Imagine managing your hotel without network wires, without fixed hardware or servers, without a large IT team solely to manage your property management software or having numerous servers clogging up the space. Sounds too good to be true? Well move over Legacy giants, cloud based property management systems are the chosen paths nowadays, especially with the small and mid-sized hospitality businesses. But this should not come as a surprise because when you look at all the reasons why a cloud based system makes more sense than Legacy systems. Cloud based PMS’s have come off age and matured to handle these businesses better and offering them a much more powerful solution that works. A solution that gives them instant ROI, flexibility and much more.
We, at Hotelogix, have seen from experience after having serviced over 60 countries ranging from under developed to developed nations in Europe, APEC, South Africa, South America, Central America etc. that Cloud based solutions is the way to go for this segment in particular.
Why you may ask? Well let’s have a look
Cloud Based Systems are More Cost Effective
The differences in pricing starts from the word go, for a Legacy system one would need to install servers and technological infrastructure to support the usage of the PMS whereas with a cloud based system like Hotelogix you just sign us. If we compare the costing for a 50 room property, for a Legacy system, the initial investment for capital expenditure would be between 25K to 75K USD, which would include servers, hardware, licenses, internal wiring, software etc. whereas the initial investment for a cloud based solution would only be up to USD 500/-.
The variance in pricing doesn’t end here, with a Legacy system, an annual maintenance cost would range approximately from 5K to 20K USD per year, whereas a cloud based solution would cost upto USD 2,000 as active subscription. Legacy systems also require an IT team to monitor all the servers and hardware’s being used which would cost 10,000 USD to 50,000/- USD per annum depending on the geography. In cloud based solutions the cost would be zero since there are no external servers required.
Legacy systems would also have recurring costs of system upgrades, product upgrades, software upgrades which would not be incurred in a cloud based system since any software upgrade done on the cloud is automatic, and the benefit is passed on to the consumer.
Hotel Can be Accessed from Anywhere
As long as one has access to internet, hotel owners and the required personnel can access their hotels from anyplace and at any time. Owners and Stakeholders can be better informed and get MIS wherever they are.
Mr. Shahab Hamid, owner of Erbil Oscar Premium Hotel, is of the same opinion, “Compared to an offline legacy model a great benefit is that even though I travel a lot, I can access my hotel from anywhere, anytime and anyplace.” There is no dependency of waiting for reports to be mailed across or finding the right time to talk to the hotel’s GM.
Maintenance
In Cloud based systems, all upgrades are done online and therefore are always available to customer, but in legacy, upgrades take a significant effort and bandwidth not to mention the cost associated
Training and Support in Cloud Based is Swift and Available Online 24/7
With a cloud based system support is always available and can be done online. Cloud technology is better suited to provide live support and since the system is available to the support staff at all times resolving issues and turnaround time are always instant. With cloud based solutions, since the support is live, the cost of support gets passed on to the customer, whereas in a legacy system, there is cost involved for any and every support required.
Even with the initial training, the support team is so prompt and effective that hotels don’t need to allocate months for training their staff. A great example would be One Greenbelt hotel in Philippines, they only required 4 days training for their staff to use Hotelogix and since they were doing the training through a satellite office, the cloud based system even allowed the staff to practice using Hotelogix from the comforts of their own home.
Mr. Patrick Favoreal, CEO Enable Hospitality who introduced Hotelogix to Filipino hotels, was most impressed with the implementation and training required for using Hotelogix: “It was the easiest implementation we have ever done. We were able to set-up in 48 hours, trained staff in 3 days, and checked up on them for the next 3 weeks just to make sure the software was used correctly. The good thing about Hotelogix is, staff at hotels can get guidance and learn on their own through the on-line chat service and online video tutorials.”
Better Distribution
Nowadays depending on the geography, 30 to 60% of bookings are done online and cloud based technology are much better suited to get integrated to global online market places. A simple example would be: in a Legacy system something as simple as integrating your own hotel’s booking website with a Legacy software would take a significant amount of engineering which then gets defined into a cost.
With cloud based solutions hotels get better integration with the online world and at a much faster pace without requiring extra manpower managing the various distribution channels.
Flexibility
Cloud based systems allow you to pay as you go, as you increase your operations you increase your capacity and as your operations get decreased, you reduce your capacity. It is elastic in nature and guarantees you are not bearing any overhead costs. A hotel is also able to initially use a free trial which helps minimize their doubts on whether the system would work for their property or not, which is not available in several legacy systems.
Also with a cloud based system, in case an hotelier at some point feels that the system is not right, they can cancel anytime but with a legacy system, since your initial investment is so high you get stuck.
Better Collaboration with Ancillary Systems.
Cloud based system have better collaboration with other ancillary systems like CRM, accounting, HR, payroll etc., since many of them are already available on the cloud, whereas in legacy a collaboration becomes a big overhead cost.
Performance
With legacy performance is completely dependent on the in-house infrastructure, which always get challenged on a daily basis with newer releases of OS, new software’s, newer models which also demand more and more computing power and storage capacity.
With cloud based, the servers are on the cloud, they have unlimited access to computing power and storage capacity and hence would always give u better performance.
Security
Security is much higher in cloud based systems; data gets managed at high end data centers which have very powerful and comprehensive in-built data security systems. Data gets backed up almost every hour, and uptime guaranteed by data centers is nothing less than 99%. Failover and redundancy data mechanisms are inbuilt, so if one server goes down it switches over to a different server, if the location of one the servers face a natural disaster the data is switched over to another data. Any data transferred over the wire is encrypted so there is no chance of anything being misused, there is complete accountability and audit trails of data access. Such kind of security is impossible in legacy; they can’t even come close to what can be provided by cloud based systems.
Just as banks are better custodians of money rather than keeping it at home, data centers are better custodians of data than keeping them in-house.
After going through all these points it’s no wonder why today’s hotels prefer Cloud based solutions. While the small and mid-sized hotel industries have warmed up to the idea of a cloud-based PMS, more and more 5 star properties and chain hotels are also converting from the traditional Legacy systems to cloud based PMS.
Mr Aditya Sanghi, CEO and co-founder of Hotelogix rightfully says “In this technological era, cloud based technology is the best option for small and mid-sized properties around the world. It is cost-effective, efficient and better suited to integrate in real time with the current online mediums like OTAs, website, social media etc.”