Like all industries, hospitality is excelling through the introduction of new software systems into its processes, making daily activities more efficient than paper-based and traditional process. This allows entities such as hotels to cut down on admin tasks so they can focus on the more important tasks at hand, i.e. its customers. In this article we’ll run through the types of software that are taking hotels to the next level across various departments and the benefits of each.
With the introduction of HMS, hotels have been able to automate daily admin tasks, allowing them to focus more on the customer-facing operations that define their establishment.
Why Do You Need Hospitality Software?
Service-oriented businesses have a lot of data to manage across both tangible and intangible aspects of their operations. Hospitality software streamlines the collection, assessment, use, and sharing of this data.
On the physical side of service, there are items like glasses, plates, flatware, and towels to maintain. On the immaterial side, there are aspects like secure payments and excellent customer service, which helps prevent a dine and dash.
If your business doesn’t have a central tool for these ongoing tasks, you risk inaccurate or missing data. This can lead to incorrect calculations when reviewing your inventory turnover ratio, shrinkage, and inventory forecasting.
Hospitality Software
A hotels operations have become increasingly more streamlined in recent years. It’s essential that the core processes are being adapted and improved constantly to remain competitive in the hospitality industry. These core operations include web booking engine software, a front desk system, billing and invoicing software and employee scheduling software.
Hotel Booking Engine Software
Your hotel booking engine is the first landing area your potential customers will have with your hotel. Due to this, its essential that you leave a good first impression both aesthetically and operationally. A fully featured hotel booking engine software will give them the power to choose the options they most want in an easy to use and intuitive format. Providing these options also gives you a great opportunity to upsell the customer with ancillary items. This is where having a complete hotel hospitality management system is necessary.
With a booking software in place you can dictate what offerings of the hotel are portrayed and how they are shown to the potential guest, as opposed to a third party site in which you have little control. With all of the data collected about the guest journey available in the one system, algorithms can help you identify ways to appeal to different guest-segments and vastly improve the ROI from your hotel booking system.
Billing and Invoicing Software
From the moment a guest arrives into the hotel until the moment they leave, its essential that all payments are totaled up accurately to provide them with the correct bill/ invoice at the end of their stay. This is a very difficult task as the guest can occur payments from various different areas of the hotel throughout their stay.
The front and back of house need to be able to access all the payments regarding each individual staying at the hotel in an instant, without the use of paper- based bills. Along with their bill it must be clear and easy to view information screens containing important guest billing information such as:
- Name
- Room number
- Invoice number
- Balance
- Payments
- Deposits
- A Front Of House System
Your front of house team are the face of the hotel from the guests perspective. Any questions that a guest has about your hotel will go to the front desk to get it answered. Whether it be regarding facilities, a booking or information on the surrounding area, the team must be available to help the guest at any time. For this reason it is essential that they are equipped with the appropriate software to aid them due to the wide variety of tasks that front desk is in charge of.
Instead of having to call different departments or switch between different software program, in order to accommodate the guests, your staff will be able to quickly access everything from one location. Whether your guest wants to book an appointment at the spa or be reminded of which room they are in, it can all be handled from one software package.
Scheduling Software
Banquet managers are a prime example of people who have a difficult time creating weekly schedules for subordinates. With the large amount of staff in which they over-look being predominantly young professionals, managers have to work around their schedules as many are studying. Chopping and changing the roster is a tedious task, especially if they are using something along the lines of an excel spreadsheet. With the introduction of software, managers can seamlessly create schedules for its employees, mitigating the weekly headaches of scheduling and re-scheduling employees, with sick calls and dropouts being the norm in this specific department.
The adoption of systems such as Celayix for hospitality businesses can allow companies to cut down on heavy admin duties and focus on more pressing issues such as looking after guests and improving their experience. With the integration of AI into the Celayix platform, schedules can become an automated processes for hospitality managers allowing them to cut the time it takes to create a shift schedule by 95%.
Software is continually changing the way hospitality operates. In order to stay competitive, its critical for hotels to stay on top of software trends in the market such as the three highlighted above. With the adoption of new technology, hotels can make their processes more streamlined and efficient whether it be front of house, back of house or management. New software allows them to cut out tedious admin processes such as scheduling, phone reservations and billing and focus on the customers needs instead.
