A profitable hospitality business not only needs an efficient team of seasoned hotel management professionals, but excellent administration tools as well. An effective hotel management system can go a long way in ensuring efficient management of the complete hotel’s business. Apart from taking care of the administration aspect of the hotel, a hotel management system can assist you in management of inventory, reservation, sales and several other functional aspects of a hotel. Having a software custom-made for your hotel’s requirements can be a very costly affair; the better option is to buy a good off the shelf application which can be operated from multiple locations. However, it is important that the pre-built software application meets the following requisites:
Overall functionality – It is important that the hotel management system is chosen keeping in mind the specific purposes it is going to solve. It can be implemented to either automate one or two specific functions or to perform multiple tasks. Most importantly, the software should be web-based, so that it is able to import/export data from/to different websites/locations.
Ease of implementation – The hotel management system should be compatible with the pre-existing system in the hotel. Moreover, it should have the ability to import data from the old system without any difficulty.
Ease of adaptability – The hotel management system should be easy to install and operate. Since the hotel staff is normally not technically qualified, the software has to be easy to navigate and supported by a comprehensive manual. Further, it should also have a help option built into it, which can be referred to instantly, in case of any technical problem. The system administrator should also be provided with proper guidelines for effective troubleshooting.
Multiple language support – The hotel management system should have the ability to receive and generate data in multiple languages. There should be an option to generate invoices, reports, labels etc. in different languages. This feature can be of great help to both the hotel staff as well as guests. It is not uncommon for hotels to receive guests of different nationalities; generating invoices in the regional languages of the guests can be a great initiative for increasing customer satisfaction.
Vendor’s reputation – The reputation and authenticity of the software manufacturer should be checked and verified properly before making a decision to invest in a particular hotel management system. One should ask the vendor to provide testimonials/references of existing clients, which should then be cross-checked on a random basis. Furthermore, it is extremely important that you take into account the after sales support and terms and conditions of service into consideration as well.
Ease of Scalability – The hotel management software should be easily scalable without having to incur excessive expenditure in the event of future expansions. It should have the features to add and manage multiple properties without compromising on the performance of the system.
Third party Integrations- It should have the ability to integrate third party utilities such as video-on-demand, CRM, EPABX, Room Key etc. without incurring any additional expenditure (apart from the utility itself)