Category: PMS hôtel

How well do you know cloud hotel management systems?

logiciels-hoteliers-cloud
Posted on by Claudine Vio

In poetic terms, cloud hosting literally happens “in the clouds.” The process is a bit more complicated than that, but the fact remains that the concept has scared many people since its inception.

It’s worthwhile to learn more about Cloud hotel management systems, so here’s a run-down of the basics you need to know about it. As you’ll see, there’s no reason to fear this technology!

logiciels-hoteliers-cloud
Connaissez-vous bien les logiciels hôteliers Cloud?

What is a cloud hotel management system?

Before outlining the many benefits of a Cloud hotel management system, it’s important to know precisely what such a system is. While Cloud technology is virtually ubiquitous today, you’re probably aware that it sparked a revolution when it appeared on the digital landscape.

Cloud hosting refers to app and data hosting on remote servers on the internet, as opposed to the old method of stocking and installing software on site.

With any Internet-connected device, you can access your software, even your PMS, which is hosted on the Cloud. A Cloud hotel management system consists of the apps stocked and installed on remote servers.

There are a ton of benefits to choosing cloud hosting for your hotel management system. In addition to having the freedom of working anywhere from any device, a Cloud hotel management system is a window onto the future of technology.

The benefits of a cloud hotel management system

Let’s cut to the chase. A Cloud hotel management system offers many benefits. Cloud technology is popular for many reasons.

Security

Security is the top worry clients have about a Cloud hotel management system. The Cloud is a safe space to host your data because it must comply with numerous international rules. Moreover, back-ups are done regularly on the Cloud so that you can avoid losing all your data if an incident should occur.

Cost savings

Surprisingly, a Cloud hotel management system is a tool that can save companies money. Since licences are billed monthly, they don’t require a substantial investment upfront. Additionally, the cost and features can be adjusted seasonally according to your financial cycle. Savings are also possible because no specialized hardware is required to host a Cloud hotel management system, which means you also save on maintenance.

No hardware required

Obviously, since hosting happens on the internet, you won’t have any physical infrastructure to maintain. Forget about breakdowns, accidents, flooding and hardware wear and tear; a Cloud hotel management system doesn’t require any maintenance.

Scalable

A Cloud hotel management system is a savvy choice because it’s easy to modify, improve or simplify. All you need to do is call your Cloud specialist, and they will help you add or remove features according to your company’s growth and evolution. Nothing could be simpler!

In short, choosing software that’s not on the cloud might put you at risk!

Even though you may understand the benefits of Cloud hosting listed above in an abstract sense, it can be hard to imagine what could go wrong with traditional software hosted on your site. However, the truth is that the Cloud is a much safer and reliable technology. Software hosted on site isn’t stored in the Cloud. Rather, it’s installed on servers on site, which can be unsafe in many ways.

First, it’s important to remember that a hotel management system hosted on site will need technical support for its infrastructure. Therefore, you’ll need to perform maintenance and updates on physical servers in your offices. The fact that you’ll have to rely on physical infrastructure to accomplish your work could complicate matters.

For instance, in the event of a fire or flood, your on-site data could be compromised. And since your hotel management system is installed on those same affected servers, it could be inaccessible for days, even weeks.

Also, a hotel management system hosted on site could put the security of your data at risk, especially if you don’t back up your data frequently. Servers are often the target of cyberattacks that aim to steal or even destroy your data with viruses. It’s also easier to steal or clone data when servers are at hand.

Finally, if you choose not to host your hotel management system on the Cloud, you run the risk of lost or stolen data, equipment breakdowns and data backup issues. Software hosted on site contributes to some risks.

Multiple cloud hotel management system options are available

Many hotel management system solutions exist either hosted on the Cloud or on site. You’ll find a wide array of products in both categories. First and foremost comes the essential PMS (property management system), which is a complete solution that includes various apps and modules to improve the overall management of your hotel.

For its part, the POS takes care of everything related to sales. Point-of-sale software makes it possible to generate sales and manage payments and invoices as well as inventory. Generally, the booking engine is hosted on the Cloud and lets you manage everything involving reservations, availability and so forth. The email marketing tools are often hosted on the internet, too.

