During the last couple of years, every enterprise has understood the importance of comprehensive digitisation of their end-to-end processes. For them, it has become clear that conventional legacy solutions no longer add value to their operations and business. And that’s why we are now seeing accelerated adoption of cloud solutions post-pandemic. We have also spotted this trend in the hospitality industry, with an increasing number of hotels, especially hotel groups getting ready to ride the cloud wave for better business control. They have realised that digitisation via cloud-based hospitality solutions in general and multi-property solutions, in particular, is the key to saving costs, improving efficiency, seeing ROI, and boosting revenues. This blog will look at the top 4 reasons you need to check-out of legacy PMS and check-in to a cloud-based multi-property solution RIGHT NOW.
#1 Go live quickly & expand rapidly
There is this trend of growing hotel groups consolidating their market presence by acquiring standalone properties as part of their post-pandemic growth strategy. And we know that you, too, are looking at the same plan as your peers. But you certainly can’t realise this when you rely on legacy hotel management software. Because when you add a new property to your hotel group, you must go live quickly to start selling rooms and hosting your guests to see value out of your investment – and this is not at all possible with a legacy solution. First of all, the implementation process itself is a lengthy affair. Then other operationally imperative cloud-based third-party solutions will not seamlessly integrate with the legacy PMS, impacting your go-live plan.
But when you adopt a cloud-based multi-property solution, you don’t have to worry about any of the above-mentioned issues. Cloud-based hotel software is known for easy and faster implementation turnaround time. Plus, they seamlessly integrate with a host of cloud-based third-party solutions so that you can go live quickly and start selling from day one.
You don’t have to take our words for this. See what one of our customers has to say: “With Hotelogix, it has been a breeze for us to plug in and integrate a new property as part of our corporate operations. We are able to go live with a new property within three days.” – says Deepika Arora, Founder, Rosakue, a popular hotel group with 12 properties in India.
#2 Save costs
“Change” – is often described as a difficult proposition. And when it comes to migrating to a new technology platform, the general notion is that the whole thing will be expensive. But this is not the case when you implement a cloud-based multi-property solution at your hotel group.
With the cloud, you can save costs by significantly lowering Hotel PMS ownership costs. Unlike the legacy Hotel PMS, with cloud, you are no longer bound to pay upfront PMS costs and then spend a mini fortune for servers, training costs, cyber security, and even having a dedicated IT team across all your properties. You just need to pay as you go, as cloud-based hotel management software is available on a subscription-based model. The cloud Hotel PMS vendor can implement the system and even train your staff in a remote setup, saving you further costs.
#3 Ensure centralised control over the group
Having efficient and better control over all your member properties is quite a critical aspect of running your hotel group. You know the importance of this better than anybody else. When you have a so-called grand old legacy Hotel PMS, you miss out on this. Because it may help you manage operations at a property level, but when it comes to empowering you with centralised control over all your properties, the system will fail miserably. Now, if you are the owner or general manager, you need to call up each property to know what you want to know. This is time-consuming, and time lost is money lost.
On the contrary, when you migrate to a cloud-based multi-property management system, you can keep an eye on the entire group, even at the property level, from the central dashboard. Let’s say you are on vacation and still want to know the position of each of your properties. Just access the cloud Hotel PMS over the web on your smartphone and dig out the relevant group-wide information you want. No more dependency on your staff and no more waiting time to see what is happening across the group.
#4 Stay future-ready
Business dynamics and guest expectations are evolving rapidly. For example, touchless guest service was a buzzword in the industry a few years ago, with a swallow adoption rate. But today, it has become the mainstay of hotels’ offerings, with almost 90% of guests wanting to experience it during their stay. Another example of remote working, which gathered pace during the pandemic and is here to stay.
If any scenario in the future demands your non-guest-facing staff to work remotely, a legacy PMS will never be able to help you. When keeping staff on the property becomes impossible, only cloud hospitality solutions can empower you to ensure business continuity while allowing you/your staff to access department-wise and group-level operation critical data in real-time to make informed decisions.
The final word
Replacing the legacy Hotel PMS with a cloud-powered multi-property management solution at your hotel group is all about adapting quickly and responding efficiently to the ever-changing business dynamics. It is all about saving time and eliminating errors with comprehensive process automation. It is about collecting insightful real-time data on your business and guests. Ultimately, it is all about staying relevant, attractive, and competitive in the market.