Irish Ferries has signed an agreement with Hogia Ferry Systems to deliver the company’s standard booking system BOOKIT.
Part of the Irish Continental Group, Irish Ferries manages four ropaxes and one high speed ferry currently operating on two routes across the Irish Sea, as well as direct route between Ireland and France.
“We felt from the beginning that Irish Ferries and Hogia would make a good partnership. Obviously for any ferry operator changing their booking systems is no light matter. After what was eventually years of meetings, site visits, demonstrations and the resulting procurement process, we are very confident that we have made the right decision in choosing Hogia and BOOKIT,” said Andrew Sheen, Irish Ferries’ Managing Director of the Ferries Division (pictured, right).
Irish Ferries currently has two separate systems for its passenger and freight operations, which will now be replaced with one complete solution.
Holding the capacity for both passengers and freight in one system should improve capacity management and vastly simplify port operations. BOOKIT also has a fully comprehensive API, which will allow Irish Ferries to integrate any hardware or third-party software, fulfilling both the company’s existing and future needs.
“We run a competitive ferry operation, and by investing in BOOKIT we hope to improve our offerings and customer service. The new system will give us more flexibility, improve holiday packaging, automate our port operations, we will no doubt see improvements for both our customers and staff,” Sheen added.
Niclas Blomstrom, Hogia Ferry Systems Managing Director (pictured, left), said, “We are seeing more and more ferry operators choosing to buy into a standard system to replace their bespoke or in-house solutions.
“A standard system offers the operator continuous product development to keep up with the expectations across the industry, without operators needing to research, scope, develop and maintain that new functionality themselves. The fact that we also have what we believe is the best API on the market, will be invaluable for Irish Ferries during this implementation project, giving them the opportunity to select best of breed components and also to ease the large number of integrations.
“Reaching this point has been a team effort and although we have a period of hard work ahead of us, it is something we are hugely excited and proud to be undertaking,” he said.
The contract was signed in January this year, and routes will be available for passenger bookings by the end of 2020. The passenger side of the operations will be rolled out in phase one, followed by the commercial business in a second phase in 2021.