Finally, multiple relationship management tools like Guestfolio or Trustyou are also on the Cloud.

In conclusion, Cloud hotel management systems are here to stay. Besides being omnipresent in the hotel world, they offer numerous benefits and undeniable safety. Even though the technology is recent, there’s no good reason not to trust it. If you want to learn more about Cloud hotel management systems, contact one of our experts

What is a hotel PMS, and what features should it have?

hotel-pms
Posted on by Claudine Vio
pms-hotel

What is a hotel PMS?

A hotel PMS – or synonyms such as PMS Software, PMS system, PMS, Property Management Software, Property Management System – is a property management system that ensures complete, consistent and flawless hotel management. A PMS Software includes numerous features and, depending on your needs, it can assist you in various departments. A PMS Software’ main purpose is to help you manage room availability, prices, invoices, contacts, booking and sending automated booking emails before clients arrive, among other things.

Unlike its ancestor, the Excel file, property management software doesn’t require you to intervene or supervise to coordinate information, ensure an occupancy rate close to 100% or inform management of guest stay length or room vacancy rate. Awesome, right? So, when a PMS Software handles every aspect of your hotel, what’s left for you to do? What you do best: take care of your guests, offer them an unforgettable stay and ensure no details are overlooked.

What hotel PMS features does a good manager need?

Since hotel PMS software includes a wide range of applications and features, it goes without saying that it has to be adapted to meet each establishment’s needs and issues. However, there are some services you absolutely must have to leverage the power of your PMS Software fully.

You need PMS Software activity reports

As a manager, your decisions rely on numbers and stats, and even if your instincts are good, you need to analyze the data to make the right choices. This is why you should consider adding a module that generates hotel activity reports.

A hotel PMS can create all kinds of reports:

You need access to data

Try to get property management software that provides the data you need to better understand your clientele. Guests come through your doors every day, live in your rooms and see your hotel as their home for a few nights. It’s your duty to know your guests. Hotel PMS software offers complete management for your establishment. It’s the ultimate place to collect all the information related to your business.

Guaranteeing you have access to this information will help you make a wide range of decisions:

  • Client type
  • Stay type
  • How many days in advance do guests book their room?
  • Contact list to improve guest communication

Finally, while you need this data, you also need to be able to export, analyze, process and use it. Never underestimate the power of data! For example, if you want to attract business travellers, this data could help you set up various strategies based on the conclusions you draw from it.

Think about adding a yield management module to your hotel PMS Software

Unique to our industry, the yield management feature automates price management according to special events or activities. There’s no need to calculate the price manually as the module handles the task for you!
Remember to always look for a yield management function that will be easy to use and let you add notes to your calendar about all the important events that could influence your price. 
And, as you already know it, this module will complement the reports your hotel PMS generates. By analyzing these numbers, you’ll be able to set your prices better.

Finally, automation is vital to your hotel

Thanks to its modules and features, hotel PMS software can save you hundreds of hours of work. The ability to automate and free you from redundant and time-consuming tasks is its strength. One of the tasks it can take care of is room assignment.
You already know that optimizing hotel management and achieving an occupancy rate close to 100% are no small tasks. They’re like a Tetris game where your company’s profit, your guests’ satisfaction and your internal logistics are at stake.
By choosing a PMS Software that assigns rooms automatically, room turnover and space management are optimized to guarantee equal use of your infrastructure and equipment and avoid inconsistent bookings.

A hotel PMS is an essential tool for every department of your hotel

Your hotel PMS can assign rooms or develop data-based strategies, and it can also support every aspect of hotel management. Have you ever thought that software could help you manage your cleaning service better? Well, it can. A hotel PMS makes it possible for your department to communicate room statuses directly to the front desk to boost room cleaning speed and consistency between all your hotel’s teams.

