Best Hotel Management Software

About Hotel Management Software

The best hotel management software is the ultimate management solution to maintain hospitality and customer relationship management by a hotel. A hotel management system can manage rooms to engage with guests in the hospitality industry like restaurants, hotels, lodges, suites, resorts, etc.

Features like front office, POS, inventory, payroll, internet hotel booking software, hotel billing software, and interfaces contribute to the best HMS hotel software solutions, making it a full-fledged system that becomes the backbone of any hotel.

What is Hotel Management Software?

Hotel management software is a computer program that helps automate all your hotel-related tasks from the front desk to booking, billing, and revenue management.

A property management system in hotel software will take care of the online hotel reservation system and other administrative tasks. Some of the most critical functions that a hotel PMS software will carry out are front-desk operations, reservations, channel management, housekeeping, rate and occupancy management, payment processing, etc. In addition, the hotel PMS software is also responsible for controlling booking and financial transactions. Besides these, it also helps you to manage housekeeping and perform HR-related functions.

Hotel Property Management systems are used by big hotel chains, small hostels, cottages, resorts, rentals, etc. Using this hotel front desk software, hoteliers can see the booking status of rooms and control reservations. However, their functionality doesn't end here. Using hotel PMS software, hoteliers can also manage back-office operations, food and beverage services, and track room occupation rates.

Benefits of Hotel Management Software

The hotel billing software provides the following benefits for a hotel organization:

1. Centralized Control

Hotel software delivers centralized control. The hotel manager can regulate all the small hotel software modules easily from a single interface. This helps him govern all the daily functioning of the hotel. The everyday happening in each unit of the hotel can be observed in real-time and improved if required. Most hotel management software has the feature of customization, allowing the users to make changes or add more features as per their requirements.

2. Dependable System

Another main reason for using small hotel management software is that it brings in a reliable system that eliminates human flaws. Glitches such as dual bookings can create grave issues if reservations are logged on paper. With online hotel reservation software systems, this is no longer an issue! All tickets are instantly and digitally documented with hotel reservation management software.

3. Added Convenience

The software can make the procedure of bookings far more appropriate for people looking for rooms. They can check which rooms are available and then make a reservation. The hotel management app helps people pick a room with the facilities they require. It also allows global guests to make a reservation without incurring the charges of a transnational phone call.

4. Stress-free Generation of Invoices and Reports

Cloud-based hotel software records reservations, guests, transactions, invoices, etc. It allows for the safekeeping of records and accounts, thereby easing the process of generating reports. Hotel software efficiently produces invoices. Creating accurate and real-time reports is a breeze with this software.

5. Easy To Use

The software is straightforward to use, without any need for training. The interface is automatic, with online booking systems that are cool for visitors to handle. Also, the hotel staff can manage internal software systems with no trouble. Multi-user options make hotel billing software user-friendly and enable coordination between different departments or teams. Cloud-based hotel management software assists hotel employees to work more professionally with less stress and improves hotel productivity at the same time.

6. Simplified Processes

A hotel management solution helps you streamline a wide range of procedures. These include generating financial reports, automating distribution tasks, updating occupied or empty room status, and more. Using hotel software helps you simplify these processes and make them more efficient.

Hotel software provides powerful automation features hotel booking engine that enables you to facilitate several operations without the need for manual intervention of the hotel staff. These solutions help you share data across floors and even different hotel chains to eliminate any roadblocks.

7. Reduced Expenses

A hotel management system might be a significant initial investment; it would surely provide you with cost savings and increased revenue in the long term. These tools reduce or even eliminate human involvement in most daily operations, which helps you cut down your staff requirements and costs.

Labor costs make up for a large share of expenses in the hotel industry, and automation enables you to reduce the size of the staff and their working hours. Besides, hotel management solutions also provide improved distribution capabilities, which helps channel managers save on distribution costs.

8. Increased Revenue

Apart from helping you save on labor, distribution, and other operational costs, a hotel management system also enables you to increase your earnings. These solutions help you optimize delivery and pricing; you can access current and past industry data to make accurate demand and price predictions.

Hotel software also helps you analyze customer data and create customized deals and offers. Moreover, distribution channel managers can provide you with transparent visibility and availability across all channels of distribution. You can increase your revenue further by effectively using hotel management software to create a demand for your hotel rooms.

