Weston, Fla.� (January 8, 2003) Datavision Technologies, a software solutions firm that specializes in data warehousing and business intelligence systems for the hospitality industry, has added Intrawest Corp., a Vancouver, B.C.-based resort developer and operator, to its growing roster of lodging clients. Datavision is installing its Decisions� Business Intelligence System throughout Intrawest resorts in Canada and the United States. 

�The Decisions� Revenue Management module is just one of Datavision�s data-warehousing products that allow users to expedite the collection and analysis of financial and operational data�all with the goal of boosting hotel property revenues and cutting costs.�

Decisions� captures a wealth of information from the Property Management System on a daily basis�detailed occupancy and revenues as well as future-business-on-the-books data. All this information is consolidated into a central data warehouse and presented to users at individual Intrawest resorts as well as the corporate office. Within minutes, users can slice and dice the data and perform ad-hoc analysis or run canned based reports off the consolidated data.

�To accomplish the same task using only the PMS can take hours,� said Datavision President Sudharshan Chary. �We�ve calculated that hotels spend 20 to 40 hours a week performing this kind of data collection and analysis manually. Our hotel clients that have installed Decisions� can do the same task in minutes.�
Decisions� also allows users, as Chary put it, �to capture how the future looks on a daily basis.� He said the system instantly shows a property�s booking pace for any date in the future, and uses history to automatically forecast occupancy, allowing for manual adjustments.

�With Decisions�, Intrawest will be able to more accurately�and much more quickly� forecast rooms into the future,� Chary said. �And they�ll be able to drill down into the data to capture market-segment and room-type detail, something that would be far too unwieldy a task to do with just the PMS.�

Streamlining information

�We now have all but one of our resorts on the SMS (Springer-Miller Systems) property-management system,� said Dave Hartvigsen, Senior Vice President/Lodging for Intrawest Corp. �We chose the Decisions� Revenue Management module due to its excellent ability to extract key operating information for us from SMS. This technology from Datavision gives us a great window into SMS and creates the opportunity for us to transform new data into information that is highly useful to us.�

The Decisions� module has been successfully installed in six Intrawest properties: Blue Mountain Resort, near Toronto; Stratton Mountain Resort in Vermont; the Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort in Florida; Copper Mountain Resort in Colorado; Panorama Mountain Village in British Columbia west of Calgary; and Tremblant, near Montreal. Plans call for the remaining four Intrawest resorts to be installed by spring. Ultimately, all will be linked up with Intrawest�s corporate headquarters.

Chary said independent hotels and resorts and branded properties alike use Decisions� to extract key information from all production systems at the property, including PMS, point-of-sale, time-and-attendance and payroll systems. The software creates an integrated data warehouse that can be used by all decision makers in the company. Data is delivered to the resorts via standard spreadsheets or via an executive information system. 

�In each case at Blue Mountain, Sandestin and Stratton, we are using the Decisions� module to give us better insight regarding our operating statistics,� Hartvigsen said. �More importantly, it is helping us look at booking pace, which is enabling us to better manage for the future. With the output information being in an Excel format, the spreadsheets that are produced are usable and adaptable by almost any member of our lodging team and at any of our resorts.�

About Datavision Technologies
Datavision Technologies, a privately owned company established in 1996 and based in Weston, Fla., serves more than 50 clients in hotels and resorts across North America. Datavision�s data-warehousing products have successfully been used to achieve a variety of goals, including night audit automation, revenue management, forecasting, marketing, corporate consolidation, payroll control, comment-card reporting, owner reporting and group revenue analysis. For more information, log on to the corporate Web site, www.datavisiontech.com, or contact Sherry Marek at Datavision Technologies Inc., 860 Marina Drive, Weston, FL 33327; phone (954) 385-0525, or e-mail [email protected].

About Intrawest Corp.  
Intrawest Corporation (IDR:NYSE; ITW:TSX) is the leading developer and operator of village-centered resorts across North America. The company owns or controls 10 mountain resorts, including Whistler Blackcomb, North America�s most popular mountain resort. Intrawest also owns Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort in Florida and has a premier vacation ownership business, Club Intrawest. The company has a 45 per cent interest in Alpine Helicopters Ltd., owner of Canadian Mountain Holidays, the largest heli-skiing operation in the world.  Intrawest is headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia and is located on the World Wide Web at www.intrawest.com.