Rezcontrol was proud to be invited to speak on this topic at Cumbria Tourism’s 50th anniversary ‘Future Trends and Innovation’ conference which took place earlier this month at the Low Wood Bay Hotel and Spa in Windermere. It was such a hit, we thought we’d make it the topic of this month’s blog!
Make your tech work harder for you
Hospitality employers are feeling the pinch. There are rising staff costs in terms of PAYE and NI; rising utility costs, while guests themselves may also need to make savings and therefore budget for shorter stays, or fewer frills. This makes selling rooms, as well as extras, all the more important, while saving time and staff cost where possible. The good news is, this is where technology is here to help.
“Take a step back and ask yourself: does your online presence and guest experience show your property at its best?”
Before getting into the nitty gritty of the technology itself, a bit of self-reflection is vital. Your website is the main window to your world, so does it reflect all you want it to? You might want to ask yourself:
- Is it attractive, true to your branding, easy to navigate and seamless to book?
- Do you track and monitor traffic, so you can see where guests are looking on the site to maximise the impact of those pages?
- Looking at your overall content, are you sure you’ve not missed any opportunities to target particular segments in your demographic with offers tailored to them?
- Are your systems and processes, from the website onwards, clear and easy to use, to ensure a streamlined guest experience and an efficient, effective staff one?
Advantages of hotel PMS technology in YOUR day-to-day
Used to its full capacity, your tech stack will:
- Showcase your business in its very best light while increasing visibility – helping to attract new customers and delight existing ones.
- Save time on admin, leaving you more time with your guests – guest communications can be automated, both for confirmations and marketing, while online processes save time at check in and check out, and revenue management and distribution technologies do the heavy lifting for you in terms of rate setting and channel management.
- Prevent costly mistakes by making the most of automation – automation, and other AI-related technologies, are manna from heaven for busy hoteliers. Whether it’s ensuring everything has been billed correctly, or knowing your pricing has been optimised for a busy festival in town – and more and more hotel guests are making a mini-break out of a festival or event – you can rest easy, knowing it has all been taken care of.
- Maximise your exposure without increasing your workload – make the most of hospitality PMS integrations such as SiteMinder to make sure you are visible on multiple channels, targeted to your guest base.
- Drive revenue and profitability through effortless upselling and price optimisation – RoomPriceGenie will ensure your rates are optmised, while you can make more of direct bookings and upsells with Rezcontrol’s new booking engine – see our September blog!
- Monitor business performance – reporting is available at the click of a button so you can track performance against KPIs, costs against revenue and margin, and see how you are pacing this year against historic years, or forecasting for the future.
- Staff and rota management – this is an area which causes most hoteliers headaches, especially with seasonal staff fluctuations, HR management, ongoing training needs in peak season, and so forth. Integrations like RotaReady can help take the pain away.
Where do technologies make the most difference?
Hospitality software solves a myriad of problems, as well as saving time and helping to increase revenue.
- Payments and accounting – having a system which handles multiple payment scenarios is key. Rezcontrol helps hotels to bring all their sales into one place and reconcile them accordingly, be it for room sales, F&B through the hotel POS, spa or events – and we are acquirer agnostic, so do not force our customers to go through specific ‘preferred suppliers’ who may be charging through the nose!
- Communications – your PMS can help with both the marketing communications such email campaigns, offers and updates – which can also be taken to an even deeper and more granular level by integrations with CRM providers such as FOR-Sight. Internally, instant communication and a live trail keeps the flow of tasks and information moving between team members and departments.
- Integrations bridge the gap between platform and the individual functions which are best served by APIs. Any good PMS will have numerous integrations, covering payments and POS, accounting and CRM, spa and events, gift voucher sales and reviews – but we go a step further and manage the relationships and support, cherry-picking the ones we know will serve our customers best. A great example here is the relationship between hotel PMS and hotel table booking platform, where if they are standalone systems, you can be left with an empty table if a room booking cancels, but if they are integrated, the associated table booking will automatically be freed up.
- Guest experience is largely guided by technology these days, and smooths the guest journey from the booking process and pre-arrival information to easy check-in and check-out, payments directly from room or restaurant table and the review process post-departure.
The relationships between the PMS platform itself and the range of integrations filling the gaps can best be shown visually, demonstrating the network of features and functionalities involved:
Food for thought
We’ll leave you this month with some food for thought in terms of the difference that hospitality software and technology and a great hotel PMS can make to your business:
- A hotel can increase revenue by 22% using a good revenue management platform (source: RoomPriceGenie)
- They can also save around ten hours a week through automation (source: RoomPriceGenie), or 30 mins per guest (source: Rezcontrol)
- The UK gift voucher market was worth £7bn last year. There are £3m unused gift vouchers in the UK in any year, and 6% of all restaurant vouchers go unused (source: Gift Card and Voucher Association – GCVA)
- If you use more than 5 channels, you can increase bookings by 40% (source: SiteMinder)
So don’t feel too down when you watch the news – talk to us, explore your options and see where you can save time and increase revenue by using the best combination of hotel technology for your business.
Not a customer? Call us on +44 (0)330 223 1456 or email sales@rezcontrol.com – or contact us for a demo.