Until a few years back, hotel PMS solutions were mostly managed on-premise. We all know what a pain it was. Now, Cloud solutions are becoming more and more popular across the hospitality sector.
These days, it is common to come across a hotel guest with at least one mobile device. It could be a tablet, iPhone or Kindle, etc. Travelers are increasingly using digital gadgets to enhance their traveling and vacation experience, doing everything from researching destinations to booking hotels and even giving online reviews and ratings.
But it is not just travelers that can benefit from using online technology. Over the last decade, it has become very obvious to hotel owners that investing in cloud-based hotel property management software could potentially transform their businesses. This is because on-premise PMS solutions have not advanced enough to accommodate the needs of the present-day technological requirements of hotels, especially large hotel chains. Another reason for their failure is that server-based PMS solutions do not have adequate room to bring in new improvements in their applications. The reason behind this is that the codes are written in programming languages that were applicable years ago. In 2020 it is explicitly outdated.
On the other hand, for cloud solutions patch updates are very convenient and fast. Using cloud solutions significantly reduces IT complexity, costs and improves operational efficiency.
Cloud PMS offers many benefits to all hotel categories. But, for an Enterprise Hotel, Cloud PMS, pays off a little extra.
While all the benefits of using cloud PMS do exist for all hotel types, enterprise hotels benefit more from cloud solutions. We all know that the needs of enterprise hotels are different from that of a standalone hotel. Let’s see how-
Faster Implementation and Go Live-
With cloud-based hotel PMS, hotels can bring new properties online more quickly. Cloud solutions enable starting operations quicker on new solutions as compared with on-premise solutions.
Also, updating new enhancements is easy. With each new release, new capabilities are brought to help deliver great guest experience, improve operating efficiency, and enhance staff productivity.
Migration of huge data from old systems and integration with other third-party systems is also very convenient and fast in the case of cloud PMS.
You can imagine what a tedious task it would be to do it repeatedly in case of a 50-chain enterprise hotel operating on server-based PMS solution. This is the reason all progressive enterprise hotels are adopting Cloud PMS.
Lower IT complexity and costs-
With cloud-based hotel PMS, hotels can lower upfront capital expenditure on software and hardware.
On-premises solutions require hardware that takes up a lot of space and cost. It needs human resources to manage the hardware and licensed software systems. Upgrades and patches need to be scheduled and installed manually by onsite staff.
On the other hand, cloud-based, mobile-enabled hotel PMS platforms offer hotels a much economical and innovative way to operate and engage with their guests. Cloud-based solutions enable hotels to reduce IT costs significantly and simplify their infrastructure. Savings will multiply more in the case of an enterprise hotel.
Cloud-based systems are administered by the external vendor and are easy to use and maintain. Updates, and patches are done automatically, saving time and money.
Almost 99.95 % uptime is a common scenario with cloud-based tools, and that enables you to enjoy the best competences and benefits your PMS solution offers without prolonged and disruptive update routines.
Dynamic pricing, improved occupancy, increase in RevPAR
Cloud PMS can be easily integrated with third-party systems, like channel manager and booking engine etc. This provides real-time and seamless flow of data between systems enabling hotels to automate the room prices upto the last minute update. Unlike on-premise PMS, Real-time room price and booking updates, leads to improvement in ADR, RevPAR, and overall occupancy. All in all, it helps in improving inventory distribution and hotel occupancy and growth in revenue. Hence, we can say that Cloud PMS is the future for chain hotels.
Country inn increased its revenue by 10% just because of dynamic pricing
Indian RevPar is at 4.2% and whereas country inn achieved 7% to beat the trend.
Dynamic pricing (DP), which works on supply and demand pressures in real time (or nearly real time) is well supported by Cloud PMS solutions. Cloud based PMS adopts the airline model of dynamic pricing as a learning platform.
Improved online reputation better guest experience
With cloud PMS, hotels get a window with comprehensive guest profiles. This enables them to create very personalized offers and provide different guest experiences for each of them. It enables hotels to work towards improving customer lifetime value.
