Best Western Hotels & Resorts goes all-in on AWS

Best Western Hotels & Resorts will migrate all of its business-critical applications to AWS, including its hotel reservation system, customer reward platform, and global contact centres, with plans to complete the migration of these applications from its existing data centres by the end of 2020.

Best Western is leveraging the breadth and depth of AWS services, including analytics, machine learning, database, computing, and storage, as well as the expertise of AWS Professional Services, to accelerate the pace of innovation and improve operational efficiency for its member-owners that independently own and operate its hotel properties.

As part of its move to the cloud, Best Western Hotels & Resorts is migrating its hotel reservation systems off legacy databases to Amazon Aurora (for its primary database needs) and Amazon Redshift (for data warehousing) to increase capacity and enable the faster processing of hotel reservations around the world, enabling the company to scale during peak travel booking periods.

The hotel brand is planning to use Amazon Connect, a cloud-based contact centre service, to better serve customers around the globe who need booking support, along with AWS machine learning services, such as Amazon Transcribe and Amazon Comprehend, to convert speech to text and uncover insights to deliver more personalised customer experiences for guests.

Working with AWS, Best Western is identifying additional ways to use analytics and machine learning services across its entire business. For example, they plan to use Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service to build, train, and deploy ML models, and Amazon Forecast, a fully managed service that uses machine learning to deliver highly accurate forecasts, to uncover key trends and guest booking patterns in order to offer more personalised recommendations to the nearly 40 million members of its Best Western Rewards loyalty programme.

“In recent years, we have embarked on a digital transformation that is designed to delight our guests, develop agile ways of working, and create new value for guests, hotel owners, and employees,” said Greg Adams, senior vice president and chief digital officer for Best Western Hotels & Resorts. “With its unmatched portfolio of services, AWS is a natural fit for Best Western's move to the cloud, as we focus on improving processes, driving better business results for our member-owners, and delivering even greater value to travellers around the world.”

Mike Clayville, vice president, Worldwide Commercial Sales at AWS, added that, “Going all-in on AWS will accelerate their digital transformation, delivering scalability, agility, and the ability to innovate more quickly than ever before. We are thrilled to enable Best Western Hotels & Resorts in the next phase in their journey of providing new and quality services to guests around the world.”

Best Western Hotels & Resorts, headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, is a privately-held hotel brand within the BWH Hotel GroupSM global network. It has 17 brands and approximately 4,700 hotels in over 100 countries and territories worldwide. In Vietnam, it has been expanding dynamically with Best Western Premier Hotel Sonasea Phu Quoc already opened, and more and more projects scheduled for opening, in Quang Binh, Hanoi, Nha Trang, and Cam Ranh.

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