Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Pegasus has a mission - Michael Kistner is the new CEO and RezView NextGen is the Product

News out today that Pegasus has a new CEO with the promotion of Michael Kistner (previously COO). He takes over from John Davis. The press release links the transition to the launch of the RezView NextGen reservation system. I had a chance to speak to Mike on Feb 18 this year about the impending launch of the Next Gen System.

During the interview he was very passionate about the product. Stressed the time and effort it took to integrate the acquired GuestClick (who provided the basis for the new technology), mapping the new technology to each of the interfaces supported by Pegs to commencing the sale cycle to technology wary and tired hoteliers. I did not get the feeling that he was betting the company on this product but almost.

The piece that all of us are looking forward to the most (Pegasus, hotelier sand distribution companies) is the rate refreshing improvements that will hopefully eliminate the need for a cache or at least dramatically increased accuracy in the cache. Kistner told me that the company is determined through this to protect itself and the reservations systems of the hotels/chains from the dramatically increasing numbers of searches coming out of the meta-search companies. Look to books as high as 500,000 to 1. Staggering numbers.

The part that is the biggest challenge is that Kistner committed in our interview to have RezView NexGen fully rolled out within a year and a half. This means closing down the old product toward the end of the year. Big tech roll out job, big sales job and big expectations from the industry. The Pegasus Board is backing him to do it.

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