If you are running an independent hotel in the United States and looking for a hotel property management software, then you have landed on the right page. We will take you through some of the most important features of a Hotel PMS that can help you run your property quite efficiently.
But, hold on for a bit; let me ask this to you – you are looking for a Hotel PMS, but which one? Due to its old application architecture, an on-premise PMS will not be able to help you stay relevant in today’s era of rapid digitization. However, given its flexibility and agility, a cloud-based Hotel PMS can help you save costs, connect to the online world and deal with competitors. However, here too you might have to compare multiple features before selecting the right one that caters to your business requirements.
So, here are the top 7 Hotel PMS features to consider, that will make it easier to decide –
1. Look for a robust hotel PMS
The PMS or hotel software is supposed to automate and streamline the end-to-end operations at your hotel. It needs to help you handle operations across the front desk, housekeeping, point of sales, food and beverage, finances and accounting, materials and vendor management and many others. This means the PMS needs to be comprehensive and all-in-one. This would enable a seamless flow of operational data across all the departments. The robustness of the PMS brings in a higher degree of automation and thus would help you save man-hours so that you can add the much-needed ‘human touch’ in your guest service.
2. Find out if it can help you scale-up your hotel business
The cloud PMS you choose must help you grow your business. For example, if you are a 35-room independent property in Ohio, and you plan to add 10 more rooms, a few more point-of-sale outlets like a gym or a gift shop or even an all new F&B outlet, the PMS must be agile.
With a sophisticated cloud PMS in the place, you can add extra rooms and distribute them on all the connected OTAs. Not only one or two new POS outlets, but you can also set up unlimited POS outlets with a feature-rich PMS to earn more non-room revenue.
3. Consider its integration capabilities
This is the most important feature or characteristic of a PMS. Make sure that the one you are about to adopt is capable enough to seamlessly integrate with some of the operationally crucial third-party solutions including channel manager, online reputation management, revenue management and business intelligence solutions.
The two-way connect between your PMS and Channel Manager would help you distribute evenly on OTAs in real-time to enhance your online visibility and to sell more rooms. It would also help you reduce double-booking and overbooking. Moreover, the PMS provider must help you to get more direct bookings through website and Facebook booking engine integration. Plus, it should also have the capabilities to get connected with leading metasearch engines including Google Hotel Ads and many others.
The integration with a reputation management solution is a great way for you to automate the process of guest review collection to enhance your online reputation and ratings. Similarly, an integrated revenue management solution is supposed to help you with rate recommendation for your rooms, aggregated data on local market demand and updated rate intelligence on your competitors.
4. See if it can help you with rate management
Now as an independent hotelier, you might find the adoption of revenue management solution a little costlier. But your PMS must come to your aid in this. Check if it can help you create relational rates, seasonal rates, multiple rates support in a single day and most importantly, with occupancy-based dynamic pricing.
5. Remote accesses via Mobile PMS App, anywhere & anytime
The PMS should come with a mobile version of its own – a Mobile Hotel App. This enables you to access real-time information anytime, anywhere, from your smartphone or from any other device. Additionally, it must help you with a management dashboard that lists out all the critical data points including ARR, RevPAR, occupancy, revenue analysis and business on books, etc. All these empower you to make data-driven decisions on the go.
6. It should help you with guest history management
The PMS should record all the guest details including full name, type (FIT or corporate), gender, nationality, contact details and special preferences including likes, dislikes, payment methods and room type booked during the last reservation/stay. To be more precise, the system should capture and store every guest detail to help you understand and serve them better during their current stay as well as in the future.
7. Don’t ignore its reporting feature
The PMS should offer multiple reports that would help you understand your hotel’s overall performance and growth. Reports are important to evaluate your hotel’s performance in the past to plan your future strategies. With insightful reports, you can make required changes in your daily operations to achieve forecasts while efficiently responding to market conditions.
Apart from some of the above mentioned Hotel PMS features, there are few more areas of concern, too. You need to consider the PMS vendors’ market reputation – what its customers have to say about the PMS, its functionalities and support. You can check all these by browsing through relevant software recommendation sites like Capterra, FinancesOnline and Software Advice.
A right Hotel PMS from a trusted PMS vendor can do wonders for your hotel business. You can sell more rooms to increase occupancy, get more direct bookings, do away with overbooking and save a significant number of man-hours. Hotelogix is one of the trusted cloud PMSs that has helped many hotels in the United States to witness increased revenue. For example, with Hotelogix, North Carolina’s Biltmore Greensboro Hotel has seen a 40% increase in both revenue and direct bookings. Not only this, but Hotelogix has also helped Utah-based Hat Rock Inn to enjoy a 20% increase in revenue while reducing overbookings.
