Hospitality Connectivity Landscape: Choosing Solutions For Your Hotel

Understanding hospitality trends and having the ability to utilize them in the day-to-day operations of your establishment is a determining skill of the successful hotel manager.

Automating day-to-day tasks is an essential part of achieving guest satisfaction as it helps the hotel manager provide a quality and reliable service, every time. Below you find the latest hotel management software solutions every hotel owner should make use of.
 

Travelopro develops bespoke hotel booking solutions for hoteliers, travel agencies, tour operators, and travel management companies. If your requirement is unique then an off the self-hotel booking software is the right choice for you. Let's have a discussion about your requirement with our experts to get a bespoke online hotel booking solution.

Travelopro online hotel booking solution is best suitable for Individual hotels and groups with a chain of hotels. This is a perfect solution for Hoteliers with a single hotel or chain of hotels, tour operators, and for agents who want to have their own booking system and create their own hotel network using our customizable booking solutions.
 

Hotel Property Management System (PMS) is a platform that enables a hotel or group of hotels to manage numerous operations. It is a system that is used for reservation, availability and occupancy management, check-in/out, report generation, and much more.

They’ve replaced the traditional pen-paper methods that tend to be quite unmanageable. At present, hotel software handles much more than just these traditional processes.

However, they have been extremely useful in automating day to day operations and enhancing the guest experience. At present, hotel PMS are of two types viz. on-premise or legacy-based systems and online or cloud-based systems.

Types Of Hotel PMS

Out of the N number of software available in the industry; we’ll be focusing here on its two major types.

Cloud-Based Hotel PMS

• Cloud-based hotel PMS is next-gen software, that is generally offered on a SaaS (Software as a Service) platform. This allows the operators to access the software from any internet-enabled device or location.
• Cloud or online solutions provide stable output with much less downtime. In comparison to on-premise PMS, cloud-based have fewer installation hassles and IT requirements.

On-Premise Hotel PMS

• On-premise hotel PMS is installed on the desktop and requires a software license for each server and/or end-user. They are generally easier to customize according to one’s specific needs.
• These solutions are supplemented by paying annual maintenance charges (AMC) to ensure the smooth working of the program.

Summarily, both online as well as traditional desktop-based hotel PMS systems, have their fair share of advantages and disadvantages. Think twice and go for the one which perfectly suits your hotel needs and makes your operations easy.

Travelopro's cloud-based Guest Engagement Solution integrates data at the point of customer interaction with back office and loyalty program systems in real-time. The solution delivers detailed customer insight, improved operational efficiency, and personalized interaction that takes customer engagement to the next level.

Central Reservation System (CRS)

A hotel CRS system or better known as a central reservation system enables all kinds and sizes of hotel groups and chains to maintain complete and centralized control over their reservations and online inventory distribution. The CRS hotel system also helps hotel chains in acquiring chain-wide direct bookings, improve guest experience, and even streamline operations.

Key Features and Functions

Reservation software for hotels that is compatible with all kinds of distribution systems offers a great advantage to the hospitality industry:

Less operational cost – hotel CRS can reduce the burden on the management of the hotels. By requiring less work from the front office, your reception staff will have more time to tend to their other tasks.

Make more profit – you can now easily track the reservations made months ahead and feel confident that you will not lose them. The hotel CRS lets you keep track of all the special requests you've had from your guests such as food preferences, favorite room. Central reservation software for hotels helps you manage your hotel inventory efficiently and effectively, with this system you are giving your travelers the option of getting the best price when booking through your website.

Internet Booking Engine (IBE)

Internet Booking Engine is a web-based booking system that allows customers to make bookings and manage their hotel reservations and benefit from other services available. Travelopro Internet Booking Engine is a highly customizable, new-generation online booking engine for hotels.

With our CMS, we provide a booking engine with the package, flight only and the hotel only offers. The booking engine is fully integrated into our website and gives your customers a convenient booking process.

Travelopro offers a highly customizable new generation Internet Booking Engine. With a real-time connection to multiple Global Distribution Systems (GDS) and other travel content sources, user interfaces in many languages and support for all GDS featured currencies, the Internet Booking Engine helps you adopt a targeted approach to various market segments.

Distribution Channel Manager

Channel managers are highly valuable for hotels of all sizes. The role of a distribution channel manager is to connect the hotel’s inventory to multiple online travel channels or agencies. This will allow you to manage your hotel’s prices and availability across all the marketing channels you use online. 

A channel manager helps avoid overbooking and prevent other costly mistakes since it has the ability to report booking sources. The hotel owner can then determine which online channels or portals are the best fit for their niche market. With such sophisticated tactics and systems, interested travelers can find the accommodation they need quickly.

Revenue Management System (RMS)

RMS helps hotels create prices for their rooms based on algorithms. The purpose of RMS software is to improve pricing strategies in order to sell more rooms at optimal rates. Since the hotel industry is highly dynamic, it is crucial to use a revenue management system. 

