Hotel industry is always at a booming pace across the world. No matter where we travel, hotel industry will always remain associated with us, throughout.
However, to pacify user experience and host a seamless flow of hotel management, it is very important to work under a composite backup of a solid and robust hotel management system. This will not just improvise the working system of the hotel industry but also offer a more accurate information processing and process flow as well.
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What is hotel management system?
A hotel management system setup is basically a software setup being popularly used for managing all the tasks and operations that constitute the overall hotel management system. Right from invoice management to record management, reservations to occupancy checks, everything can be seamlessly managed using the tools under a well-defined hotel management system.
Mostly a property management system (PMS) in association with a hotel management software based system helps in facilitating a hotel’s reservation management and other administrative tasks. The functions and operations performed under the PMS and overall hotel management system includes operations like- front-desk management, reservations, housekeeping, channel management, pricing, occupancy management, and overall payment processing.
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Advantages and disadvantage of hotel management system
Even though the entire hotel management system work seems to be quite seamless and time savvy, just like any other activity on the earth, it does have some countable benefits and downsides, too. So, let’s take a look at the same!
| Advantages |
Disadvantages |
| A hotel management system helps in dealing with a wide array of tasks related to day to day hotel operation, record keeping and maintenance. |
A hotel management system needs a complete training about the software and staff’s interest, too. Failing which the usage capacity is not attained to the fullest. |
| With a dashboard setup, it is very easy to keep an enhanced attention at the check-in/ check-outs, accurately. |
Use of such system are said to lower down the required connection or the “human touch’’ between the Hotel Staffs and the Guests as very little communication is needed with such efficient systems. |
| A efficient hotel management system works on increasing the overall revenue management and generation of the entity by managing different activities like- housekeeping, better customer data management, invoices generation, etc. |
While working on such systems, the users have to 100% rely on sound internet connection for any Cloud Based Software, including these software solutions for hotel operations. Without a sound internet access, there are fair chances of data getting lost. |
| Such systems are enabled with very high data security systems that keeps the guests’ personal data safe. |
Installing hotel management systems in hotel surely reduce the overall burden of managing even the most redundant tasks but on the other side, they are increase the overall cost of operations for the hoteliers. |
| Due to the fast processing and high paced results generation, the hotel management system offers an enhanced guest experience. |
Most of the hoteliers prefer hotel management project work due to the ease of online operations. However, these online operations invite a very high risk of online cyber-attacks that can turn out to be very costly for the hotels. |
| Such systems store and manage the entire data in a single place with easy access from anywhere. This will automatically help in increasing the employees’ productivity and user engagement. |
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Purpose of hotel management system
The prime purpose of a hotel management system is to manage the in and out, day to day operations and functions being performed in a hotel for successful establishment of a constant flow of services for the guests all through the year.
It is the responsibility of such system to manage multiple hotel management based services and products under a single umbrella. These systems operate at high accuracy and pace to manage multiple operations ranging from guests management, room & property bookings, and their payments to facilitate an overall hotel reservation, administration and management.
Features of Hotel Management System
The features of hotel management system includes the following-
Hotel management project work are defined with the prime aim to keep it user-friendly. The best feature of these software systems are that they are simple to understand and operate. With a complex operating system, managing a user interface becomes very challenging and thus, it is very important to keep this feature in mind while selecting a powerful hotel management system for your hotel.
- Multiple-device optimised
A good hotel management system is the one that can work on multiple-devices and is compatible in multiple operations across all devices. It should be easily accessible across multiple domains as an when a manager or any other staff member need to pull out any information. Being accessible throughout, and optimized for usage across different platforms like- mobile phones or tablets, these systems help in improvised business management.
A hotel management system is laid with additional features like bookmarking the special events, returning guests, non- paid guest entry, due payments, etc. and several other key information concerning the guests that helps in quickly and easily identify the same.
A hotel management system helps in building guest loyalty for the hoteliers by creating and storing the guest’s profiles. This can include elements like- guests’ contact information, their stay history, preferences, important dates that helps in delivering a more personalized touch to the guest for a pleasant experience while staying at the hotel. This helps in building guest loyalty and helps encourage more and more returning guests.
The hotel management system also helps in better communication with the guests by reducing the overall manual work. Hotel staffs can reduce their burdens by creating more personalised, guest-customised, and automated emails using the easily available templates to continue their communication journey with the guests on regular basis.
