New Podcast: Umi & a Cup of Tea |LISTEN NOW

Tech & Trends

Supercharge Revinate with Contacts API

15 February 2021

By:

Introduction and Benefits

Revinate is an industry-leading CRM system for hotels and hospitality. It draws its competitive advantage from excellent segmentation and deep integrations with PMS. This ensures up-to-date information for each guest is used for effective segmentation, targeting, and positioning of the hotel’s marketing strategy. The ultimate goal for hotels is to have a single guest view and deep PMS integration is pretty much the only way to have this at the moment.

To an increasing extent, hotels now are putting significant focus on making better use of other revenue streams that need to be amalgamated into the marketing approach. This creates a data integration challenges due to the fact that most additional tools used for F&B, Spa, Weddings, etc use systems far removed from the PMS. There are certainly exceptions but generally, they are not conducive to a single guest view out the box. A simple example might be reservations made on ResDiary not going against a particular hotel guest.

To truly get the most from ALL revenue streams, we need to upsell and cross-sell across the wider brand so it is essential that we have the most up-to-date guest data across the business as a whole, not just in each revenue silo.

The Revinate API

Fortunately, Revinate has made it possible to programmatically interact with contact lists via their API which opens up a wealth of possibilities for third-party integration and data upload. Umi Digital has been working exclusively with hospitality technology for over 10 years and has created an efficient and reliable process for leveraging this API to enhance the power of Revinate.

By crafting some bespoke middleware for a number of different third-party software providers we are able to act as the glue to bond two separate services and take away the laborious integration task that you may incur should you wish to take this on yourself.

How does it work?

Our integration solutions take an input (either dynamically or by checking at specific times for new data, i.e. polling), formats and validates the data, and then sends the information to the correct list within your Revinate account.

How much does it cost?

Umi has a number of different solutions that are already pre-configured which allow you get up and running very quickly. This includes any webhook subscription integrations, WordPress, contact forms, ResDiary, TAC, and a number of others.

As these are already built and ready to go, we are able to switch these integrations on in a matter of days following some basic configuration and collaboration. For each solution we will request specific details from you such as logins or API keys for different services so that we are able to complete the setup.

With regard to integrations that are not already built or need to be tailored, we would be delighted to still help. While this might not have been implemented yet, our middleware solution is highly flexible and it is very likely that we will be able to create a new input source. Pricing is available upon discussion and evaluation of the new software’s integration policy and API capabilities.

How do I start?

This can be done either through your Revinate account manager or through Umi. We will introduce the integration solution to you and pass you over to an Umi representative once it has been deemed a suitable option. Your Umi account manager will subsequently provide you with an onboarding checklist for your chosen integration or alternatively schedule a further discussion with the technical team should it be a custom integration.

Under the hood

To achieve, this Umi Digital leverages AWS infrastructure by combining two key services from AWS,  API gateway, and Lambda serverless functions. This offers a replicable and scalable integration solution for each platform and also ensures we never store any of the data to be compliant with GDPR.

The data validation is seamlessly handled through a combination of template mapping in API Gateway, with further checks being performed by the Lambda function as the data is structured further (when out of scope in API Gateway). Environmental variables are used for different API keys with added security added to both internal and external communications.

Wrapping Up

A connected tech stack will always perform better than a disconnected one and that is a core driver of our tech decisions at Umi. While we are not a SaaS solution ourselves, we have the luxurious position to be able to cherry-pick and integrate with the very best solutions on the market to give them even more power. Umi means ocean in Japanese. The ocean is the connector of worlds and while this ethos started out for us as using the internet to connect people and cultures, we see that very same ethos being used between programs and will remain at the core of our tech approach well into the future. If you have any questions about this or wish to learn more, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Get in touch with an expert

Ready to chat?

Book in a 30 minute meeting with one of our experts to discuss your project or goals.