Best Hotel Management Software
Best Hotel management software is a technology system that allows hotel owners to contour administrative functions and main operations such as room bookings, front office, sales and marketing, planning, and accounting system, etc. The system manages all day-to-day operations efficiently by offering overall guest experience from the beginning of guests’ online booking journey up to the completion of their stay and feedback about the brand once they return home.
The software covers all aspects of guest management services to engage, attract, and retain customers. Best Hotel management software can be integrated with back-office software like accounting, property management, or facility management solutions for maintenance and repairs. Hotel management technology continues to advance at a rapid pace and it is important for hoteliers to improve their overall hotel management system. Advanced hotel management solutions help hospitality companies with property management or back-office features. The Hotel management software automates several operating functions including Guest bookings, Guest details, Point of sale, Telephony, Accounts receivable, Sales and marketing, Banquets, and Event Management.
With the use of technology innovations in the hospitality business, customers expect much more than comfort such as online bookings, virtual check-in, and check-out, flexible services, using customers’ mobile devices as room keys, or in-room television remotes, etc. The Hospitality industry is changing more to cloud-based solutions over on-premise options because of its easy implementation and integrations.
Top 10 Best Hotel Management Software
- Oracle Hospitality OPERA Property Management System
- Quore
- Visual Matrix PMS
- RepUp Marketing Cloud
- Hotello - PMS
- Cloudbeds
- Atrium
- Hotelogix
- Backpack online
- Cerberus
Market Overview
The global hotel and hospitality management software is expected to grow USD 18.11 Billion by 2021, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 25.8%. The rapidly changing trends in technology and consumer behavior are expected to open new opportunities in the hospitality industry. The Hotel industry has been seen significant growth rates with a considerable CAGR for the last couple of decades. The hotel management software market has an influence on the global economic structure with a higher revenue share.
The Hotel Management market is classified based on its type includes -Hotel Operation Management System, Integrated Security System, Hotel Building Automation System, Guest Service Management System, and Integrated Communication Technology Solutions.
According to applications, the Hotel Management Software market is divided into Business Hotels, Heritage and Boutique Hotels, Resorts, and Spas.
In terms of revenue, business hotels dominated the market share. Business hotels distribute into the different building automation systems and mobile device-enabled technologies to offer an amazing experience to the guests. Business hotels primarily attend to business travelers, professional tour groups, individual tourists, and small conference groups. Business hotels provide unified communication capabilities to guests to conduct business meetings and conferences and connect to associates globally, thus attracting more number of guests.
The hotel building automation system is likely to hold the largest market share in the tourism and hospitality market. The hotel building automation software is impelled by the increasing demand for energy and facility-efficient methods. The hotel building technology has significantly changed in various disciplines such as building automation for the facility, managing emergency responses, optimizing building energy, managing parking, and water. The emergence of IoT has also a strong influence, which makes hospitalities smarter.
The on-demand deployment model is expected to grow at the highest CAGR because of its features such as agility, scalability, and easy integration. Most of the national and international, small and medium-sized hotels are expected to move towards the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) deployment model due to the reduced cost related with purchasing, servicing, and supplying of server-class machines. The cloud-based deployment also ensures the integrity of data back-up while minimizing the risk of expensive security breaches. Data privacy and security offered by cloud-based deployment is anticipated to provide growth opportunities mainly due to increasing adoption of on-premises application software for improving business productivity.
The guest service management system is predicted to grow due to the increasing demand for automated real-time optimized guest services and the rise of demographic growth in the near future.
As per the geographic analysis, the Europe region is expected to hold the largest market share in the best hotel management software due to its technological advancements, widespread adoption of new technologies, and robust internet infrastructure. The Asia Pacific region will offer several growth opportunities to hospitality software vendors because of the increasing adoption of cloud-based hotel management software. The key markets for hotel management software in the APAC region include China and Japan.
The growth rate of the tourism and hospitality management market is accelerated by increasing product demand, growing disposable incomes, innovative products, raw material affluence, and changing consumption technologies. The major driving factors for sudden demand in hospitality software include the growing demand for real-time optimized guest experience management, enticing revenue generation, low operational costs, and increasing adoption of IoT devices and energy management systems. The major benefit of using the hotel management solution is that it reduces the dependency on manual processes. The software efficiency may be hampered due to some factors such as power outages, virus attacks, and others thus restricting the market growth.