- Efficient Housekeeping management
A PMS system under the hotel management project work will help the housekeeping team to keep a check on the rooms and premises and mark them as- clean, dirty, or even out of order. Holding all such information in a single place will also give enough visibility to the front desk and help in their operations. With this, they can allot rooms, opt for early check-in and make inter-hotel room transfers without having to every time confirm with the housekeeping supervisor. This makes the overall housekeeping process simple and sound.
The most crucial hotel management system’s feature is to manage the reservations and operate the front office. Hosting all the reservations digitally under these management software, hoteliers can easily manage their hotel reservations, on-time. Multiple other associated operations with these systems are- setting the rates, control room availability, offer discounts & promotions, and also get a real-time visualization of the reservations on a calendar.
The room management feature of hotel management system is just similar to a virtual front desk wherein the users can control all the functionalities of front desk agents, check-ins and outs, reservation cancelations and extension with just a click. This simplifies the overall room management system.
- Group bookings/reservations
Group booking facility is another very crucial feature of any hotel management system. Most of the times when guests plan to check-in in groups, the group reservations functionality becomes highly important. Under this feature, hotels can offer guests to book reservations of their choice within the same room block, or exporting a room list or configure their billing settings, etc.
- Invoice generation and management
Each time a guests check out, a copy of their invoice needs to be provided, along with. With this feature, hoteliers can easily settle their bills with the guests and offer their copy of the same, effortlessly. With this, they can also generate their financial reports that will further help in revenue reconciliation and calculating the overall revenue and expenses the hotel has to bear under room revenues, outlets, vendors, etc.
Earlier payments used to be completed in the form of cash or cheque, however, with an efficient hotel management system, payment processing and integration becomes effortless and accurate. Right from digital payments to credit cards payments, there are a number of secure payment gateways to manage the payment processing.
- Rate management, Use logins, Permission
Hotel management system helps in managing the overall rate lists and management of the hotel, it is associated with. With this, guests and staffs can directly access the rate list and manage the bookings and invoices, accordingly. These management systems also offers special authorization and permissions to the authentic users with which they can access the non-refundable or refundable rates or value-added packages being offered from the hotels side. Using the rate management system, hoteliers can also offer multiple, customizable, discounted and many other types of rate plans to theirs guests, as well.
Importance of PMS in hotel industry
The importance of PMS in the hotel industry is to facilitate the overall working of a hotel’s reservation management and other administrative tasks. The prime functions that are performed in a hotel industry are- front-desk operations, room reservations, channel management, different operations of housekeeping, rate checks, updates and occupancy management, payment processing, etc. Few of the important needs of PMS in hotel industry are-
- Improvised check-in/check-out operations for every guest on-board.
- Increased efficiency of all kinds of housekeeping functions and operations on a daily basis.
- Helps in keeping all data and information in one single place, making the overall operations and day-to-day functions, easier and simpler.
- Helps in improved operations of the revenue management system for the entire entity with easy access to all the payments and revenues generated.
- Helps in overall customer data management without compromising on the security feature to help offer a personalized touch for every guest.
- Helps in increased employee productivity for an effective work flow and user engagement an interactive and simplified user-interface.
- Helps in ensuring high level data security and encryption to safeguard the stored data and information without any chances of breach.
- Helps in an overall enhanced guest experience for the guests residing in the particular hospital.
How does a hotel management system handle room reservations?
A hotel reservation system works in a two-way format. The process comprises guests sending requests and hotel management receiving the reservation data. Some hoteliers work independently while some work in partnership with other property management system or the channel managers. All the information is shared between the channel managers and the connected channels wherein requests are received and further processing is done.
For internal management, hotel management system work as a dashboard from where all the operations can be administered with just a click. Users need to enter the details and operate the functions to get the desired results.
What are the key components of a hotel management system?
There are multiple key components of a hotel management system that needs to be coordinated and worked upon on a daily basis. These include-
- Room management
- Housekeeping Management
- Service Integrations
- Guest management
- Front Desk Operations
- Accounting Management
- Channel Management
- Reporting and Analytics
- Rate and occupancy Management
- Reservations Management
- Payment Processing
Conclusion
A hotel management system is one of the best ways to manage and sustain the day to day operations in a hotel chain. Managing multiple operations from just a single point is the biggest advantage these software solutions add to hotel business. Seamless operations and accurate results is the USP of hotel management project work.
Nowadays most of the hoteliers prefer opting for hotel management systems for a fast and accurate work process. Even though, they add a little cost to the overall operation cost but with the level of efficiency and data management, they deliver, making use of these software systems are definitely recommended for managing hotel industry and its various entities.