9. Enhanced Customer Experience

While customer satisfaction is the "holy grail" for business success in all industries, its relevance multiplies by several times in the hotel and hospitality sectors. From providing a seamless booking experience to welcoming, serving, and providing a smooth exit to your guests, hotel owners need to act upon many aspects to ensure their customers are satisfied with their services.

Hotel wifi management software is a beneficial tool in providing a better customer experience. It allows your customers to use mobile check-in and check-out, which provides them with easy arrivals and departures.

Some advanced hotel management solutions also offer point-of-sale features that help you collect online payments. If you have implemented smart hotel automation technology, you can control air conditioning, temperature, and lights with your hotel software.

10. Edge Over Your Competitors

If none of the above reasons have convinced you to use hotel management software, this one surely will. These solutions provide you with a significant advantage over your competitors. For starters, you get access to real-time industry insights, including room rates and demand, which enable you to set competitive prices and offer strategic discounts.

Besides, these solutions allow you to map customer journeys, improve a better customer experience, receive positive feedback, attract loyal customers, and build better relationships with them. You also get a chance to save money, which you can spend on core operations to outshine and overtake your competitors.

Hotel Management Software Features

1. Dashboard

After signing into the hotel management software, the first thing that you should see is a friendly, helpful dashboard. The panel will give you a snapshot of all the activities that are taking place in your hotel. In addition, it will provide you with information such as occupancy, number of check-ins-checkouts, vacant rooms, staff availability, etc.

2. Direct Booking Support

Online distribution channels can help you increase your business, but they come at a cost, and these costs increase as the commission percentage increases. But if somehow a traveler manages to find your website, you can easily capture their direct booking. Customers are longer willing to fill out an inquiry form and wait for you to revert. A good booking engine in your hotel billing software will allow your guest to research different options, check availability, complete payment, and receive information all in one session.

Even large hotel chains with solid relationships with online travel agencies have made a massive push toward a direct booking engine in the past couple of years.

3. Best Available Rates (BAR)

BAR helps you to control your rate plans. Using BAR functionality, you can manage promotions and employee rates and respond quickly to market conditions. Your hotel management software should be efficient enough to provide BAR based on different seasons, i.e., set them higher for busy seasons and vice versa.

If you have BAR functionality in your online hotel management system, you don't have to worry about manually changing every single rate. Instead, you can set the prices you want for a certain period and then leave it like that.

Along with the BAR, the hotel billing software makes it easy for you to change rates and packages easily. So creating promotional codes and special allowances should be no big deal.

4. Housekeeping and Maintenance

You must be wondering what hotel front desk software has to do with housekeeping and maintenance.

Using Hotel front desk software, you can keep track of rooms needing cleaning or other preparations before the guests arrive. Not only this but it is also used to keep track of places cleaned on a given day.

Talking about maintenance, hotel management software keeps track of areas that need attention and schedules future repairs to ensure that plumbing and electricity are running effectively and efficiently. In addition, the hotel software combines housekeeping and timekeeping, ensuring that the services are provided to the guests in an orderly fashion and helps the manager keep the hotel's efforts streamlined in the right direction.

5. Reporting

A reporting module is a must for any hotel management software. Many reports are mandatory for a hotel to run every night. These are divided into three categories.

a) Production Reports

It helps you understand how your online hotel management system operates per rate plan, Distribution channel, ADR, and occupancy Calculations. The reports are used to make strategic decisions based on distribution pricing etc.

b) Financial Reports

They report revenues, taxes, commissions, net income, etc. These reports will help you understand what money is coming in and going out. They are also used for tax and government reporting purposes.

c) Daily Activity Reports 

Arrival, departure, and in-house reports keep track of guests and help run a smooth operation.

6. Shared Inventory

Shared inventory allows you to sell stock in different formats. For example, you can sell the same private room in multiple different room types. The whole purpose of this tool is to sell the same private room as various room types. You don't always know what is demand for a room with two queens or a king or a deluxe room. Shared inventory feature in your hotel information system. It will help your cater to the offers the market is looking for.

7. Customer Database

Some of the best online hotel reservation systems will also act as a primary customer database management system. Your previous guest information can be a great treasure that a lot of properties neglect to use. You can be in constant touch with your last guest via email and update them about local happenings, discounts, and other relevant information.

If your property is good enough, this technique will definitely help you get a significant amount of returning guests. Having customer profiles will help keep track of their personal information, which will make their stay even better.