The competitive leadership mapping (Quadrant) showcased below provides information for the best Hotel Management software. Vendor evaluations are based on two broad categories: product offering and business strategy. Each category carries various criteria, based on which vendors have been evaluated. The evaluation criteria considered under product offerings include the breadth of offering, delivery (based on industries that the vendors cater to, deployment models and subscriptions), features/functionality, delivery, product quality and reliability, and product differentiation. The evaluation criteria considered under business strategy include geographic footprint (based on geographic presence), channel strategy and fit, vision alignment, and effectiveness of growth (based on innovations, partnerships, collaborations, and acquisitions).
Curate Proposals, CaterTrax, Total Party Planner, Caterease, and Oracle hospitality have been identified as visionary leaders in software.
The Hotel Management software in this category are:
The Hotel Management software in this category are:
The Hotel Management software in this category are:
Types of Hotel Management Systems
There are several types of hotel management systems available in the market. But the end goal of every hotel management solution is to run the hotel by offering an array of rich features. As every hotel is unique, the hotel management system varies from solution to solution and that may look different for every business. These include:
Property Management Systems - A property management system (PMS) or property management tool manages your day-to-day tasks such as accepting reservations, noting cancellations and creating daily manifest or customs documents. PMS tools cover all aspects of a hotel’s business from the front desk to the back office. It usually includes front office software and other special type breed solutions. A property management system is an essential tool to effectively run any size hotels in today’s travel industry.
Channel Managers– A channel manager allows hoteliers to connect with various agents. A distribution software program allows you to easily implement your distribution strategy. Maintaining partnerships with different types of agents in the hotel industry is important to survive in a competitive market. A channel manager helps you to create and implement a diverse distribution strategy that continuously aims for bookings.
Online Booking Engines– Online booking engines focus heavily on online booking features to maintaining the hospitality business. An online booking engine enables you to accept online bookings directly on your website. Payment gateways and billing features are also necessary technology components for hotel management.
Website Creators- Effective website creator provides travelers with a window about your property to lure guests to book with you. A website creator will use your website for SEO while allowing you to deliver a personalized experience with exciting visual and multimedia elements for your guests.
Pricing Tools– Pricing Tools help you to develop a more effective revenue management strategy, rather than manually changing each room service rates and calculating the revenue. Pricing Tools offer you an innovative tool to automate the process and minimize stress while increasing your revenue simultaneously.
Why use Hotel Management Software?
The travel and tourism industry is difficult to manage. The day-to-day operations of the hospitality business are complicated and involving many different individuals in many different roles. The chain hotels have many advantages such as marketing and sales-related activities over independent hotels. Despite the fact, hotel management software can balance and streamline the processes that were previously manual and required smooth communication with several different departments.
The hotels need many effective tools to smoothly function and operate their business on a greater revenue scale. The hotels may need reservation tools, accounting tools, marketing tools, hotel property management (PMS) tools, housekeeping tools, sales tools, and more. The best hotel management software is designed to meet some or all of these needs to ease the critical operations of the hotel and hospitality business. For example, if one tool handles both front desk check-in and housekeeping then the front desk workers will know in real-time which rooms are ready for new guests, rather than being forced to wait for guests until a certain time.
The greater advantage of using one tool for hotel management software is that it allows hoteliers to save both money and time. By using one tool that does the work of several tools, help the hotel management to save money as implementing one tool is much faster and quicker than implementing and integrating several. Hotel management is complex and involves a lot of risks, the hotel management solutions will help the hoteliers to ease some of those burdens.
Advantages of Hotel Management System
While selecting the right hotel management technology, you should consider several benefits that the system will offer. Hospitality industries always attract both domestic and international visitors and a significant number of visitors increasing every year. More guests mean more business transactions and more profit.
Technology plays a more important role in the daily operations of hotel management. Hotel technology is used across all departments to enhance the guest experience, streamline operations, and improve communication between staff and guests. The main objective of the hotel management solution is to take down the disadvantages of the manual operations of hotel management.
