Choose the Right PMS for Your Hotel with These Tips

Today, technology advances at an incredible speed.

The determining factor for hoteliers when choosing to invest in hotel software is its positive return on investment (ROI). There are many different software programs, and it can be a difficult and tedious task finding the ideal Property Management Software (PMS) solution. The key to selecting the right PMS is to understand what your hotel needs. It’s also important to consider solutions that have flexible models that can adapt to dynamic market situations.

A PMS acts like the brain behind a hotel’s entire operation. That’s why it’s important not to rush the process. Choosing the wrong PMS can have a tremendous negative impact on your hotel. Based on your hotel’s needs, you can opt for some features or others. A PMS should be flexible enough to accommodate the specific needs that your hotel has, such as the option to integrate a Revenue Management tool. We understand how daunting and important it is selecting the right PMS solution for your property, so we’ve prepared a brief guideline to help you with this process:

• Distribution. Hotels can offer a great guest experience, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will achieve the desired level of occupancy. Today, a cloud-based PMS allows you to connect your hotel with online travel agencies and a Global Distribution System (GDS), giving your hotel visibility to millions of potential travelers via hotel room availability. Ideally, you should choose a PMS solution that offers the easiest and quickest integration, since data will be exchanged and updated with more ease.

• Productivity. For smaller hotels with modest budgets, it’s especially important to capitalize on resources. Automating management tasks related to bookings or billing frees hotel staff from mechanical tasks and allows them to focus more on customer satisfaction and offer a more personalized service. The aim is to increase efficiency and minimize human error in time-sensitive processes associated with management and guests.
  

• Savings. Technological costs can greatly affect a hotel’s economic capacity, and even reduce department budgets. Cloud-based PMS solutions allow hoteliers to use the software even when hotels don’t have the infrastructure to host or develop the program. Service costs, that cover maintenance and training, will make it easier for hotels to use this cloud-based application.

• Profitability. Most companies that develop products such as PMS solutions also offer other services for hotel sales and distribution such as booking engines, revenue management solutions or Channel Managers. If you’re developing your hotel’s direct booking strategy, take advantage of these services offered to avoid intermediaries like OTAS and metasearch engines.

• Scalability. A cloud-based PMS adapts to your hotel’s necessities and allows you to make updates. For instance, you can choose to add additional properties or increase the number of hotel rooms. The solution also makes it easier for you to manage your property’s growth and significantly reduces expenses associated with scaling your business, since there is no additional cost for adding new properties.  

• Business model. The most important part of buying a PMS is adapting your hotel’s needs to the solution’s business model. Hotel PMS is a critical business operations system that will help your hotel deliver a seamless guest experience and increase profitability.

• Upgraded features. It’s still quite complex to fully track a potential guest’s behavior, one important reason why a PMS should be able to adapt to the market and provide real solutions. A good PMS needs to seamlessly adapt to changes as quickly as they arise. This is especially true for target markets like Millennials. Inbound marketing systems or channels like Whatsapp help improve guest interaction with your hotel, and can be easily managed with a PMS, allowing you to quantify parameters.

• Guest satisfaction. This is probably the most important part of any business in hospitality. The efficiency of a property’s management greatly influences the level of guest satisfaction. For hoteliers, it’s important to gather and organize all hotel guest records. The more you know about your guests, the better equipped you’ll be to offer a more personalized guest experience, helping you gain a competitive edge.
  

Technology adapts to our lives and we adapt to it. Although hoteliers can now automate a great number of daily tasks, the human element still determines a product’s success, especially in management and guest treatment. BEONx works alongside world leaders in the hospitality industry and continuously works hard to innovate, educate, and provide the best resources to its clients.