If you want to grow your B&B or small inn, you need to look beyond using Excel to manage bookings. It might have been a great and highly advanced system a decade ago, but now it’s hurting your business more than it’s helping it.
Conversely, a property management system (PMS) will not only make your booking system more efficient but it will also help you better run your B&B or small inn. Thus, a PMS will help you:
Improve the Customer Experience
A cloud PMS will allow you to carry out a wide range of tasks more efficiently than if you were doing everything manually. Things like issuing invoices, checking guests in and out, changing rates, adding more rooms and sale items to an existing booking and more can be done within a single system with a few clicks or taps.
By being able to perform all these tasks more quickly, you will free up more time that you can dedicate to making your guests stay an extraordinary one. After all, for guests, it’s all about the experience nowadays and receiving personal attention from you will certainly make them feel special, which is precisely what you want.
Also, the system will allow you to build a profile of your guests, which you can use when they return to visit. The information will prove invaluable so you can further personalize the experience and make them more than happy that they returned to your B&B or small inn.
Eliminate Lost Revenue Caused by Double Bookings
If you are using multiple channels for your reservations, and you are still using Excel to coordinate bookings, there’s a good chance double bookings are not that uncommon. A double booking isn’t just embarrassing, it also leads to lost revenues not just because of the loss of a guest but because that guest will not be happy. And 95% of unhappy customers will tell everyone they can about their poor experience, according to Diamond Research, thereby damaging your reputation and leading to even more lost revenues.
With a property management system in place, though, you can funnel all your booking channels through one system, including all the online travel agents you are using to promote your B&B or small inn. Thus, when a guest attempts to make a booking, they can see your actual availability in real time because the PMS will automatically update all OTA sites on room status, eliminating any double booking issues.
Another advantage is that you can see how all your channels are performing, so you can focus on improving the ones that aren’t doing so well while also bolstering the ones that are providing great results.
Ensure You Are Using Your Budget Efficiently
As a small inn or a B&B, your budget is limited. And even though all businesses should spend their money wisely, it’s even more important for you to do so.
A PMS will provide you with all the information you need to ensure you are allocating your dollars appropriately. Thus, you will be able to track things like occupancy rates, the best performing travel sites, direct bookings, bow much money you are making, what outstanding payments you have and even which of your promotions are generating the most business and income.
These advanced reporting features will allow you to spend your money wisely so that you increase revenues and reduce costs.
A good property management system is essential for any B&B or small inn looking to grow their business. In fact, in today’s highly competitive travel environment, such a system is a necessity for survival because your business can only take so many poor reviews from guests complaining about double bookings or other issues which you could have easily dealt with but were tied to your desk because you were using an antiquated approach to managing bookings.
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