South African hotels are moving to Google Workspace to reduce overheads, improve internal communications and reduce admin time so staff can focus on improving customer experience.

This is according to Wilhelm Dubber, director of Rand Data Systems, an IT infrastructure specialist focusing on the hospitality industry.

Rand Data Systems, which has served as a trusted one-stop technology shop for hotels for 44 years, sees a strong shift to Google Workspace for enhanced efficiency and security, Dubber says.

“In the past year or two, we have seen growing interest from hotels to move to the cloud. This is largely due to the costs and complexity associated with legacy systems, a greater focus on data security and a need for more operational efficiency,” Dubber says.

As a Digicloud Africa Google Cloud partner, Rand Data Systems has been helping clients of all sizes migrate to Google and optimise operations using Google Workspace. The move has been transformational for them, he says.

“Hotels are supposed to have a human touch, but when they depend on legacy systems, staff spend too much time closed in their offices preparing schedules and writing reports and e-mails. Google Workspace with Gemini AI takes on those time-consuming tasks and frees up time, so staff can become more mobile and interact with guests more.”

Stepping up resilience

Dubber says moving away from on-premises legacy systems to Google has allowed his clients to modernise their operations and boost resilience, while reducing costs.

He notes that hotels are increasingly under attack by cybercriminals, making security a top priority. In addition, cyber resilience is crucial because a system failure could bring operations, checkouts and billing to a halt.

“If a server crashes late at night, staff would lose access to important schedules and documents, their recipes, operation manuals, and night audit reports. The hotel can’t do the rollovers, so the next morning when the staff come in, none of the accounts is set up correctly for the guests. There can be a huge financial impact due to a system going down,” he says.

“Hotels running legacy systems generally have only one server, which means they have little redundancy. Another challenge is they tend to have a lot of disparate data stored on staff laptops, which creates security risks and means management does not have full visibility over the environment. These factors also increase risk.

“When hotels move to Google, everything syncs to the cloud and is integrated automatically. They don’t have to worry about a server going down and leaving them unable to function, and they can recover quickly if a device is lost or broken. Data and e-mails are fully secured in the Google Cloud, with two-factor authentication and all the additional security Google brings in,” Dubber says.

He notes that Google also allows hotels to go paperless, eliminating the costs and risks associated with scanning and storing copies of guest IDs.

Transformative tools

Most hotels migrating to Google lean heavily on tools such as Gmail, Google Meet, Drive, Tasks, Chat, Docs and Sheets, with many also making use of features such as Meet embedded within Docs and Sheets to discuss queries or collaborate on shared documents. Gemini has been transformative for many of Rand Data Systems’ clients, Dubber says.

He cites the example of a small boutique hotel that did not have budget for a full marketing team, but now uses Gemini to create compelling adverts and social media posts.

“We picked up that the chefs are actually enjoying Gemini AI a lot,” Dubber adds. “They’re using it to check their food costings, expand their menus, run recipes through it and check what meals they can prepare with the ingredients they have available. These used to be tedious manual processes.

“Part of why I am so excited about Google Workspace is that the system makes my clients smile,” Dubber says. “It can take on the tasks that are really a burden for them. One busy client was spending an hour a day on his daily reports: when we showed him how Gemini could do the work for him in under three minutes, he just sat there and started smiling. Now, he isn’t office-bound anymore – he is moving about the hotel engaging with guests and keeping an eye on operations.

“We find that once we’ve trained people and showed them some of the Gemini features and use cases, it’s impressive how quickly they embrace it and find more uses for it,” he says.

About Digicloud Africa
Digicloud Africa is Google’s chosen enablement partner in Africa. Through Digicloud, Google is creating an ecosystem of Google Cloud partners across the continent. Digicloud supports its partner network by providing the necessary training, tools and resources needed to implement cloud solutions and support to their customers successfully. As customer demands for technology intensify, Digicloud is increasing its investment in supporting its partners to achieve sustainable growth. Digicloud’s partner enablement helps organisations build skills around open, advanced technologies to go to market with outcome-based solutions. Find Digicloud Africa on LinkedIn.