Microsoft .NET stars in hotel rating system

• AAAT uses Pocket PC to eliminate paperwork
• .NET solution provides platform for new opportunities
• Assessors’ productivity doubled

AAA Tourism’s assessors inspect more than 14,000 hotels, motels and other accommodation houses annually to give each property a star rating on behalf of Australia’s automobile clubs.

A .NET-based mobile solution developed by Huon Associates has freed the 20 assessors from having to use paper forms, dramatically increasing the accuracy of scoring and eliminating the need for manual transcription.

The Pocket PC user interface simplifies data entry during the inspections, which must address 500 aspects of the accommodation. Automatic scoring and immediate access to inspection guidelines also save time enabling assessors to visit more properties in a day, subject to travelling times between locations.

Major savings are also made at the back end. Apart from eliminating data entry from paper forms, the increased accuracy reduces the need for management oversight and auditing, “and the saving on our printing bill is enormous,” says AAAT’s general manager, operations, Wayne Peters.

The project was piloted on Windows CE. But given that .NET became available around the time the go-ahead was received, Huon chose to move to the new environment.“ .NET gave us many benefits,” says managing director Andrew Bennett. “Many of the standard .NET controls were really valuable to us, replacing the custom programming we had done under Windows CE.” The potential for deployment on a wider range of devices was among the other advantages.

“The whole project involved six months’ work for three developers and one database specialist, even though only one had .NET experience. If .NET had been available right from the start, it would have saved a month,” he says. “The real benefits will come from the long-term deployment and maintenance savings we will make.”

The system was developed using Visual Basic .NET and Microsoft SQL for CE. Other Microsoft products used were: Pocket PC (including Microsoft .NET Compact Framework), Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

Huon had previously created the back-office system to manage the rating information and integrated it with member organisations’ websites. The assessors’ mobile system synchronises automatically with this database.

Peters says the project paid for itself in nine months thanks to the back-office resource savings. The switch also makes it easier to alter the details of the star rating scheme without worrying about the cost of wasted forms. In any case, “a series of small changes is a lot more acceptable to the industry than widely spaced wholesale changes,” he says.

“The flexibility of this system will help us take advantage of other commercial opportunities for field data collection. It also opens the possibility of licensing the system to other organisations with similar requirements,” adds Peters.

Further developments are under way, including making the information available via Web Services so that other organisations that list accommodation can be sure they have the latest star rating for any property. Other possibilities include the use of geocoding (relating addresses and geographical coordinates to display a location on a map) and digital photography.