Small hotels look at means by which they can ease the burden on their limited manpower and manage operations efficiently. Managing rooms itself can be cumbersome for small and mid-sized hotels but when you add various POS like a basic restaurant to the picture, then hotels definitely require a good management solution.
So what should small hotels with restaurants do to simplify operations?
- Use Tablets:
Tablets are one of the best ways in which restaurants can simplify operations; they can provide an end-to-end solution for a restaurant. Instead of paper menus, hotels can now opt to present tablets as menus for their guests. In the long run it works out as a more cost effective solution since no re-prints are required whenever a menu is changed. Restaurants can change the menus as often as they want.
Another advantage of having a tablet is that the hotel can give an option for the diners to directly order their dishes from the device itself, thus saving the burden on waiters having to take the orders. Or the manager or waiter of the restaurant can take an order on the tablet which can be directly linked to the kitchen, thereby omitting the need of a paper KOT (Kitchen Order Ticket).
- Use a PMS with in-built POS service or one that can integrate with some POS:
Hotels should look at an efficient Property Management System which can integrate the restaurant’s billing transaction to the hotel’s main dashboard thereby simplifying billing management. The system should be tablet compatible.
– Direct Billing:
A comprehensive property management system would enable restaurants to link the diner’s bill directly to their room if they are staying at their hotel. The integrated system shall ensure that restaurants can post billing instructions directly to the guest’s room so that any monetary transaction can be taken care of during check-out without any extra communication required between the restaurant and the Front Desk with no manual tracking required.
– Package Management:
One of the biggest challenges for hotel restaurants is in managing discounts and packages like corporate discounts at the restaurant, special rates for breakfast packages, inclusive meal packages and more. In such cases, if manual billing has to be done, it is an absolute nightmare since the manager has to keep track of varied tariffs and discounts.
A PMS can enable restaurants to organize their room packages in unlimited categories and sub-categories, so that once the restaurant posts the bill to the hotel’s dashboard, the system would take care of how the billing has to be done depending on the guest’s booking details.
Technology is all about making things simpler for its users, and systems like Hotelogix are geared towards empowering small and mid-sized hotels to simplify their operations. Hotels should make the most of technology to add convenience to their operations and manage well with limited manpower.
“Our restaurant hardly upsold beverages and when they did, someone would forget to charge to guest’s account. Now with Hotelogix POS, using a tablet, the team can access room number, board, and charge accordingly. The hotel POS integration has helped increase our revenues.”
Ian Jackson, General Manager of Southcliff Hotel, UK