In the modern era of the digital age, hotel management software is used for different purposes, among them convenience, efficiency, accuracy, and monetary benefits matter the most. Following are the specific advantages associated with the use of hotel management software solutions–
1. Streamlined Processes
Hotel Management technology has the ability to streamline processes more efficiently from automating distribution tasks, share data across hotel chains to generating financial reports instantly. The software application can make almost everything with the potential to reduce down the instances of a processing error.
2. Minimize the time spent on administrative work
The software can minimize the amount of time spent on administrative tasks and allow you to focus more on the other side of the big picture. The hotel management system provides you a valuable data about your employee’s responsibilities and how this affects employee retention, satisfaction, and productivity. Hotel systems speed up the process that efficiently saves time and resources. They are designed to make the process fast, make more money, good customer experience, and convenient for hotel users.
3. Increased bookings
At the end of the day, what matters most is to increase your bookings in your hotel. This will be successful if you select the hotel management system whether it’s during off-season bookings or you want to expand your offerings to new market segments.
4. Reduced Costs
The hotel management system requires an initial investment for a long period. Further, the system can lead to significant cost-savings in the long run. The money can be saved due to less human involvement and in a number of other areas, that may require many day-to-day processes. Automation allows you to minimize the number of staff employment and reduce the number of working hours or simply obtain increased productivity in other areas.
5. Increase in brand presence
Hotel Management system assists you to increase your brand presence online. Hotel Management software that is integrated with your website builder, enables you to develop user-friendly websites, and accept direct online bookings. This process will increase your relevance in the search engine results and allow more travelers to search for your property during their online booking journey.
6. Form relationships with guests
Hotel software enables you to develop a better rapport with your target market segment, at the same time identifying new markets to tap into. The new technology will also allow you to reach out to new markets with an improved experience. With Hotel management software, hoteliers can track the types of visitors that usually have and from that data, they can check whether their business is targeting the right market.
7. Handle revenue management strategy
With the hotel management solution, you can implement a beneficial revenue management strategy. The feature-rich innovative pricing tools allow you to create a flexible room pricing strategy in order to maximize the revenue benefit that you generate per room criteria. Setting price for your room is the key to succeeding in this competitive industry, and these tools help you significantly to enjoy such rights. The revenue management system allows you to optimize pricing and distribution strategy based on past data, existing data in the books, and wider industry data to help you to precisely predict demand.
8. Improved Customer Experience
The Hotel management solution can significantly enhance the customer experience that you offer. However Many HMS solutions offer point-of-sale options and making payment for hotel services easier. The smart hotel systems for things like heating, air conditioning, and lights to be on and off automatically, increasing customer comfort and at the same time making the hotel more energy efficient.
9. Competitive Advantage
The most prominent and winning reason why you should use the hotel management technology is that you develop the capacity to gain a competitive advantage over your rivals. Many feature-rich software packages will offer you valuable real-time industry insights, enable you to be more competitive in terms of room rates, or package discounts.
Furthermore, the Hotel management system promotes good collaboration with various departments due to real-time reporting and display status. Hotels are designed to address the varying needs of their user’s preferences. The software helps you to build better relationships with customers, generate customer loyalty, attract more positive feedback, and save money that could be spent on other areas to increase profit.
Benefits of using Best Hotel management software
The hotel management software serves several purposes for both large hotel chains as well as independent hoteliers. These include:
The hotel management solution helps you to effectively and efficiently manage your bookings. The system automates the booking process, allowing you to free from back-office work and manually inputting bookings and focus more on interacting with your guests. It also helps you to minimize the risk of overbooking rooms.
Direct bookings are actively driving more tourists to your website. Nowadays, most travelers opt for online booking instead of calling and finalize bookings or with a travel agent. Direct bookings increase the revenue that you generate per booking. The only thing you need is software that integrates with an online booking engine.
Hotel management technology should allow you to easily build partnerships with different types of industry agents such as OTAs and GDSs, to survive in a competitive, global climate. Channel management allows you to create and implement a diverse distribution strategy that continually drives bookings.