Some of the main advantages of this hotel software include strategic pricing and higher revenue, but there are many more benefits that hotels can make use of. Firstly, RMS lowers costs as it takes into account the room rates during the low and high season. As a result, the hotel manager can plan in advance and lower costs by avoiding unnecessary expenses.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

If your hotel has thousands of customers – which we hope can apply to your business – you need to keep in touch with all of them: past, current, and upcoming. CRM integration simplifies this task and automates customer interactions. The functions of CRM systems differ depending on the vendor. Some have more advanced features like call forwarding or delivery management. 

The following are the basic functions:

• Customer data export and storage
• Purchase history
• Lead management
• Reporting
• Newsletters and marketing material mailing
• Accounting
• Sending notifications

Online Reputation Management and Review Management Software

Online reputation management (ORM) is first, managing your hotel’s online brand in relation to reviews, ratings, or even just mentions (both positive and negative) in the online space. Secondly, once you have a view of how your brand is portrayed, you can then see how this impacts your business and develop strategies to optimize or maintain it.

Reputation and review management software is designed to track online users’ feedback on services and products. It is a system that helps spread the customer’s positive reviews through the relevant online platforms. Building a reputation with positive reviews can only be a good thing for hotel owners as they will be able to increase their sales this way. 

Hotels use this software to promote their business and capture negative customer reviews. It is also a useful tool that helps hotel owners monitor social media posts relating to their services. In simpler words, this software allows you to monitor what your guests are saying about your hotel by sending you alerts. You can then respond to these reviews and rectify the issue quickly.

According to TripAdvisor1 “More than 90% of business representatives rated online traveler reviews, repeat business and increased direct bookings as the three most important factors to the future of their business.”

As you know the value of customer reviews and experience can make or break down the online reputation of your hotel or guest house or any other hospitality services business. Regardless of whether you're managing a big resort with hundreds of rooms or an international tourist destination brand with numerous hotel properties around the globe, you need to repeatedly check all social media channels and review sites, to analyze visitors' comments, to rectify steps for undesirable comments.

An ORM System’s Functions Are:

• Social media monitoring
• Review reply
• Insight into competitors
• In-house problem communication
• Notifications about new mentions
• Support for several languages
• Image analysis
• Reporting and analytics

Loyalty program management

Loyalty management software allows businesses to identify either repeat customers or potential repeat customers, and then send them incentives such as gift cards or rewards points so they return to that business. Loyalty management is a key part of any marketing strategy, as it helps to ensure that the right customers are being targeted and incentivized. Many loyalty management tools will have built-in email marketing or marketing automation tools, making it easy to identify potential loyal customers and send them promotions or rewards.

If a business is having difficulty finding its target audience or demographic, loyalty management tools can help a marketing team narrow down the search and test different methods of bringing customers back to the business. This type of software can be implemented as a standalone marketing platform, API, or add-on for a marketing solution already being used, or one of several marketing tools a team might utilize. Perfect for small businesses, loyalty management software can provide quick marketing solutions for busy business owners.
 

Rate Shopper Software

This hotel software has the benefit of simple graphics and easy-to-use reporting tools that help hotel owners optimize room rates in line with demand. By using rate shopper software, you’ll be able to obtain real-time data about your competitors, including their prices and current promotions. In addition to disclosing useful information about other hotels, this software will also allow you to keep an eye on your rankings using track events in your local area and obtaining statistics about the average prices charged by the hotels in your area. The main benefit of using this software is to ultimately learn about the local hotel industry in order to stay ahead of the competition.

Mobile Check-In App Software

Hotel owners are turning their attention toward mobile apps as they provide instant access to many self-service options. For the hotel owners, the mobile check-in app reduces the need to provide a front desk service so the staff can focus on other tasks instead. Some of the advantages of using a mobile check-in app include saving time in check-ins, communication with guests before arrival, (via the app), increasing revenue by allowing guests to upgrade their rooms, book dinner, or tours.

Online Booking Engine 

The goal of every hotel is to sell more rooms and increase profit. But without an online booking engine, you’ll have to mainly rely on phone calls to make bookings. An online booking system is an essential and effective tool that will significantly increase bookings as it allows users to make secure reservations on the hotel’s own website. If your hotel is listed on a social media site, the online booking engine can also be used for making direct bookings. This tool is available 24/7 and gives visitors the flexibility to book a room whenever they want.

Website Builder 

Every hotel must have a website in order to gain maximum visibility. A website builder tool helps hotels create a website for their business. There are two types of website builders: online and offline.

The offline website builders allow you to download and install the tool on your PC. You can then build your website and upload all the saved files to a Web host. The online website builders are just as easy to use as the offline ones, by allowing beginner or experienced hotel owners to create a website within a few minutes using dragging and dropping elements. You don’t need any experience or coding knowledge to be able to create your own website thanks to the convenient and easy-to-use website builder software. Many website builders have a special template for hotels, which helps hotel owners to create a hotel website in no time.

A hotel management system automates operational processes from check-in to check-out, reports, housekeeping, laundry, user privileges, and many more. Adopting a hotel PMS has become a strategic necessity in order to offer quality guest services. 

Defining the needs of your property and keeping the above questions in mind will help to choose the right suitable software for your hotel.