Today Cendyn announces the launch of a new brand, look and feel and packaging of our solutions and product suite. Visit the new Cendyn.com. We sat down in a Q&A with our President & CEO Charles Deyo to talk about the changes at Cendyn and his outlook for the year ahead.Ê
Give us some background on the decision to rebrand Cendyn.
It’s not surprising that our new brand launches on Cendyn’s 20th anniversary. It celebrates our evolution from a start-up to a more mature company without losing sight of who we are and the achievements we’ve made developing innovative technology solutions for the hospitality industry. At this turning point, we wanted to unify our solutions and bring clarity to how we talk about our products.
Tell us about the new Cendyn clouds.
We now have three sets of clouds, the Marketing Cloud, the Sales Cloud and the Events Cloud, coming together under the umbrella of our main Cendyn Hospitality Cloud. The unifying theme continues to be driving sales and marketing performance for hotels and planners.
Is the Cendyn team growing?
Yes, we’ve expanded our team across all departments, focusing on recruiting the best talent and subject matter expects in the industry to join the Cendyn family. Last year, we hired three key executives to support this effort, Bryan Happ as chief financial officer, Michael Bennett as senior vice president global marketing and business development, and David Kidd as vice president of product management.
For 2017, Cendyn will be even more aggressive in acquiring talents with strong hospitality background, while bolstering our efforts to retain and develop our current staff and keep them engaged and happy. It’s the people that turned Cendyn into what it is today, so we want to ensure we take care of them.
What investments in infrastructure has Cendyn made?
We opened new offices in Whistler, B.C., London and Singapore, adding to our other locations in Atlanta, Boca Raton, Boston, San Diego and Toronto. To better serve our Asia-Pacific clients, we expanded our global cloud-based data network to Singapore.
Tell us about some important milestones from 2016 that are driving the agenda forward in 2017?
2016 was an amazing year for the company. We closed our first investment partnership with Accel-KKR. This partnership positions us to capitalize on the growth opportunities in the market and to accelerate product innovation. We acquired Guestfolio Communications, which is a leading provider of CRM solutions for boutique hotels. We will add these products into our hotel Marketing Cloud solution set, giving us more ways to service our customers.
What are you most excited about for the year ahead?
Product innovation is always an important part of our DNA here at Cendyn. In 2017, we will have some fantastic new products in the market place that will continue our quest to support hotels in achieving higher engagement throughout the traveler life cycle. Keep your eyes open for announcements in the coming months.
