Libra International, the leading provider of information technology for the hospitality industry in Russia, held its annual seminar on 24th of March 2005. It has become a good tradition to invite Russian hoteliers to the spacious conference rooms of the World Trade Center in Moscow to discuss what is new in hotel technology automation.

Same as last year the seminar was very popular and attended by many specialists from different Russian cities and regions. Among the participants were hotel IT directors, general managers, sales & marketing managers and financial controllers. This event was especially popular among representatives from national hotel management companies, many of which build their business strategies using epitome Enterprise Solutions.

Key-speakers focused their presentations on the most current issues facing hotel industry today and how hotel technology helps hoteliers to supports these new trends. Among the most interesting trends affecting hospitality industry today are how to expand and manage the online distribution channels, understand the customer and deliver personalized experiences, strengthen brand value, build self-service, grow the revenue picture and plan for the future.

Special guest invited to speak at the seminar was Brian Bowerfind, Vice-president of Hotel Information Systems (HIS). Brian spoke about what makes HIS different from other hospitality technology companies. HIS enables you to leverage your current IT investments with solutions on multiple platforms providing timely operational information and the tools to act on that knowledge. HIS epitome Enterprise Solutions provides global hotel organizations the tools to increase operational efficiency, improve guest loyalty, maximize yield, centralize processes and ultimately, increase profitability. Next generation IT solutions will be fully internet native. Written in . net and Java the first commercial release for epitome PMS is expected at the end of June 2005.

This year's other speakers included IT director, Sergey Fomin and Commercial Director, Elena Marchenko from Heliopark Hotel Management. Elena spoke about the current structure of the this young, but very dynamic hotel group, how they take on the management of new hotels, provide central reservation and consulting services, while Sergey? s presentation focused on current technology platform that supports management of regionally distributed hotel network.

Vladimir Chernyshov, IT Director of Moscow's Savoy hotel which is currently under reconstruction presented an overview of IT solutions currently being planned and soon to be implemented for Savoy.

Live demonstration of the whole range of epitome Enterprise Solutions followed the presentations. Hoteliers spent time with Libra's product managers and saw detailed demonstrations of epitome PMS, epitome POS, epitome Web Res, Management Console and epitome Business Intelligence range of products.

«What makes an IT company successful these days are systems integration, solutions available for demand chain management, multiple deployment and integrations options as well as enterprise wide applications. We are very glad to see that HIS is leading the way here», says Nikolai Balba, Managing Director of Libra International.

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