“We travel along many pathways each day and many roads around the world that we explore in trying to discover, to learn, to teach."

With these words, Roberto Polito, - founder and President of Baglioni Hotels - explains the driving force of the entrepreneurial spirit that led him in 1973 to found the luxury Made-in-Italy enterprise that is the Baglioni today. It is precisely on this idea of Italian styling that Baglioni Hotels has developed a collection that today counts 9 exclusive hotels, mostly housed within period buildings and in the historic centres of the most notable cities of art. There are five in Italy, three in France and one in the heart of London, with a hotel launched in March 2004 that marked a significant turning point in the chain's design concept. The new London style has contributed to modernising the Brand, proposing a new image with a less formal elegance, yet always being sophisticated in the attention to detail and materials that make all the difference. Today, the Group is managed by the new generation of the family which oversaw the London Hotel project, opening the company up to new international horizons.

Worldwide solution

"The choice fell to Base Digitale Platform because - in addition to offering a solution of undoubted quality - more than any other, it was the company that proved able to interpret the values in which Baglioni has always believed, especially the almost tailor-like attention to the Made in Italy aspect and the strength of the partnership that has been consolidated over time."

The desire to send a strong signal regarding improvement in efficiency within the company led to the establishment of the CRO, a completely new centre in which Customer and Prospect calls coming from all over the world converge and where request for information hailing from the Internet (institutional website and other luxury portals) are also processed. This is a multilingual Contact Centre, where English, French, Russian and Portuguese are spoken, being entirely based on the integration of two Base Digitale Platform-branded products:

• #phones, the contact management platform that employs SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) based VoIP technology (Session Initiation Protocol);
• Revos CRM, the web-based system for the tailored customer relationship management and the collection of resulting data.

Booking centralisation and process optimisation

In 2009, coinciding with a complex economic period, Baglioni Hotels began to sense the need to enact a series of innovations with the aim of optimising the internal business processes: first in line was the bookings that had been managed locally and independently by the individual hotels up until that point. This lead to the need to centralise bookings with a view of improving efficiency and adapting the entire process in line with Baglioni operating standards. “What the company was seeking above all,” explains Alessandro Bruni, CIO of the Group, “was a flexible and reliable technological Partner able to truly understand the company, accompanying it step-by-step along a path of growth that shortly thereafter would lead to establishing the so-called CRO (Central Office Reservation)."

The value of the data 

The adoption of BDP Technology has permitted Baglioni Hotels to have a tool that is not simply configured but actually tailored to its needs, able to guarantee a more direct, immediate and effective monitoring of the booking process, thus being able to exploit the fact that the complete overview of the current reservation at hand is always available. “What’s more, the BDP technology,” continues Bruni, “has the great advantage of being equipped with valid statistical and reporting tools, thanks to which we have been able to tap into a structured set of data on the behaviour of our Customers, which has become an essential starting point for us when making important business decisions. Bruni clarifies, “The choice of Base Digitale Platform cannot be explained only in view of the excellence of its products but also in terms of the relationship that has been created with them. BDP has proven to be an excellent travelling companion, a Partner able to keep pace with us without forcing us to overturn all that had been created up to that point. Thanks to BDPs gradual and highly-reliable approach, it was possible to initiate a process of renewal for the corporate information systems that has allowed us to significantly improve the performance achieved. “The history of the partnership between Baglioni Hotels and Base Digitale Platform shows no signs of waning and continues to be enriched with international innovations, such as the opening of the fabulous resort in Marrakech, an exclusive establishment that will soon be contactable specifically through the CRO service. Spasmodic research into the pursuit of excellence, a flexible and personalised approach, respect for the Made in Italy are the common characteristics of Baglioni Hotels and Base Digitale Platform rendering them the protagonists of a partnership that aims to offer Customers a delightfully unforgettable experience from the outset with the initial telephone booking.