10 Essential Features Of A Good Hotel Booking System
Online bookings make up almost 63% of the travel and tourism segment’s revenue annually. A good hotel booking system will let you efficiently manage online reservations. Automating reservation processes with a reliable hotel booking system reduces the risk of manual errors and losses in business.
Furthermore, having a streamlined booking system in place helps hoteliers provide a more intuitive booking experience to guests.
Here are a few things you will need to consider before choosing a hotel reservation software.
1. Online Hotel Reservation System
A good hotel booking system needs to have a user-friendly interface that helps both guests and staff.
A convenient calendar front-desk view will be a huge advantage to make the reservation process simpler. The software will need to have a plugin or javascript that can be embedded into your hotel’s website. Or, it should be able to redirect visitors to an online micro-site or portal from which they can complete their reservations.
The booking engine should provide your guests with all the information that they may look for- including prices, packages, room types, add-ons, inclusions, and other details, without them having to scroll through your website.
A versatile booking engine like the one offered with the Hotelogix PMS allows you to integrate with your website as well as the Facebook page of your hotel. In addition, with our open API, you can customize your own web booking engine.
2. Online Payment Integration
Integrating an online payment option with your hotel reservation system would not only make it convenient for guests to make reservations, but also help you meet your booking/cancellation policy requirements.
Financials collected via online bookings should also automatically be recorded in back end financial reports.
Encouraging guests to pay online encourages following the necessary social distancing norms.
3. Automated Communication
Automation of communication has become a necessity in the service industry. Guests expect a detailed confirmation email after booking a room.
Confirmation emails should be customizable according to the hotel’s brand image and voice. For example, you should be able to provide tips for traveling, information about local festivals and attractions, if required.
Your hotel booking system should also support the scheduling and formatting of these messages.
4. Central Reservation System
Travelers prefer to make reservations from numerous sources- hotel web booking engine, online travel agents (OTAs), and front desk. Managing these reservations can be confusing and errors such as double booking, overbooking, or forgetting to confirm the reservation of a guest can lead to bad reviews and loss in business.
Having a central reservation system for hotels that is linked to a channel manager will help you manage these discrepancies efficiently. Your channel manager and hotel reservation system are integrated to give you real-time updates of room availability as well as prices of these rooms across all your booking channels.
A channel manager helps hoteliers improve staff productivity as inventory and rates can be updated from one platform. Real-time updates mean that guests get exactly what they see.
5. Review Management
Reviews are extremely important to your hotel’s reputation and business. They are the best marketing tool your hotel can have. According to a report by SiteMinder, 81% of travelers prefer to read reviews before booking a hotel, and 91% of 18 to 34-year odds treat reviews as they would personal recommendations from friends.
As a hotelier, you should encourage your guests to leave online reviews for your hotel. Make it a point to engage with those reviews by replying to them. This provides a better experience to your guests as they feel acknowledged and appreciated.
A proficient hotel booking system allows you to both record your guests’ feedback as well as reply to the feedback that has been given. Genuine and prompt response to feedback can potentially convert guests into loyal customers.
6. Robust Reporting System
Data plays a significant role in guiding a business’s goals. Having the right data can help you optimize business performance and give your guests a more personalized experience.
Hotel reservation software integrated with a robust reporting system is a must-have to help your business make smarter choices.
Information that you could gain from such an advantage include:
- Assessing performance on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis
- Keeping track of pending payments and tabs
- Predictive analytics for sales
- Budgeting
- Rate management
- Personalized guest data
With the Hotelogix PMS, you get 100+ reports that will help you manage your online reservations, and overall hotel operations, smoothly.
7. Cloud-Based Services
Your hotel staff is rarely going to be able to stay in one place all day. Choosing an online hotel reservation system that is remotely available will make their jobs easier, and more productive. Furthermore, having the ability to access data remotely will also promote social distancing and keep your hotel staff and guests safe.
Cloud-based hotel booking software can be accessed from anywhere at any time and from any device (laptop, cell phone, or tablet). It is also easier to maintain, cost-effective, and much more secure than traditional on-site systems.
8. Languages and Currencies
Your hotel booking software should allow guests to make reservations with their preferred language and currency. Guests making reservations with a particular language should also receive email or message confirmations in the same language. This simple feature can enrich the guest experience and promote bookings with your hotel from across the globe.
Catering to different currencies is also very important. You want to target a more global audience, and a lot of your customers will be tourists. An ideal booking engine will be able to automatically set the language and currency preferences based on the IP address.
9. Discounts and Promotions
When thinking about increasing revenue and keeping your guests happy, a good strategy to take would be by providing exclusive promo codes or discounts.
An efficient hotel booking system should give you the option to create and apply promo codes. In addition to simple and straightforward discounts, you should also be able to customize the discounts and promotions based on when the booking was made, if the customer is a loyal customer, if it’s a corporate booking or travel agent booking, or even according to the season, events, early-bird or last-minute rates.
10. 24/7 Support
The hospitality industry never sleeps, and problems with software can occur at any time. Make sure that your service provider offers 24/7 support.
Choose a provider with excellent service and support, and willing to offer you quick and easy resolutions at any time.