New York, NY – October 3, 2016 – The people have spoken, and HeBS Digital is honored to announce that their innovative smartCMS® website technology has received the World Travel Award for North America's Leading Travel Merchandising Solution Provider 2016. This recognition designates HeBS Digital as creators of one of the most innovative website technology platforms in the world, and a leader in hospitality digital marketing technology.

World Travel Awards (WTA) was established in 1993 to seek out and reward the very best travel organizations in the world – those brands pushing the boundaries of excellence and implementing ground-breaking ideas. Winners are determined through a voting process carried out by customers and peers.

Powering some of the most innovative hotel websites in the industry, the smartCMS® website technology supports both single property websites (from select-service vanity websites to complex full-service hotels, resorts and casinos) and multi-property, brand and multi-brand websites. Now in its seventh generation, v7, the first generation of the smartCMS® was first developed by HeBS Digital in 2002.

The smartCMS® is a cloud-based website technology platform with one seamless dashboard that gives hoteliers full control over their websites and direct online channel streams. Capabilities include:

  • Full support of responsive website design and ability to add multiple design, page layouts and website design themes to update the look-and-feel of the hotel website or content sections at the click of a button.
  • Full content control (visual, promotional, textual) and ability to create unlimited content, landing and promotional pages, new content sections, and change the navigation of the site on the fly.
  • Ability to add new properties to multi-property and brand websites with automatic addition of the new property in drop-down and search menus, reservation widgets and site maps.
  • Hospitality-specific functionalities to drive direct bookings including:
    • Smart Personalization Engine enabling real-time automated targeting with dynamic promotions to website visitors based on feeder market origin, language preference, previous website behavior, booking history, loyalty program affiliation, etc. to achieve true one-to-one marketing
    • Advanced Merchandising Module to convert lookers into bookers with automated time-based Special Offers publishing: assign “publish” and “un-publish” times and dates to special offers, packages and promotions to automatically appear and disappear from the site
    • Rooms Showcase Module to display accommodations in an eye-catching format and boost upsells
    • Reservation Recovery Application Suite to win back abandoned bookings
    • Smart Booking Widget to provide a user-friendly and conversion-focused reservations process
    • Multi-language CMS Module, featuring unlimited foreign languages utilizing a centralized image library and digital asset manager
    • Full compliance with the latest SEO best practices, including rich snippets, canonical programming and Schema.org implementation support
    • Loyalty Program Module, interfaced with ORACLE/MICROS OCIS (Opera Customer Information System) or CRM technology-based loyalty programs (Ex. Serenata CRM)
    • Groups Pages Module: create unlimited private group landing pages, tie pages with a specific group block code and stay date restrictions
    • Much more

“We are honored to receive this recognition for the smartCMS® website technology,” said Max Starkov, President & CEO of HeBS Digital. “When creating the smartCMS®, we set out to create a technology solution that is tailored to the customized needs of the hotelier, and included unique features and functionalities that are essential in customer engagement, driving direct bookings and selling the hotel experience. Without the right technology powering the hotel website, hoteliers not only fail to engage, retain and acquire past and future guests, but seriously jeopardize direct revenue in this time of flattening occupancy rates and increased distribution costs. The real long term cost of choosing the wrong CMS for the hotel website is a dramatic increase in OTA dependency, higher distribution costs and lower revenues and customer engagement.”

The smartCMS® website technology has also been nominated for the World’s Leading Travel Merchandizing Provider. Please cast your vote for the smartCMS® by clicking here.