House of Travel (MIS100 2012)

Last year, the Christchurch earthquakes displaced 130 House of Travel (HOT) employees from the company’s Oxford Terrace headquarters. The ICT team, led by CIO David Veronese, supported and managed those displaced through the building of a new headquarters at the Christchurch Airport, with all systems and call centres operational at the new location in early July 2011.

The move to hosted infrastructure though Revera in 2009 “was invaluable, as we didn’t have to worry about infrastructure, recovery or keeping systems running — only assisting our people in Christchurch and finding new offices,” says Veronese.

In 2011 the final stages of a major migration for wholesale land search and reservation systems was completed, as well as a focus on corporate (Orbit Travel). This included the migration to a new customer online booking tool, along with the replacement of the FMIS system with Microsoft NAV. Rounding out 2011 was the migration to a new mid office system which, except for HOT’s global distribution system for air product, means the organisation has replaced or will replace every tool, system and process in the business.

“For 2012, we are focused on creating a competitive advantage through technology. Key projects involve major system upgrades for our Australian wholesale business to the same systems as New Zealand,” explains Veronese. “We are also developing a new online corporate reporting system inhouse, that leverages our EDW and the new systems installed in 2011 and deploying our new mid office system (deployed to corporate in 2011) to retail.”

2012/13 plans include an upgrade to cloud email systems for Australia and New Zealand, and a group PC refresh in 2013.