The right image for everyone - over 90 hotels worldwide use the cavok DAM system
A corporate group with worldwide marketing needs a central database for its images and media assets. This is no different at Deutsche Hospitality, which was still known as the Steigenberger Hotel Group until 2016. The digital asset management system cavok is used at the head office in Frankfurt. It is used by internal marketing employees from more than a hundred hotels on three continents, as well as by online tour operators, booking portals and journalists.
A company with tradition on an international growth trajectory
Image database on three continents
When the group was looking for an image database, the modern digital asset management system cavok stood out. "We quickly made the decision to go with cavok," explains Nicole Hennig, Corporate Marketing Manager at the Deutsche Hospitality head office in Frankfurt. The DAM system was so impressive that more than 100 group hotels can access it from three different continents. "It allows almost 1,000 users to use more than 15,000 images from our database," says Hennig.
The flexible DAM system cavok
Darmstadt-based PEAK-14 GmbH is the manufacturer of cavok. A big advantage of their DAM system is than it can be deeply integrated into other software solutions. Whether this is layout programmes, web shops or content management systems. This is possible due to cavok's special architecture: the system is based on a SOAP server (simple object access protocol), as an intentionally streamlined core. A layer of functional open source modules is connected to this, making them particularly easy to connect to other business applications in a company. This means that cavok has the ability to adapt and integrate, which is hard to find in DAM solutions.
Internal and external users
The Deutsche Hospitality image database is not just used internally, but externally too. "We work with the image database in Marketing in head office, but colleagues from our hotels all around the world also access the images," explains Nicole Hennig, "and the same applies to our external agencies and journalists." cavok is made accessible through a very differentiated rights and role concept, which regulates the access and editing options in detail. There are even different right levels for internal users. "There are administrators, then colleagues with access to all of our business divisions, those who, for example, only have access to Steigenberger Hotels and Resorts and those who only have access to images relating to their hotel," says Hennig. For external users, like OTAs or specialised journaists, database access is not usually limited in terms of scope, but it is time-limited - usually to one year. Rights can also be restricted so that they are only valid for images of one of the four Deutsche Hospitality brands, for defined countries or for certain regions, like the Rhine-Main region. If a journalist downloads images or logos they need for their medium, they are also provided with the corresponding copyright notices.
Localised creation of advertising material
For Deutsche Hospitality, it's a key requirement for hotels around the world to be able to create their own flyers. That's why a central web-to-print system is also used in Frankfurt, which hotels around the world can use to create and localise seasonal flyers using various templates. "Local colleagues can therefore create their flyers, add text and use images from cavok," explains Hennig. "So as an example, colours can be changed for printing - RGB automatically becomes CMYK."
Expertise for the system landscape
"The cavok experts were basically our heroes when it came to changing our image database."
Nicole Henning
Hennig finds working with PEAK-14 a very positive experience: "The cavok experts were basically our heroes when it came to changing our image database. The support is really great, the team works quickly and professionally, and they have a tremendous amount of expertise with respect to our entire system landscape," says Hennig. It's also a big plus that PEAK-14 is able to understand the specific requirements of the hotel industry. "Even now, with the upcoming upgrade to the new version of cavok - version 4.1 - we sat down and came up with new ideas."
Upgrade to the new version 4.1
"One of the highlights of the new version is the convenient search function." In cavok 4.1, a media as-set search can be run using categories. This makes searching as convenient as in an online shop, where you simply put in the required colour or size so only the relevant products are shown. For users with different roles, customised search interfaces with spe-cific search categories can also be created.
From DAM system to CI portal
Currently, Deutsche Hospitality is also expanding the option to localise marketing material. This is an important factor, especially for the expansion trajectory of Steigenberger Hotels and Resorts. Whilst templates in the web-to-print system have to date only been adaptable in certain defined areas, the future DAM system will include templates that can be comprehensively adapted. All standard materi-als that a new Steigenberger hotel needs as basic tools, are then directly available in cavok as open Adobe InDesign templates. In other words: the DAM system then also becomes a CI portal.
Here you can find the complete reference report as a PDF: