Hospitality is all about the guest experience – it always has been, and it always will be. In order to enjoy any degree of success, ensuring that the hotel’s guests enjoy their stay is fundamental. So as long as your visitors are having a great time and have no complaints about your property, things should take care of themselves right?
While this strategy may have worked before the dawn of the internet, it’s no longer a matter of just looking after the guests. Property’s needs have increased dramatically with the rise of digital technology. Suddenly, in addition to housekeeping tasks, inventory management and a number of other administrative duties, hotels needed to look after their online presence, OTA rankings, distribution and even marketing. And ignoring these tasks is simply not an option today – competition in the industry has grown to such a level that properties that do not adopt technology are rapidly left behind.
Ironically, the solution to this problem of increased technology, is technology itself – management software can simplify a number of core operations in the hotel and streamline processes, allowing all employees to do their job more efficiently and hence improving the guest experience too!
Here’s how –
More Time for Staff:
A property management system (PMS) automates a number of daily tasks that are usually carried out by employees, such as night auditing, reservation organization, and so on. By saving the staff from having to attend to these back-end processes, they can concentrate on real hospitality – looking after the guests. When a property’s staff is responsive, guests appreciate it. They may not be aware of the implementation of a PMS that enabled this, but it makes no difference to them as long as they continue to experience great, timely service!
Allows Better Planning:
With the PMS looking after all the reservations coming in and keeping track of spending, profits, and a variety of guest trends, planning ahead becomes so much simpler. Reporting used to be a tedious job – managers would need to gather data from several departments all over the hotel and then analyze them before coming up with any useful information, a process that would take days to weeks! However, the PMS eradicates this step by not only collecting and storing the data, but also representing it in simple charts! This allows the hotel to measure guest feedback more effectively, gauge their enthusiasm for the POS outlets and take the necessary steps to move forward
Enhances the Quality of the Stay:
While management technology plays a big role in streamlining back-end operations, it also has a direct effect on the quality of the guests stay. The PMS notifies the front desk agent when a guest is due, whether they’re travelling solo or with a family, the length of the stay, and provides a number of tidbits about the guest that can be used to build a profile. This allows the employees to prepare in advance for a family with many children, or physically challenged guests who may need assistance. Moreover, the next time the guest visits the property, the manager will be able to refer to their profile and set up their room just the way they had requested it the previous time!
Management technology like the PMS has brought together the various units of a hotel into a neat, orderly stack from where they can all be monitored and managed on one screen. And while this has helped hotels boost efficiency and increase profits, it has also improved the guest experience, forging a stronger relationship between the hotel and guest.