Centralized control
Cloud PMS provides the comfort of centralized control, which is not possible with on-premise hotel PMS. A cloud PMS is accessible from any location through a browser. Cloud-based PMS is deployed over the Internet. System data is securely housed off-site in the vendor’s data center. It is accessed by the hotel staff online via secure login credentials. However, a secure and reliable Internet connection is important.
Easy integration with third-party solutions
Cloud PMS are much more easily integrated with external systems as compared to on-premise. Integration is also possible with on-premise solutions but, it is a complex process as it requires manual technical work and additional hardware. Whereas Cloud based PMS are easily integrated with third party tools including OTAs, booking engines and channel managers, reputation management systems and accounting softwares, etc. It is possible due to common Web standards and open APIs. This greatly reduces IT requirements while improving automation and efficiency.
Automated and Anytime anywhere accessible night audit reports
Automated Night Audit Reports help reduce a lot of manual tasks of the night auditor and senior management. Since these reports are accessible anytime and anywhere it provides information easily to the high-level management to review and make use of insights received from these reports in a timely and intelligent way to achieve enhanced efficiency and make improvements. Such a benefit is not possible with an on-premise PMS.
Real-time access of reports and faster decision making
Cloud PMS makes your life much easier. It offers consolidated reports real-time for all your hotel chains. This automatically improves the bookings and occupancy for your hotel. You can also see a comparison report of metrics for all hotel chains.
What do you think would be the primary struggle of the General Manager of a big hotel chain? Well, sitting at one location and managing say 5-50 hotels is sure no easy task. Imagine the kind of time and effort that will go into digging out reports of individual hotels. Further, even if you are able to pull out the reports for 50 hotels, manually drawing a comparison of all hotels from it is like an impossible task. All the more, by the time you will be successful in doing so, your competition would have already moved ahead with their findings. Can you afford to be slow in the current scenario of the hospitality business?
People are booking their travel on the go from their mobile phones. Today’s travelers do not like to be slow or wait. So, how can hoteliers afford to be slow? Your competition will swallow you in today’s tough competition if your decisions and actions are slow.
Hence, for an enterprise hotel chain having a cloud PMS will solve this problem. A cloud PMS helps view a consolidated report of all your hotel chains present in different geographies. There is no need to manually create consolidated reports regarding booking & reservations, inventory and other operations of the hotel.
Cloud PMS solutions come to your rescue and your hotel operations become really efficient, smooth and fast with such a tool. No need to mention that it pleases your guests and improves your guest experience. Further, it also has a significant positive impact on your reviews and ratings.
Increased data security and reduced cyber risk
With cyberattacks making headlines frequently now, improving hotel IT security and protecting guest data are of paramount importance. Neglecting them not only could lead to exorbitant litigation, but also cause infinite damage to your brand reputation. Cloud technology provides the highest level of system security, which is attributable to several critical components. Enterprise hotels cannot afford to lose the trust of their guests; hence they should go for cloud PMS to ensure data security. Below are the key data security features:
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A.GDPR Ready: Cloud PMS is equipped to handle GDPR regulations. It ensures complete guest data privacy once it is in the system. Security of customer’s data is a very vital aspect and it is fully taken care of in a cloud-based PMS unlike on-premise PMS.
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B.Point in time recovery: Cloud solutions are capable of saving data up to the last second or you can also say in real-time. This completely minimizes the scope of data loss. On the other hand, with on-premise, there is always a risk of data loss due to multiple reasons.
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C.PCI Ready: Online payments are completely safe on PCI DSS ready solutions. Cloud PMS is PCI ready for a seamless payment with card information safety. Again this is a huge plus over a on-premise PMS solution
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D.Hashing of passwords: One very important factor for choosing Cloud PMS is the security of password hashing in the cloud. To overcome the possible security concerns with distributing the password across the network password hashing is the solution. Let’s understand a little about what exactly happens in Hashing.Hashing performs a one-way transformation on a password, turning the password into another String, called the hashed password.
Cloud PMS offers service that delivers a quick return on investment, diminishes operational costs, and increases competitive advantage. All of this and more, like increased reliability and security, and has an easy conversion to the platform. Hence, in today’s time cloud-based hotel PMS solution is binding for the success of a hotel business especially enterprise hotels.