The hotel website helps to increase your online presence. The hotel management system is only effective if your website is more attractive and leads more guests to reach out to your brand. With web editor or website creator, the hotel website can create a clean, appealing, and user-friendly approach and this will encourage guests to book at your property.
Hotel management system comes with a guest management system that enables hotels to strengthen their relationship with guests. With the best experience given to guests, they appreciate the hotel staff that in turn retains the staff as well as their guests.
The software automates various tasks that are recurring so that hotel management can concentrate on other important tasks. Automation of tasks definitely takes the best hotel management software to the next level and increases brand presence.
The hotel management system can be integrated with existing software like website builder software. Google also gives higher ranking to such websites that have more experiences from guests.
Another significant benefit of the hotel management system is market segmentation. The owners and managers are able to monitor the kind of visitors they have. From this data, they will determine if the right customers are targeting their marketing campaigns. This is an essential feature of the long term to increase business sales and profits.
Key features of Hotel Management Software
Hotel management software helps you to run your hotel better by boosting productivity and gain revenue. The power lies in its prominent features that work better to achieve the best business outcomes and reduce service lapses and make guests happier.
Intuitive Interface
If hotel management system is a difficult-to-navigate interface then that makes day-to-day operations hard to complete. A simple user-friendly hotel management tools are easy to use and learn. This makes run business smoother all around. The hotel owners also need to train new staff regularly.
Hotel Channel Manager
A channel manager coordinates and arranges how your inventory is distributed to online travel agencies (OTAs). The channel manager will update the availability on your calendar in real-time when integrated with hotel management software. It takes care of planning room availability and rates, managing bookings from multiple channels in one place, dashboards to easily relay information, etc.
The benefits of having a channel manager include more visibility and more guests, no more over-bookings, and greater control over your room rates and availability.
A channel manager helps you to connect to different OTAs (online travel agencies) that offer you the benefit of showing your property to a larger number of potential guests from around the world. Also, you can find smaller and more niche OTAs that will attract your ideal guest and charge less commission.
A channel manager offers you the ease and convenience of having all of your tools in sync. When you synchronize a channel manager with your hotel management software, you need not manually update your availability across multiple channels and having multiple logins to different extranets.
With a channel manager, hoteliers can set different pricing and availability on a per-channel basis. You have greater control over your rates and availability so you can rule over how to sell your property.
Booking
Hotel management system has an integrated booking engine that allows tourists to book their reservations themselves. The direct bookings with booking engine within your site also allow hotel management to control and offer more bundles and packages according to different guest interests. You can receive new bookings on your website 24/7 when you include a payment processor to bring incremental revenue to hotels. Internet booking enables guests to make reservations online also allows monitoring availability, changing reservations, and possibly making group bookings.
Cloud-based Hotel Management Software
The on-premise deployment includes hardware that you can physically touch. The hotels that invest in on-premise software need to invest in additional space to set this hardware. Bigger properties incline to invest in the on-premise setup as they have space and budget for additional hardware. Also, they have a legitimate fear of compromised data in the cloud.
Modern hotel management software is based on cloud applications. Cloud-based application technology (web-based/SaaS) is fast, affordable, and scalable. The software is very easy to update regularly than the on-premise (installed) system that needs expensive physical upgrades. Cloud-based HM Scan access all of your files, email, spreadsheets, your contacts, and even your calendar from anywhere with an internet connection. There is no need for a USB or a CD-ROM.
The web-based application does not require additional hardware. Cloud computing deployment requires no hardware and operates entirely through a computer or a tablet or smartphone. Only you need to have a strong internet connection to be able to access your system. The data can available instantly and you can also set up privacy settings in order to secure or hide certain data to be available to certain employees.
Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)
Online travel agencies are largely third-party booking sites. Integration with third-party platforms is important to keep your bookings structured. You can imagine a double booking of a room if one guest went through your website homepage for online booking and another went through third party OTAs. OTA integration can prevent and handle multiple third-party platforms any hotel can invest in multiple OTAs without the fear of potential overlap. In addition, you can monitor which OTAs are offering more benefits and positive reviews to your website ensuring that your investments are paying well.
