
New York, NY – April 21, 2016 – The World Travel Awards has counted the HeBS Digital smartCMS v7 among its nominations for North America’s Leading Travel Merchandising Provider 2016. HeBS Digital, the leading hotel digital technology, full-service digital marketing and website revenue optimization consulting firm, is calling on all friends, clients, partners and colleagues to help secure the award and vote for the seventh generation of HeBS Digital’s proprietary hotel website technology platform at worldtravelawards.com.
The World Travel Awards, in its 23rd year, acknowledges, rewards and celebrates excellence across various sectors of the tourism and travel industries. The North America’s Leading Travel Merchandising Solution Provider 2016 field comprises the four most prestigious merchandising solutions in the travel industry, ranging from airline pricing and availability software to HeBS Digital’s comprehensive merchandising and revenue-generating website technology platform.
Powering some of the most innovative hospitality websites in the industry today, the HeBS Digital smartCMS v7 is constructed with leading-edge technology that allows for quick reiteration and constant improvements. The newest version of the website technology platform grants hotel websites substantial improvements in overall performance and responsiveness, including faster front-end download speeds and back-end management. The smartCMS v7 includes an array of new features, including a Smart Personalization Engine and one-to-one marketing, a unique Groups Module, loyalty program technology and multi-property specific functionalities. HeBS Digital clients whose websites are powered by the smartCMS enjoy a cost-of-sale per booking of less than 4.5% and revenue increases of 25% or more in comparison to their previous websites.
Notable Features of HeBS Digital’s smartCMS v7:
- Download Speed Performance Enhancements
- Page download speed improvements of 65 percent and above, a very important criteria for search engine rankings, user experience and conversions.
- Search Engine-Friendliness Updates
- Schema.org implementation support.
- Automated XML image sitemap application.
- Enhanced Merchandising Platform
- The smartCMS Complete Merchandising Platform allows the property to sell rooms and generate leads on every single page of the property website via a complete 360-degree ecosystem of CMS Modules, functionalities and capabilities.
- This next generation of merchandising allows the hotel to "sell on value" as opposed to "sell on rate" and to maximize revenues on the hotel website like never before.
- Enhanced Dynamic Content Personalization Module
- Accurately target website visitors with personalized and one-to-one special offers and promotions, based on the user’s geo location, loyalty program affiliation, repeat visitor status, past booking history, etc.
- Automated Time-Based Content Publishing
- Assign “publish” and “un-publish” times and dates to content pages. Ensures content launches on a pre-established “go live” date and is removed from the site automatically at a preset time and date.
- Loyalty Program Updates
- Full support for ORACLE/MICROS OCIS (Opera Customer Information System) or CRM technology-based loyalty programs (Ex. Serenata CRM, etc.).
- Serve fully responsive loyalty pages or as a separate set of mobile-optimized pages, based on preference and design requirements.
- Guests can claim credits for missing stay, subject to third-party services.
- Groups Pages Module
- Create unlimited private group landing pages for corporate, wedding and SMERF groups. Tie the group pages with a specific group block code and stay date restrictions. Group code and date restrictions are embedded into the booking widget. Default dates are pre-populated, yet users can extend based on restrictions set by the property.
- Custom-designed pages to increase relevancy for the type of group (i.e. meeting vs. wedding vs. SMERF groups).
- Automated feature to un-publish the group pages on a date specified by the hotel.
- For Multi-Property and Brand Hotel Companies
- Multiple Brand Option: create as many brands and sub-brands within a “master” brand website, upload a different custom design or page layout for each brand or sub-brand, assign properties to each brand or sub-brand; create brand splash pages and introduce enhanced search capabilities.
- Property Types: any property in the portfolio can be specifically classified as a hotel, casino, spa, restaurant, conference center, or “other.” This allows hoteliers to easily divide restaurant or spa content into its own property, managing the content within a separate section of the same CMS.
- Sub-Properties: the hotel website can carry sub-properties, such as a restaurant, spa, shop or bar. This hierarchy offers an improvement in the logical structure of the website, allowing hoteliers to create user log-ins to manage specific portions of the site in addition to flexibility in rearranging these sections of the website within the overall navigation structure.
- Allows for SEO- and user-friendly URL extensions and site architecture.
- Enhanced Multi-Property Content Sharing and Classification
- Feature all properties within the CMS that have been assigned a particular classifier ("classifiers" such as brand, type, location, services, amenities), assigning custom layouts and designs to each.
- Create a landing page featuring Special Offers within a particular property classifier.
- Share to Properties, Press Room and Points of Interest modules.
HeBS Digital’s smartCMS v7 embraces cutting-edge front-end full-stack technologies like HTML5, JSONP, AJAX, SASS, CSS3, and jQuery to deliver the best possible blend of front-end and back-end technology. High-quality images (the CMS supports storage of unlimited high-resolution images) and videos are served over CDN for a seamless and visually rich user experience. The content management system is on a modern web stack – written in PHP language with enterprise-grade Zend Framework – and runs on a fast and scalable cloud hosting platform. The content database is MySQL (redundant, multi-AZ for High Availability); caching and key-value storage is powered by high-performance Redis; customer files are stored securely in redundant block storage and served over Content Distribution Network for fastest possible content delivery. The cloud stack runs behind load balancers, and number of servers vary based on actual demand.
“The smartCMS v7 builds on the strengths of HeBS Digital’s award-winning, dynamic website technology to create a direct channel merchandizing platform that is truly unmatched in the industry,” said Max Starkov, President & CEO of HeBS Digital. “The powerful merchandising and content publishing engine of the previous smartCMS technology remains at its core, but new features and modules, user interface improvements, SEO and merchandizing enhancements and updates to existing modules take the smartCMS to another level. HeBS Digital has upgraded all of its clients as part of our commitment of increasing their direct online channel revenues in 2016 and beyond.”
Vote for the HeBS Digital’s innovative website technology platform smartCMS v7 as North America’s Leading Travel Merchandising Solution Provider in the World Travel Awards by visiting www.worldtravelawards.com.
About World Travel Awards World Travel Awards celebrates its 23rd anniversary this year and is acknowledged across the globe as the ultimate travel accolade. Attended by senior executives from major travel companies, operators, destinations, WTA events are universally respected as providing established, top level networking opportunities, regionally and globally. The brand aims to celebrate those organizations who push the boundaries of industry excellence.
