Under study is a busy 40 – room guest house which has near capacity bookings almost throughout the year, putting a lot of burden on its current infrastructure. It used to manage its bookings and operations through a paper based manual system, which rendered a lot of vulnerability to guesthouse’s service quality and resultantly, the profits. Double bookings, manual entry mistakes, cancellations not recorded etc. used to be a commonplace. Owing to the clientele of the guesthouse and the repeat business it receives from many of its patrons, it just could not afford to come up short on the customer care every now and then. Some of the major issues that cropped up regularly were:

 

–          An invoice if requested by a guest needed to be manually created with the help of a spreadsheet.
–          Any mid stay room changes would lead to many complications and tiring paperwork.
–          The guesthouse had no automated option to effectively handle the state’s taxation system.
–          In the absence of an effective online booking software, the reservations required exchange of a minimum of three emails. Last minute cancellations would often lead to rooms left unoccupied.

 

Hotelogix came into picture at this point. As expressed by the guesthouse owner, “Hotelogix came across as a very affordable yet effective solution for independent, budget hoteliers like us. It seamlessly integrates global distribution, bookings, property marketing and management, all on an easy to use and single platform. We were earlier planning to hire more people, but decided to opt for Hotelogix instead. So now instead of shelling out as much as $7,000 every month – the cost of 2 full time employees, we’re only paying less than $200 per month for the Hotelogix’s services.”

 

Being a cloud based hotel property management system, with SaaS as a delivery model Hotelogix is run entirely over the internet. The guesthouse didn’t have to purchase any special equipment or software. The staff of the guesthouse now focuses more on quality interactions with the guests rather than worrying about the administrative tasks. Hotelogix has reduced the reservation making time by as much as 50%, and almost all of the rooms are now booked directly via Hotelogix. The guesthouse staff feels that the processes are cleaner now, efficiency has increased and they have far less work to do. In addition, the guest house increased bookings from its online channels, which are consistently generating an additional $2000 per month. The Hotelogix system operating expenditure being less than $200 per month, the ROI achieved is more than 1000% in less than 3 months of deployment.

 

Furthermore, since all the crucial data is stored offsite, the guesthouse no longer needs to worry about system security or crashes. The guesthouse owner further added, “Hotelogix empowers the budget hotels to compete in the global market. Since there are no up-front expenses on equipments, software or a computer professional, the transition becomes much more feasible. An average 50 room hotel can be up and ready for operations in a matter of less than a week’s time. What more, the system is quite comprehensive as it takes care of everything ranging from guest history, credit card processing to accounts management in the back room. Our main concern initially was whether Hotelogix would deliver at the cost it was on offer. Our answer is a bold ‘YES.’ In fact, it exceeded our expectations.”