Rich Integrations
The main feature of powerful hotel management software is the ability to connect with third-party integrations. Integrations include tools and services that can be linked to your HMS to get specific tasks done. The sales and marketing tools like CRM and SEO drive more sales and bring more customers to the hotel.
You can connect with many numbers of tools to help improve the guest experience, such as self-service check-in options and review requests, etc. For example, you could link a point of sale integration to your HMS and so your guests can easily charge purchases to their services. This integration-friendly approach allows hotel owners to empower their customers and fulfill their needs. You can easily connect to any preferred third-party solutions for strong and user-friendly technology in order to build more personal interactions with guests.
Guest Experience Management
Guest Experience Management is a broad concept that helps you to enhance your guests’ stay at your hotel. A guest profile tool can track guest information including their likes and preferences or any other specific requests they have made during their reservation. These guest profiles maintain guest history, enabling you to keep track of returning guest’s preferences. Furthermore, if they are returning guests; hotels can also give those rewards or discounts or some kind of thanking acknowledgment for choosing to stay at your hotel again. If your booking component deals with discounts and offers to maximize your revenue, this would also be a great way to attract more guests to your property.
Hotel revenue optimization
The revenue optimization technology can increase profits by automating some of your pricing decisions. The pricing can be adjusted intelligently to reflect demand in real-time. It’s not always workable to constantly adjust pricing manually. The pricing needs to be dynamic and it should consider factors like your competitor’s rates and local events that may affect your profits.
Secure Payment processing
Payment processing options vary across different solutions such as some international hotels (or the hotels that pull international guests) can accept multiple currencies and additional security factors to prevent a data breach of sensitive customer information. The payment option facilitates an easy way to your checkout process.
An insecure internet connection or a payment processor can invite most vulnerable hackers that put sensitive personal guest information at risk including debit and credit cards information, bank accounts detail, etc. The guests also check and prefer a hotel that has a secure payment processor is one of their top priorities.
Robust reporting
The software is effectively programmed to prevent duplicate entries and wrong data type inputs. The detailed reports provide you with more clarity over your business efforts. The reporting enables hoteliers to make data-driven decisions to improve operations and use proper marketing strategies for more profit. The best hotel management software helps hotels to make smart decisions. The comprehensive reports provide visibility about your property’s finances, daily activities, analytics, and more. Dynamic reporting can filter data by marketing channel, room type, year, specials, and other key parameters. Reporting on key metrics also tells you how much revenue each OTA generated and with this, you can gain control of your distribution channel and strategies.
Maintenance Management or Housekeeping
The best hotel management software can actually help you to track rooms that need cleaning or preparation before guest arrival. You can also track the number of rooms that are cleaned on a given day. The front desk features are open but you need to take care of the software for housekeeping and maintenance. Always, there is a great complaint of housekeeping staff that they don’t have enough time to thoroughly clean each room, resulting in a less sanitary settlement. Hotel management software can keep track of areas that need attention for future repairs or checkups to ensure that everything is running efficiently and effectively.
Reviews Management
According to a survey, 88% of consumers always go and prefer online reviews as much as personal recommendations. The consumers trust reviews more in case if it is positive. Many hotels opt for reviews on third-party platforms and if it includes them on their homepage to reaffirm the quality of service, it shows that they value all feedback. The positive reviews attract more guests to your door even if you have a few negative reviews. Few negative reviews will not matter most if you have enough positive reviews. This makes your negative reviews seem more like outliers in offering an overall guest experience.
Tips for selecting the Hotel Management Software
For hotels, finding the right software to run hotel management effectively and is extremely important. A suitable software solution helps hotels to provide prima guest experience at affordable costs. Installing hotel management software is an expensive matter, hoteliers need to look at their hotel's future needs and areas of operation to ensure the software can benefit them in the long run.
Choosing the best hotel management software starts with identifying the features that you want and need. There are many options available, some of which offer one or two features and some technology needs to integrate with others to offer all the features that a customer expectations. It is always beneficial to look for a solution that integrates all features, so hotels can optimize their efficiency and increase return on investment.
