Wyndham International: Fostering High-Touch with High-Tech

Wyndham International: Fostering High-Touch with High-Tech

The Wyndham Hotel Corporation was founded in 1981 by Trammell Crow in Dallas, Tx. Its first hotel was opened in 1982 and by 1985 they had successfully held 14 upscale properties in their portfolio. Wyndham continued to grow throughout the years until in 1997 they agreed to be acquired by Patriot American Hospitality Inc., under a Real Estate Investment Trust or REIT. After the acquisition, they began an aggressive campaign to purchase several smaller companies to increase their holdings. Some of those companies included Williams Hospitality, Carefree Hospitality, and Summerfield Suites. Due to these major acquisitions, Wyndham experience an eruption in growth and profit, but that would become short lived. The REIT structure was going under increased pressure federal regulators as well as several of Wyndham’s competitors. They claimed that under the REIT structure, companies were receiving an unfair advantage over premiums for both lodging properties and real estate. In light of this information, their stock value began to decrease significantly and had lost over 80% of its value. For several years Wyndham struggled to pay down its debt and was forced to lose it REIT status and turn into a C-Corporation under the new title Wyndham International Corporation. The next several years involved major changes and IT incorporation in a process to restructure the company.

Lodging Industry – Franchising & Information Technology (IT) Structure

After the consolidation and reduction in real estate size, Wyndham International began to franchise its business. With that came all the connections that Wyndham had, but it was also seen as a dirty word. Companies had now become more customer focused with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) at their core. When it came to profits, they got all that they wanted, but when it came to quality it was lacking. The companies had to take that into account and then decide what was more important to them. Wyndham International would later discover a way to have both.

When it came to IT, things really got out of hand. There was no clear path as to how money would be spent on it. IT was responsible for handling almost all of the transactions needed for the hotel. Things such as occupancy, check in/out, product inventory were all part of the IT infrastructure and there were several different configurations of hard/soft-ware, platforms and interfaces.