Running a small hotel business can be an ordeal since there are multiple functions being managed by limited staff at the same time. The most common issues faced are manual errors, double bookings and staff being unavailable for guests.
Streamlining day-to-day hotel operations becomes necessary so that revenues are maximized and hoteliers can provide excellent guest experience. The answer lies in automation. To become as nimble as a fox or in simple terms, running your hotel operations smoothly and smartly, you must look at reducing costs, saving time and increasing efficiency by automating operations.
Automation helps streamline crucial hotel functions like:
Reservations: Small hotels usually receive bookings either through direct enquiries or have a designated staff member handling OTA bookings and reservations from other sources separately, which then gets updated manually. This can lead to multiple errors. Automating the booking process can save you and your staff more time and eliminate the chances of overbooking. With automation, bookings received from all sources get updated in real-time and guests receive automatic booking confirmation emails.
Housekeeping: With no automation in place, there could be instances of housekeeping staff not updating the front desk team about the room status and visitors being checked-in to an unclean room. There are many other situations that can arise due to the absence of automation in syncing housekeeping and front desk.
If you use a system to automate housekeeping, the front desk can assign the room to the concerned housekeeping staff. The tasks can be tracked for timely completion and the housekeeping can update the status in real-time. Technology also allows the use of mobile devices for updating the same. This kind of automation will reduce efforts and errors, increase productivity and enhance the guest experience.
Point of Sale: Imagine a waitress is taking down orders in your hotel’s restaurant and needs to walk up to the front desk to get it fed in manually so that the room can be charged on check-out. She also needs to convey the order to the kitchen of the restaurant. This extra effort and time can be saved with automation.
An automated POS lets you set up unlimited services that can be clubbed to sell with your rooms. You can promote special deals and watch your staff performing instantly without any errors. Orders from the restaurant can get updated at the front desk at the click of a button and an order ticket can be sent to the kitchen with integrated technology like KOT (Kitchen Order Ticket) so that it is processed instantly.
Reports: Reports are an integral part of your business and you cannot afford to make any errors. Tracking and reporting tools help simplify analysis and monitor business performance. Hoteliers can keep track of revenues, finances and access multiple reports to get key insights.
Automation using a cloud based property management system can cover all the above aspects, helping your business grow. It can help generate revenues, increase occupancy, manage room inventories, handle reservations and improve brand visibility. Cloud PMS can be readily accessed from anywhere, even from your phones and tablets. Cloud based hotel management software can play a crucial role in a small hotelier’s success.
Hotelogix released an e-book for small and mid-sized hotels to improve operations and increase efficiency.
Download the e-book: A Simple Solution for Improving Hotel Operations