The hotel management technology needs to work for your business, and not against it. Free demo is the only way that tells you have found the right technology solution for your business. With a free demo, you can see how the software works for yourself and offer you the ability to focus on the big picture.
ERP in the hospitality industry is still emerging and it provides several benefits for smooth seamless use of technology, automation, greater visibility into hotel operations, reduced revenue leakages, optimized use of manpower, and higher resultant profits. Any hotel cannot afford downtime, and so it is important to ensure ERP providers should deliver high-quality customer support in minimum requirements more precisely.
Here is the checklist or list of a few questions that need to consider while choosing the best hotel management software:
After checking adaptability, expandability and scalability of best hotel management software it is important to check these points with the vendor before investing-
Why is the software required in my hotel?
Here you can check how the hotel management software is going to benefit your hotel. Check if it helps in improving staff efficiency and gives high ROI.
Are other users satisfied with the software you are selecting?
Check if the software is easy to use and has automatic upgrades. Ensure that software has a good amount of reviews and user experience is positive.
Is this software flexible?
Ensure that the hotel management solution is flexible enough to grow along with the growth of your hotel. Highly advanced software is always beneficial.
What other tasks can the software automate?
Automation is always helpful for any industry. If it is for the hotel industry then it is cherry on the cake. You need to check if it can optimize other tasks that are done manually so that the management team can focus on growing the brand.
Is it affordable?
Affordability is definitely an important factor when making any kind of investment. Therefore, before investing you need to forecast your ROI and check for competitive pricing available in the best hotel management software industry. While calculating ROI ensure that you also consider the time that will be saved with this software.
Trends in Hotel Management Software
Technology is the next way and it has changed everything about the future. The hotel and hospitality industry is seeing more tech trends in both IoT (Internet of Things) and AI (Artificial Intelligence). The industry is adapting quickly from digital display usage to modernized conference rooms, to mobile integration, and much more. The hotel industry is reshaping from communications and guest experience to cost savings, and from revenue opportunities to enhanced methods of operation. The use of robotics, the use of blockchain for a variety of purposes including payment in cryptocurrencies, and increased use of biometrics for security are the other technology hospitality trends that are emerging.
Artificial intelligence in the best hotel management software provides insights about guest behavior and trends. It will also find opportunities for increased efficiency. AI with chatbots also benefits to customer service, freeing up time to focus on guests.
The Mobile check-in allows guests to check-in themselves about room availability, room reservations, and remote check-in. Mobile phones are also used in some hotels as room keys. Many hotels may also replace room phones with a customer’s own mobile phone, allowing them to chat or text with hotel staff rather than calling the front desk. Some small hotels now offer guest-facing apps to order the room service or drinks at the poolside.
Mobile Technology also allows their guests to use their mobiles for elevator floor selection. The mobile phone device can also control room lighting, opening, and control temperature closing curtains, playing music, or selecting a TV program. At present, hotel industries are using mobile phones to facilitate frictionless transactions that get through a combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning, biometrics, voice recognition, and blockchain.
Free Wi-Fi has made a significant impact on the hospitality industry over the past few years. Hotels are offering fast, reliable, and free onsite Wi-Fi almost everywhere and a recent survey shows that 65% of hotel guests are using the Wi-Fi within the minutes of arrival. This suggests that it has become almost important than anything else to more number of guests.
A connected guest experience begins with facial recognition technology that allows hotel staff to greet guests by name and being attentive about their preferences. Use of AI for smart reserved parking and personalized assistance helps to enhance guests’ experience and set a hotel apart from their competitors
Virtual reality (VR) enables viewers to get detailed ideas about the hotel property before they book, and it is also found that visiting a destination virtually makes users more interested in visiting in real life.
Creating augmented environments such as the ability to redecorate the room or watch famous celebrities at the next table, also growing in popularity in the hospitality industry.
Conclusion
Nearly all of these opportunities result in data, which is another trend that transferring the entire hospitality industry. If hotel owners will entirely rely on human capital, they may be losing more than gaining. The hoteliers need to act fast accordingly and if you do not, you may discover that your operations are uncertain when it is too late.
Best Hotel Management Software