Also, the cleaning service and all your service employees will be able to manage lost and found items, packages, activities or bookings more easily. You’ll find all the information you need in the software, add notes to the client file or create alerts to ensure better communication, coordination, and consistency. Besides helping you plan better, you will have everything you need to guarantee service quality. Indeed, adding a connection between your establishment’s various services will set your business apart from the competition and offer a flawless high-end experience to guests.

A hotel PMS is a versatile and efficient tool that can handle any aspect of your daily duties, free you from redundant tasks and help you avoid potential issues. Moreover, property management software makes it possible to automate room assignment, the sending of emails before and after stays and even group coordination.

The ultimate perk? Software like this gathers all the information linked to your hotel operations in one place. With a PMS Software supporting you at every turn, automating tasks and enabling fluid communication between your staff, nothing can stop you from providing the best service to guests so that they enjoy an unforgettable stay.

Better customer service thanks to the best PMS system

customer-service-hospitality-industry
Posted on by Catherine Daoust
service-client-hotellerie

Check-in kiosks in support of customer service

Improved hotel management derives from the automation of multiple tasks, which results in time and money savings as well as in overall satisfaction (for both guests and staff). More particularly, self-serve electronic check-in and check-out kiosks are now available, which allow for greater guest autonomy and user-paced service. The kiosks can deliver room keys, pre-authorize payments and communicate hotel regulations.

There are many advantages to using the kiosks, including fast and efficient service when it comes to booking and booking management at any time day or night. Employees have more time to spend interacting with guests and can, therefore, offer more comprehensive customer service. The use of a PMS system such as Hotello should be seen as a productive complement to customer service. Receptionists can work side-by-side with the check-in terminals.

Customer service and efficiency

Regarding customer service, a good PMS system’s efficiency comes down to one significant keyword: speed. Your system must be time efficient to avoid queues at check-in and when it comes time to pay at check-out. The same rule applies where the booking form is concerned; it must be easy to understand and allow for active data entry. The speed of the service offered through the PMS system will determine guests’ degree of satisfaction. A good PMS system must be user-friendly, scalable, automated, encrypted and available on the cloud as well as provide adequate technical support. These attributes are the main qualities you should look for in a good PMS!

Customer service through integration

Your PMS system may be your hotel’s focal point, but for it to be as efficient as possible, it must integrate seamlessly with other systems. The kind of integration required allows for fluid communication between multiple systems and provides optimal and comprehensive customer service. For example, a PMS system must integrate with the in-room guest management system, the connected key system that makes late check-in possible by sending guests a code by email or text before they arrive.

To have access to these features and offer them to guests, integration between the PMS and other systems is essential. Automation lies at the heart of this integration. When you acquire a good PMS system, keep in mind that it is always possible to improve customer service further by making judicious and broad use of the PMS’s features.

Hotel PMS and POS: the hotelier’s dynamic duo

hotel-pms-pos
Posted on by Claudine Vio
pms-hotel-pos

The difference between a hotel PMS and a POS

A POS is point of sale software available on the Cloud that allows you to take charge of sales, invoicing and ordering for your restaurant, rooms, activities, meals and hotel boutiques. More than just a simple invoicing software, a POS can integrate with your PMS to take charge of transactions during your client’s stay. Hotel PMS and POS integration generates unique, understandable and coherent invoices for all the services offered in your establishment, which ensures a worry-free and streamlined guest experience. A POS will not only work at your restaurant but for hotel activities, the boutique and room service as well. A POS ensures a connection between your hotel’s various departments, makes you more efficient and helps you offer a flawless high-end experience.

Why a hotel PMS and a POS are essential

In all great teams, each member has a strength:

  • The hotel PMS handles room booking while the POS processes restaurant orders.
  • The hotel PMS manages room inventory while the POS helps manage restaurant or boutique stocks.
  • The hotel PMS notifies you if a room needs to be cleaned or is ready for guests while the POS tells you if a table is available or booked.

If you own a resort, your hotel PMS helps book rooms, but your POS lends a hand with invoicing activities or extras directly to the room to simplify your guest’s experience. From the spa to the restaurant to the bar to the souvenir boutique, the hotel PMS and POS are there at each point of sale to ensure consistent and guest-friendly service.

