Less is More! The Hotel Manager’s Guide to Slimming Down the Hospitality Software Suite
In a fast-paced industry facing a high demand for personalized, high-quality services, scattered operations, poor customer experiences, and non-compliance can cost you dearly. Read more on how the right hospitality software can help you manage the business better.
Multiple, disconnected hospitality software solutions can be detrimental to the success of your business. While you might think you’re ahead of the game with an expansive range of hospitality software, your technology suite might not be serving you as well as you imagine.
From bookings and property management to guest data, payments, and marketing, your teams need to work in unison to ensure overall operational efficiency. If your teams don’t have seamless access to the information they need, they’re flying blind. This results in unproductive and inconsistent operations that affect your bottom line.
If you’re using multiple hospitality software solutions, that’s really no solution at all. So while the task of slimming down your hospitality software suite seems daunting, the reality is that simplifying and streamlining your operation yields a very worthwhile return on investment.
This guide will help you identify what needs to go, what needs to stay, and what needs to change. We’ll walk you through a seamless process to ensure day-to-day productivity isn’t affected during the transition, so you can start seeing great returns right away.
Why More Software Is NOT the Answer
With so much operational information captured in separate hospitality software suites, here’s why too many applications are detrimental to your business.
hospitality software is better than a simple door reminder
Poor Integration
Life as a hotelier is filled with hundreds of distractions on any given day. Besides time-consuming routine tasks, there are also last-minute guest requests, complaints, events, emergencies, and a never-ending list of maintenance issues.
From locating the correct reservation and identifying available rooms to tracking and processing payments, property management, and regulatory compliance, your teams need to keep track of a vast range of tasks simultaneously to ensure smooth operations.
Throw in staffing shifts, seasonal marketing, OTA integration, and finances, and the need for task automation and system integrations becomes even more apparent.
A glitch in any part of the chain of operations affects all the other parts. When systems function separately, inconsistencies are already highly problematic when they surface.
Double bookings, check-in delays, incorrect room allocations, and non-compliant safety standards are all avoidable with automated and streamlined cross-departmental communication.
man using hospitality software to discuss customer booking
Add the extra challenge of labor shortages, and task automation becomes even more important. With fewer manual tasks and faster, more accurate processes, your current staff can work more productively and efficiently.
Booking Issues
Managing daily operations with slow, error-prone manual processes can tarnish the guest experience.
In addition, when data systems operate independently from one another, it significantly increases the administrative load and slows down every consecutive course of action.
For example, when your online booking channels are not connected to your reservation system, reservations need to be entered into your system manually. You then also need to update availability across all other channels.
The delay between the actual time of reservation and updated availability puts you at risk for double bookings. In the same way, manually updating availability for canceled bookings can lead to low booking rates or charging clients for stays that never happened.
Consider the importance of efficient guest check-in to set the stage for a happy stay. When guests arrive, a successful check-in experience entails quick identification of clean, vacant rooms. If your housekeeping and front desk systems are not integrated, guest check-in will be an inefficient, delayed, and disorganized process.
Disconnected systems also lead to billing inefficiencies. Whether it’s the mini-bar, breakfast, room service, or shuttle service, guests don’t like it when they’re charged incorrectly for things they did not use. And you don’t like it when they’re not billed for things they did use.
Lack of Personalization
When it comes to creating a remarkable guest experience, there’s another important, and somewhat new factor at play: personalization.
Customers have become accustomed to personalized experiences across their daily lives (think Netflix, Amazon, and Spotify). They also expect this level of personalization when they travel. Guests don’t want to be just another reservation number; they want to feel like valued customers.
young hospitality worker using hospitality software
If you want to be a market contender, personalization needs to form a key part of your strategy going forward.
Whether your hotel has 100 or 1000 rooms, it is unlikely that you remember who checked in two weeks ago, never mind last year. To then still remember which room they liked and what they were allergic to is an improbability.
You need hospitality software tools that easily allow you to ingrain personalization into every repeat visit. Automated hospitality software will allow you to harness guest data, forming the backbone of personalization.
Lost Revenue
An integrated hotel management system is essential for avoiding unnecessary expenses. Failure to implement such a system can result in several issues, including billing errors, chargebacks, and double bookings. Manual data transfers can also lead to errors, which can be easily avoided by automating administrative tasks.
Without a management system, maintenance resolution may be inefficient, leading to more significant repairs that are more costly. Regulation non-compliance may also result in fines or lawsuits.
Furthermore, inefficient shift schedules may cause over or under-staffing, resulting in poor budget allocation. Finally, software subscription and maintenance costs may increase without proper management, and compatibility issues may lead to data loss or errors.
Read More: Less is More! The Hotel Manager’s Guide to Slimming Down the Hospitality Software Suit
