The three properties – the luxurious 207-room Vineyard Hotel and Spa in Cape Town, 106-room Townhouse Hotel in Cape Town and South Africa's oldest hotel – the luxury, boutique 38-room D'Ouwe Werf hotel at Stellenbosch, built in 1802 – have implemented SiteMinder's Channel Manager to not only to distribute their rooms to online booking sites but also integrate two-way to their Opera PMSs and take rate recommendations from their IDeaS Revenue Management Systems (RMS). Completing this new, full integration suite is SiteMinder's commission-free booking engine, TheBookingButton, which takes direct bookings from each of the three hotels' websites.

SiteMinder's General Manager for South Africa, Lisa Horne, said that in a climate of increased online bookings and competition, the path taken by the three hotels is a route hotels are now increasingly seeking to increase revenue and streamline business efficiency.

"Vineyard's use of our full suite of distribution tools is another milestone for SiteMinder in our expansion as one of the world's leading hotel distributors," Ms Horne said. "By capitalising on all our distribution products, the Vineyard Hotel and Spa is now completely automated in the way it reaches out to online markets and has therefore has placed itself in the best possible position to increase revenue and cut costs and labour time."

The Group Revenue Manager for the Vineyard, Townhouse and D'Ouwe Werf hotels, Theresa Prins, said: "We saw roughly a 25 per cent revenue increase across the board after we introduced SiteMinder's Channel Manager and TheBookingButton. We have now taken our distribution to the next level by integrating Opera and the IDeaS RMS with SiteMinder and the result is a seamless and totally automated online distribution system that runs like clockwork and saves our reservation team hours of labour."

The Managing Director of IDeaS for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Fabian Specht, said: "The new integration of SiteMinder's Channel Manager and our IDeaS RMS offers our joint clients like these 3 properties in South Africa increased online exposure and an improvement in business efficiency. This streamlined, automated integration results in faster and more extensive rate distribution and improved rate optimisation.

"We are very excited to see the Vineyard implement this new integration which will release them from the daily task of updating their online channels and allow them to focus on strategic initiatives to optimise the hotel's revenue potential," Mr Specht said.