Better service through hotel PMS and POS integration

PMS and POS integration can offer guests the ultimate experience. Since your hotel provides numerous services and has hundreds of rooms and guests, it can be complicated and difficult to check each one and make sure all services are paid before guests check out. So, to ensure that everything goes smoothly, the restaurant, boutique, room service and concierge can access the POS to provide a unique and complete invoice and enter any purchases. This way, the guests don’t have to carry a credit card during their stay. According to some studies, this freedom gives guests the impression of spending less, which encourages them to spend more. This unique invoice approach makes your hotel staff’s job easier and contributes to a pleasant stay for your guests. Moreover, if guests have a package or a credit flagged in their file, the connection between the different services eases communication and avoids confusion.

The hotel PMS and POS combo ensures the perfect stay

By connecting both your booking system and hotel management to all your points of sale, you can offer a true benefit to your guests. You help them enjoy their stay without having to worry about bills or invoicing errors. With the hotel PMS and POS combo, unpaid bills at your restaurant can be automatically added to a guest’s room invoice. Additionally, you can establish a pre-authorized limit for each room to avoid uncomfortable surprises at checkout. Once the limit is reached, all the point of sales linked to your hotel PMS will be alerted and will prompt the guest to pay directly. In this way, you’re guaranteed to avoid invoices that extend your guests’ ability to pay.

With PMS and POS integration, service centralization offers an invoicing mode that’s unique and clear. You’ll get fewer complaints when guests check out as invoices will be transparent. Fewer complaints at the end of the stay also mean less time spent at the hotel’s reception desk, which guarantees a quick and efficient guest experience.

Your hotel PMS and POS are interdependent and help you manage from your hotel from A to Z by drawing on the strength of both software systems to help your company deliver a more connected and efficient guest experience. And by leveraging the power of solutions like these, you’ll have more time to focus on what you do best: take care of guests so they can enjoy their stay. Want to learn more?

With PMS integration, you have the luxury of choice

connectivite-pms
Posted on by Karine Thibeault
connectivite-pms

Why is integration capability important?

An establishment’s hotel management system (PMS) lies at the heart of its operations. While it’s true that a PMS covers most of the trades found in a hotel on its own, it isn’t an island onto itself. Sometimes, it needs to integrate with specialized partners to meet the hotelier’s needs.

For instance, take the case of the booking engine, an online sales tool that can be a real challenge for hoteliers. Many engines offer tempting PMS/booking engine conciliation deals. However, online sales is a distinct profession. Often, hotel management system developers don’t have the expertise in this field. A booking engine may seem simple, but a host of special features lie below the surface, including overall efficiency, ease of navigation, response time and OTA connection time.

When choosing a PMS software, make sure the package offered includes a powerful booking engine that’s designed by a company specialized in online sales. Here, of course, we’ve only considered the importance of connecting a hotel management system to specialized booking engines, but the same applies to all PMS add-on systems.

Which systems should your PMS integrate with?

A nearly infinite number of systems can integrate with your hotel management system. The ones you pick must truly meet your hotel’s needs. Some hoteliers have a short list of integration requirements. Others have a long one because many hotel industry aspects may require PMS integration, including key systems, payments and room entertainment systems.

Among the most recent are customer relationship management (CRM) systems that let hoteliers build a precise profile of each guest and find them on social media so that offers tailored to their profile can be marketed to them.

Many CRMs provide sales teams with a tool dedicated to their activity, while also retrieving the information in the hotel management system. PMS/CRM integration can also be leveraged by marketing teams, who can mine the customer data collected by the PMS from their e-marketing platform for targeted marketing purposes. For marketing ends, the hotel management system can also integrate with platforms that manage the hotel’s online reputation.

You can also link a PMS software to innovative autonomous terminals dedicated to electronic check-in check-out. These terminals collect all the information the hotel management system requires to function. The same holds true for online check-in check-out. No matter what type of software you want to integrate with your PMS, it’s nice to have the luxury to choose which vendor you want for specific features.

Integration takes you where you want to go!

