Kees Lek

In 1987 Kees started as night manager in a small hotel in Amsterdam. Fascinated by the possibilities of automation began there where a night work was verified in minutes work by a colleague who brought a PC from home for that purpose. Until 1999 he worked in many operational departments in hotels. As Front Office manager, House-keeping manager, Rooms Division manager and Operations manager. In all of these positions he used automation to improve efficiency and increase guest satisfaction but also to make more profit with smarter pricing and upselling. In 2000 he just started building a Multi Property setup for Golden Tulip when they were bought by NH Hotels who ‘already had that’ and asked him to implement their property management system (PMS) in all newly purchased hotels to feed their central reservations system (CRS). Both the PMS as the CRS were developed ‘in-house’. About 100+ installations later he and the team he worked with were ‘the IT department’ and he lead that as Director of Information Technology. Working on improving the programs, fixing the bugs and dealing with requests and questions. In 2014 he joined StayNTouch. A company founded by people who came from market leader Opera and ‘wanted to do that better’. Allowing users to check-in and check-out without intensive training. Enabling customers to checkin on-line and Hotels to facilitate on premises self service kiosks without high investments.