Hotel Management System at a Glance
A Hotel Management System (HMS), or also often called a Hotel Management Software is a system that helps hotels and hospitality companies manage their daily tasks like handling reservations, monitoring, and updating room availability for bookings, human resources management, and so on.
Hotel operations, by nature, involve a lot of repetitive tasks, and an HMS offers a solution to automate some of these tasks to improve labor efficiency and also to eliminate risks of mistakes and reduce delays.
So, a Hotel Management System is very important in the hospitality industry nowadays so hotel staff wouldn’t need to spend their valuable time to fulfill repetitive tasks and instead can use their time to improve service.
An HMS can also help monitor the performance of hotel staff, and also various aspects of the property, as well as managing incoming and ongoing payments.
In short, a Hotel Management System is essential for any business nowadays, and in general, hotel businesses can pursue two different options: getting a ready-made Hotel Management System or get a custom Hotel Management System.
A custom Hotel Management System is a better choice if you want a solution personalized for your business, but typically it’s also more expensive than comparable ready-made software. So, is getting a custom Hotel Management System the right choice for you? Below we will discuss some important factors to consider.
Why You Might Want a Custom Hotel Management System
Below are some important benefits you’d get from a custom Hotel Management System that you wouldn’t get from a ready-made one:
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More Control Over Your Data
With a custom-tailored Hotel Management System, you can store all of the information about guests in the HMS, and you can integrate it with your existing CRM (if any). Ready-made HMS might not be compatible with certain CRM software, and obviously, your data is exposed to a third-party provider to some extent.
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Personalization
Obviously, with a custom Hotel Management software, you can design personalized services for your guests like sending personalized welcome emails, custom loyalty programs, providing unique services to your guests, and others. Personalization is becoming increasingly important these days in improving customer loyalty.
You can read more about personalization and hyper-personalization, in particular, in this article by Ikaros.
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Seamless Customer Experience
A custom management system can help in improving the automation of various property-specific routines like check-ins (and checkouts), concierge services, and various other services. By eliminating human interactions between hotel staff and guests, you can also eliminate potential misunderstandings and conflicts.
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Automate Repetitive Tasks
We have briefly discussed this above, but a custom Hotel Management software can help eliminate repetitive and sometimes redundant tasks performed by staff members. Different properties might have different tasks, and this is where a custom-tailored software can shine.
Key Steps in Creating a Custom Hotel Management System
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1. Figuring Out Your Objective in Customizing a System
Why do you need a custom Hotel Management System in the first place based on the above benefits? Below are some common objectives that you might consider:
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Increase in bookings
With a more personalized, more seamless Hotel Management System, we can aim to boost hotel bookings (and thus, increase our revenue). With this objective, we should create a Hotel Management System that is more customer-centric like offering personalized services, a more seamless check-in and check-out process, and better guest experience in general.
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More seamless operation processes
A custom hotel management system is essential in minimizing the time usually spent in repetitive administrative tasks, and also is important in monitoring how employees are performing their daily tasks. We can custom-tailor the HMS to achieve a more seamless, efficient, and cost-effective operations.
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Better promotion
A custom HMS can improve your reach across the hospitality industry with an integrated channel manager, so you can automate the process of advertising and promoting your hotel to various channels while maintaining rate parity. The system can also provide real-time booking information to all your promotional channels from GDSs to OTAs or independent retail agents.
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2. Designing a Booking Automation Process
Automating your booking process is one of the most important capabilities of any Hotel Management System. A proper booking management feature can ensure a seamless booking experience so all customers can seamlessly get the room they have booked, and at the same time allowing hotel staff to track all details related to booking and reservations.
Here are some important features to consider in this aspect:
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Reservation management
How the system can receive, manage, and respond to booking details. For example, the HMS should mark a room occupancy for some time according to the booking details. The system must be able to provide easier viewing of all bookings (i.e. calendar view, and hotel staff should be able to make the necessary arrangements (change dates/category of room, cancel a reservation, send a confirmation, etc.)
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Online booking integration
A standard functionality today is for the hotel’s website to show the availability of a room and to allow potential guests to book directly on the website. The Hotel Management System should integrate properly with the website and should automate some of the processes like sending out an email confirmation after a reservation and also manage data related to bookings, guest information, and payment details.
3. Automated and Managed Guest Relation System
A custom Hotel Management System should safely store guest information from contact number, room details, payment methods, birthday dates, and other necessary information. This guest relation module should also help distribute messages and notifications like invoices, promotions, and others.
A proper guest relation flow must be designed according to the hotel’s business preference, including:
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Personalization
By knowing individual guest preferences and habits, you can provide personalized services like booking specific restaurants you know they like, or simply greeting them with their favorite drink and magazine upon arrival. You can collect and analyze data to plan future campaigns and service personalizations.
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Notifications
The system should automatically send notifications in the following stages of their stay:
- 1. Just when they are about to arrive (booking process, payment confirmation, list of services ordered)
- 2. During their stay (offers and discounts off the hotel’s services, restaurant menus, etc )
- 3. Just after checkout (asking the guest to provide feedback and review)
Evaluate Your Vendor Options
In creating a custom Hotel Management System, here are some important considerations in evaluating your vendor options:
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Make a list of desired functionalities
Based on the factors desired above, make a list of desired functionalities and their priorities. The main principle to consider is that you’d want the most affordable vendor that can fulfill these features/functions reliably. In most cases, you won’t find a provider that can cover 100% of your needs, and this is why listing a priority is very important so you can evaluate your options more carefully.
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Ask for recommendations
Once you have a priority list for your Hotel Management Software, then you can start asking around for vendor recommendations. Your business partners and acquaintances might already have their first-hand experiences with various vendors, and you can narrow down your options into just three to five vendors based on their reviews.
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Ask for demos
Ask for product demos from the top 3 to 5 options so you can explore further, don’t forget that this list is not final, and you can always check more vendors if the software demos disappoint. Take your time to review the demos, and use this chance to review the software vendor and how they cater to your questions. Since your HMS can be a significant investment, there’s no rush in reviewing the best possible vendors.
End Words
A custom-tailored Hotel Management System can streamline various repetitive tasks associated with daily hotel operations, and at the same time provides us with a simpler way to collect and analyze guest information and operations data.
Since different hotel properties have their uniqueness and specific needs, a custom Hotel Management System can be more efficient in managing the unique property and also in integrating with existing software solutions. Above, we have shared some important tips you can use in creating your custom Hotel Management System and how to implement it in your company.
Credit
Mike Khorev is a digital marketing and SEO expert who helps SaaS, Software, IT, Technology, B2B and B2C companies generate more leads and sales and grow revenue online. He offers expert advice on marketing your company the right way through performance-based SEO, web design, social media, search engine marketing, and many other online practices.
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