Choice Hotels International Inc. has closed its last data center, making it the first hotel company to migrate its entire system infrastructure to the cloud.
Now fully on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the move to the cloud enables Choice to respond to real-time market conditions and provides the company with a flexible, resilient and scalable platform that benefits owners and operators within the Choice system, the company reports. Being on the cloud enables the company to update its hotel-facing operations and management tools more efficiently and more completely layer in the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other cloud technologies to help hotel owners drive profitability and enhance the guest experience.
“By moving all of our systems to the cloud, we’re ensuring that our franchisees have up-to-the-minute access to the latest innovations, saving time and money while providing industry-leading distribution and digital systems throughout the competitive hotel booking journey,” said Brian Kirkland, chief information officer, Choice.
The migration concludes a five-year process and is a key component of Choice’s long-term technology roadmap and involved decommissioning more than 3,729 servers, with more than 300 applications retired and more than 250 applications migrated, the company reports.
“Choice Hotels leaned in big and early on the cloud, which helped them innovate, scale, pivot and become a more sustainable business over the last five years,” said Matt Garman, SVP, sales, marketing and global services, AWS. “The hotel company has a cloud-first mindset that permeates every part of their business from improved operations to extraordinary customer service, and we’re excited to see what they do next.”
Choice’s work with AWS began in 2015 with the creation of a cloud-based central reservation system (CRS), choiceEDGE. At the time, it was the industry’s first new CRS from a hotel company in more than 30 years.
“Choice operates at the intersection of hospitality, franchising, and technology, and we are thrilled to leverage our cloud-first infrastructure,” said Jason Simpson, VP, cloud engineering, Choice. “AWS Cloud was key for us in completing the digital integration of Radisson in record time as well as increasing traffic and booking revenue across our platforms.”