8. Hotel Reservations and Front Desk Support

Hotel check-in software is more accessible these days to check in and out of hotels because the software gives a quick guide to room availability and other details related to charges. Also, the general information about the hotel facilities can be seen in a jiffy with the help of hotel management software.

9. Payment Gateway

Hotel software solutions help managers to accept payments from customers via credit/debit cards. This is automatically updated to their financial database also as well as the guest's information.

Hotels generate bills and invoices that have many details attached to them. The best hotel software system that keeps a check on the guests' usage of facilities and combines it into the invoice becomes ideal. Also, if the software helps in the financial aspects through payment gateways of the hotels makes it a boon for the hotel managers.

10. Gift Coupons/Certificates

Customers can redeem their gift coupons/certificates quickly without the problem of tallying the expenses. The hospitality management software immediately recognizes the value of the tokens and makes adjustments accordingly. The software also helps in making gift coupons/certificates for valued clients.

11. Employee and Manager Details

Once the details of the employees are fed into the software, it can be useful for several purposes. The manager can assign duties according to the list; they can interchange the functions when required and even get the contact details of the employee(s) in case of emergency. The hotel software systems also help in making employee identification cards. The salary of the employees can be checked and even updated from time to time. Receipts of salary payments are also obtained from the software.

As in the case of employees, even the details of the managers are updated. The managers are also issued their identification cards.

12. Retail Support

Certain hotels also need retail inventories for keeping a list of their housekeeping and food items. Most hotel software systems have an integrated retail inventory that makes the hotel management system process much more manageable.

13. Restaurant Management

Hotels that have their restaurant need the restaurant details specifically. This involves invoices, billings, and even inventory listing. Hotel management software that has this separate area within its software package can immensely benefit the hotels.

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Hotel Management Software

1. Ease of Use

The interface of the hotel information system shouldn't be too complicated to use and integrate. The easiness of the user interface will determine your employees' learning curve.

2. Customer Support

Anything can happen to hotel management software at any time. The system may hang up, or there is a server breakdown. All these issues should not affect the hotel service. Make sure you have 24*7 technical support. Before making the final call, check for the reviews, and try contacting the hotel owners who have already used the software in the past.

3. Customization

Based on the size and type of property, the online hotel management system requirement may differ. It may be possible that you may need every bed-based management system instead of a room-based in the front office module. That's why it is essential to make sure that the hotel billing software vendor provides us with such kind of functionality.

4. Integration Options

If you are already using a system for your hotel, or if you are planning to integrate any additional software, make sure your vendor provides all the necessary API and is ready to offer integration services. Say, for example, if you are using CRM software, then it should be easy to integrate it with your hotel management software.

4 Types of Hotel Management Software

There are four types of Hotel Management Software:

1. Property Management Systems

Hotel property management systems are responsible for managing day-to-day activities such as accepting reservations, canceling reservations, and creating daily manifests. Therefore, it is a valuable tool to run a hotel of any size.

2. Channel Managers

A channel manager is a hotel software that will help hotel owners to connect with various agents. These agents have real-time information about the availability of rooms based on these. As a result, they can resell your rooms with greater efficiency for a commission.

3. Online Booking Engines 

These are a particular type of hotel information system that will help you accept bookings directly from the website using hotel online booking engine software. It is a mandatory component for almost every hotel type.

4. Pricing Tools

Pricing tools help you to develop an effective revenue management strategy. You no longer have to worry about changing the rates manually or calculating the revenue that should be generated in each room. You can use these innovative pricing tools to automate the process and eliminate those tedious tasks.

What are the Modules of Hotel Management Software?

Hotel information software has modules that cover several facets of hotel management. This mainly includes tracking reservations, hotel bookings, room service, housekeeping, inventory management, and accounting. Right hotel management technology will save a lot of time and money by streamlining these processes. Explained below are some modules of the software:

1. Administration

This module of hotel billing software permits the customization and arrangement of the hotel. Here's what all comes under the canopy of the administration module: 

• Management of room types and features with hotel room management software

• Allocation of permission status

• Set dates

• Payment choices

• Set charges by room type

• Adding, editing, and disabling staff

• Managing inventory

• Set tax rates

2. Housekeeping

The housekeeping or front desk module of hotel management software is where the maximum day-to-day operation takes place. The following tasks are a part of this module:

• Managing reservation

• Accounting for financial transactions

• Reservations

• Accessing guest reports to check bookings

• Print check-in cards for guests

• Check-in guests as they arrive

• Check out guest

• Billing

3. Hotel Reservation Systems

For any hotel, the most significant feature of hotel booking software is the management of reservations. Sound hotel information system shows the following information:

• Which rooms are available for reservations?

