Hastings Hotels Revisited
Luxury Hotel Group Builds on Digital Transformation with Percipient Cloud Connect
API-led integration tool Percipient Cloud Connect delivers comprehensive insights and instils greater intelligence for Hastings Hotels, a Northern Ireland-based hospitality company.
Hastings Hotels is Northern Ireland’s leading luxury hotel collection, operating a portfolio of renowned properties across the region. As the business evolved, it needed a finance platform that could deliver greater agility, deeper operational insight, and more efficient reporting.
Working with Percipient, Hastings Hotels leveraged Sage Intacct to modernise financial management, automate key processes and provide timely, accurate data to decision-makers, helping the organisation respond more effectively to changing business demands and support long-term growth.
About Hastings Hotels
Hastings Hotels, Northern Ireland’s premier hotel group, comprises six luxurious hotels of character and distinction, each set in key locations across Northern Ireland. These include the five-star Culloden Estate and Spa, the world-famous Europa Hotel, the four-star Stormont Hotel, and Northern Ireland’s largest hotel, the Grand Central Hotel—all situated within Belfast.
The Group also owns the four-star Everglades Hotel in Derry-Londonderry, Northern Ireland’s second city, and the historic Ballygally Castle on the stunning Antrim coast, a short drive from the Giant’s Causeway. Each of the six properties sits amid breathtaking scenery, letting guests discover the true meaning of Irish hospitality through luxurious accommodation, gourmet dining, world-class spa facilities, and idyllic surroundings.
Meeting Digital Transformation Goals
After deploying Sage Intacct in 2020, Hastings Hotels set goals to fully integrate the platform with Procurement, Property Management, HR & Payroll, Time & Attendance, and Recruitment systems.
“We operate a diverse portfolio of hotels – from city-based venues to country retreats, with spas, world-famous golf courses and scenery, and unique hospitality experiences all designed to meet the demands of our guests. Full visibility of our operations in ensuring our proposition meets the high standards we set ourselves is therefore paramount,” comments Peter Gibson, Finance Director, Hastings Hotels. “We migrated away from our previous system to achieve precisely that, and since going live with Sage Intacct, have benefitted from access to accurate, in-depth and comprehensive management information to enable faster, more informed decision-making within the business.”
The breadth, depth, and cohesiveness of insights were initially confined to finance, except for integration with Hastings’ procurement system, Procure Wizard. However, several years on, Hastings leveraged the API-led integration capabilities in Percipient’s Cloud Connect tool to fully integrate the hotel company’s property management system (PMS), as Peter explains:
“This level of integration across all of our key systems has brought huge benefits. The integration of the HR and payroll tools, in particular, has given us immense granularity in how we slice and dice our wage bill, a value that can’t be overstated in a business where remuneration is the highest cost. As the rise to the minimum wage and increases to national insurance (NI) take hold, Hastings’ team must dynamically manage their impact.
“The fact that General Managers (GMs) can view wage bills in detail, in real-time, means they can exercise greater control over budgets and costs. They can view details by hotel or department and identify trends and anomalies across food and beverage, housekeeping, spa services, and customer service. Crucially, this is done easily via dashboards to bring autonomy and intelligence to their planning.”
With powerful integrations underpinned by Percipient Cloud Connect consolidating Hastings’ digital transformation roll-out, data quality and the level of analysis available elevate how business planning works.
Real-time access to insights means Hastings can be proactive in mitigating risks or cost leaks and in seizing opportunities before they become obsolete. Both represent significant USPs in an industry characterised by substantial variability and fluctuating market dynamics.
Five years on from deploying Sage Intacct, it really does represent the central hub and intelligence source for the business. Our General Managers love it because it gives them the tools to do their jobs more effectively. And as a finance department, we spend less time gathering data and more time considering what to do with the data to serve the business better.
An Intelligent Financial Future
“Five years on from deploying Sage Intacct, it really does represent the central hub and intelligence source for the business,” explains Peter. “Our General Managers love it because it gives them the tools to do their jobs more effectively. And as a finance department, we spend less time gathering data and more time considering what to do with the data to serve the business better.”
One area where this evolution has been formalised is via Hastings’ hotel controllers. The group’s finance resource previously focused mainly on transaction processing and reporting key data, but Sage Intacct’s autonomy has shifted this role to a more business-centric focus through dedicated hotel controllers.
“We now have substantially improved visibility of more in-depth, higher quality information from across the business,” Peter concludes. “The availability of these insights on an intuitive dashboard means that GMs have up-to-date information from which to perform their role to the best of their abilities.
“The fact that data is more meaningful and relevant to employees across the organisation ultimately means better decision-making based on sharper insights and instils the agility to make decisions quickly.”
The Percipient Value
“Our bi-monthly calls with the Percipient team now represent more of a catch-up than a discussion of any issues, which is a testament to the success of our Sage Intacct deployment and the subsequent smooth integrations that followed.
“We have experienced very few problems, and whenever we encounter a hiccup, the team is there to support us. We’re fortunate that our post-pandemic trading has been really positive, and supported by Sage Intacct, Cloud Connect, and the Percipient team, we’re confident that we’ll continue to build on this in the years ahead.”
To learn more about Sage Intacct, or our work with Hastings Hotels, contact us today or call 01606 871332.