The first hotel with a robot dedicated to room service opened in Canada. The robot allows customers to order food and drinks directly from their room. The robot moves around the hotel on its own and requires a great deal of information to do its job properly. It needs to know the guest’s room number, what they ordered and their name to offer personalized service.

Even though the operation isn’t a simple one, thanks to PMS integration and the integration potential of other software applications, the information the robot needs can be accessed. First, the guest in the room must be identified based on the entertainment system they used to order. This data returns to the hotel management system so that the guest’s order can be sent to the restaurant, for instance. Next, the restaurant will prepare the order and bill it to the room using the PMS software. Then, only after retrieving the guest’s order and information, can the robot deliver the order to the room. Several systems must connect to the hotel management system to enable the exchange of information required for the robot to do its work.

When the time comes for you to choose a hotel management system, be sure it offers the requisite connectivity. Otherwise, you might not be able to connect an external system you like to your PMS software. Some PMS providers have agreements with external system providers, so you can select and add them to your hotel management system. Before switching to a new PMS software, remember to check whether its connectivity is adequate for your needs.

4 booking engine attributes that boost conversions

qualites-moteur-reservation
Posted on by Claudine Vio
qualites-moteur-reservation

User-friendly and intuitive

The easier and more intuitive the booking experience, the more likely conversions will result. Therefore, your booking engine must be as user-friendly as possible. It should clearly represent your rooms and list their price and availability, without the user needing to go looking for the information.

Connected

With a booking engine that’s connected to a distribution channel, you benefit from real-time updates based on direct and third-party bookings (OTA, GDS, etc.). As a result, you not only save time but avoid overbooking. A connected booking engine also makes faster conversions possible since users can see whether room availability matches their trip dates. Real-time connectivity keeps extra phone calls or email requests to a minimum and prevents the loss of bookings to your competitors.

Mobile and responsive

Les réservations mobiles constituent une source de conversions de plus en plus importante. C’est pourquoi votre site Web et votre moteur de réservation se doivent d’être accessibles sur mobile. Si cela n’est pas le cas, vous perdez des réservations directes. Il est vital que la version mobile de votre moteur de réservation soit responsive pour rendre le processus de réservation simple et facile sur un écran tactile.

Mobile devices are a growing source of direct booking conversions. For this reason, your website and booking engine must be mobile-device enabled. If it isn’t, you are missing out on direct bookings. It’s crucial to have a responsive booking engine that’s optimized to make the touchscreen booking process simple and easy.

International

Your hotel’s website can reach visitors all over the world. It’s essential to ensure your booking engine offers a wide choice of languages and currencies to encourage international client conversions.

To boost direct bookings and profits, you must have a good booking engine. To this end, your booking engine must be intuitive, connected, mobile, responsive and international. If your booking engine has these four attributes, you’re well on your way to boosting direct booking conversions.

Hotel management software: what about cybersecurity?

cybersecurite-hotel-pms
Posted on by Karine Thibeault
cybersecurite-hotellerie

Physical security

Should your establishment suffer damage from a fire or water infiltration, it would be unfortunate to lose the data stored in your hotel management software. By choosing an external backup, you’ll eliminate all risks of physical damage that could affect your data.

Moreover, your hotel management software will be saved on your provider’s secure cloud infrastructure, which ensures you can rapidly resume your work after a disaster.

virtual security

Unprotected hotel management software is susceptible to virtual security risks. First, if ransomware takes control of unprotected hotel management software, the establishment’s owner will need to pay the requested ransom to recover the data. Also, a server failure, a computer problem or even a computer virus could have serious and detrimental effects on your business and incur unexpected expenses. Backup solutions are designed specifically to address these risks, as they regularly perform an automatic backup of your hotel management software. You won’t lose your data since it will have been saved on a secure backup server in accordance with the industry’s security standards. These regular backups will allow you to resume your work in no time.

By backing up the data of your hotel software, you considerably reduce the risk of loss following an incident. Therefore, the cybersecurity of your PMS is essential for your establishment and to ensure that your operations run safely and without any worry.