• When are the clients arriving and departing?

• Available rates

The hotel management software ensures that the reservations are precise so that the administrative personnel can avoid awkward slip-ups and overbookings.

4. Deposits

With reservations, arrive the need for deposits. If a hotel grosses a deposit to secure the booking, this must be imitated on the guest invoice. This is where the hotel billing software comes into the picture. It keeps a check on the reservations with deposits and also unconfirmed bookings. This permits the administrative personnel to keep the financials and transactions accurate. 

5. POS

The online hotel software also comes with an in-built point of sale software. This system tracks the sales which take place within the hotel. For example, if a customer purchases stuff from the gift shop located inside the hotel, this software will follow it. It will then generate receipts and help the administrative personnel in executing the billing successfully.

6. Reporting

The top hotel management software also easily handles the Reporting feature. This includes:

• The forthcoming bookings

• The rooms in use

• The deposits paid

• The occupancy rate

• The existing month's sales

These reports are useful for the profit and loss statements and allow the housekeeping personnel to define checked-out rooms and the rooms with guests. This guarantees that all the rooms are cleaned decorously without any hassle.

Challenges Can Face While Implementation Hotel Management Software

The existing hotel management systems rely on manual work, which makes their implementation challenging.

Here are a few challenges you might face while using a hotel management system.

1. Manual Work Required

Despite installing hotel software, you'll need to assign a team to monitor your hotel activities continually. For instance, if a customer inquiry comes up, you'll need to manually attend it and respond to it as soon as possible.

2. Lack of Technical Proficiency

Though modern-day hotel management courses have begun providing knowledge regarding hotel software systems, almost the entire hotel staff comes from a non-tech background. Therefore, it could be a hurdle for them to adapt to a technological transformation.

3. Security Risks

As with any software, security can be a significant concern. If you opt for cloud-based hotel management software, you'll be risking your customers' personal information, which may include addresses, contact information, and payment details.

4. User Interface Hurdles

Not many hotel management solutions have a user-friendly interface. Unless your staff is full of techies, they'll face problems using the software. To overcome this hurdle, you'll need to provide thorough training to your team, which will cost time and resources.

5. Hefty Deployment Costs

You can mitigate security risks by implementing on-premise hotel management software. However, on-premise tools are costly and require a considerable upfront investment. In addition to end-user license costs, you might also need to spend money on installation, updates, and maintenance.

6. Third-party OTA Challenges

Most customers book hotels from online travel agencies (OTAs), like Booking.com, Expedia, and TripAdvisor. To get more customers, you'll need to partner with the major OTAs. Hotel management solutions, unfortunately, don't go well with online booking sites. Different OTAs have different data, booking, and commission policies, which can pose a challenge for you when using a travel agency solution.

Market Trends in Hotel Management Software

Over the past decade, the hotel industry revolution has witnessed the rise of a new generation of hotel management solutions. Cloud-based, agile, flexible, and cost-effective platforms have become the new normal. Yet, most hoteliers prefer sticking to tried-and-tested and a bit outdated, traditional hotel management systems.

However, things seem to look up as hotels across the world have increased their IT expenditure. This is evident as the global hotel management software market is expected to surge to approximately $4,300 million by 2022.

But what's driving this change? Let's find out by looking at the latest market trends in the hotel management software industry.

1. Cloud

The rise of cloud technology is apparent. It offers remote access, reduces operational costs, and enables seamless scalability. In the year 2020, more hoteliers than ever are likely to shift to the cloud to alleviate their costs and increase business efficiency.

2. Mobility

Cloud technology also paves the way for mobility, another crucial trend to watch out for this year. With mobility solutions, hotel owners can access hotel operations anytime and from anywhere.

3. Guest Engagement

Modern-day HMS solutions can go beyond the conventional collection of guest information that includes nothing but names and addresses. Hotel managers are now able to consolidate preference data and guest stays information in one place. This offers real-time insight into the guests' staying and spending habits, enabling hoteliers to promote targeted offers.

4. Integration Capabilities

Traditional HMS systems had zero or limited integration capabilities that limited hoteliers from working with other vendors. With cloud-based hotel software solutions, you can connect and integrate with other software applications, like CRM, ERP, accounting software, and more, for enhanced business productivity.

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