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Description: Hotel management software is everything you need to improve your hospitality business processes. Why? Find out in our simple guide.

Hotel management software often becomes a great asset to the modern hospitality business. Still, lots of ready-made solutions offer complex interfaces, low functionality, and a bunch of unnecessary features. That's why more and more companies tend to develop software specifically for their business needs.

In our article, I'm going to cover main functions of a hotel management system, explain what technologies are used for its development and explain why your business can run twice as effective with a top-rated HMS.

Hotel Management Modules and Features

Hotel management software implies a complex system that is often split into modules according to the role they perform. Basically, they can be divided into 4 groups:

  • Reservation module
  • Analytical features
  • Housekeeping
  • Customer relationship management

Now let's review these modules in details, paying attention to their main features.

Reservation Module

Customers mainly start interacting with hotels not with checking-in but making a reservation. This module allows hotel staff to add and store customers' reservation details like check-in and check-out days, clients' preferences, number of people to expect, etc. Most popular features of this module include:

Booking engine. As more and more people tend to book rooms online, booking is one of the most important HMS features. This is how it works: when guests are booking a room on a hotel's website, the system shows available rooms and possible check-in dates. Once the details are selected, customers can make payments via various means (credit card, PayPal, Stripe and more). Finally, after the booking completion, the details are transferred to hotel staff to review.

Reservation processes. Once the customers finish booking, HMS automatically marks the number of days they stay for as taken. Hotel staff can review and edit these details - change the number of dates, add transportation means or exclusive services, etc.

Channel management. Services like TripAdvisor and Booking.com are extremely popular these days. They are called Online Travel Agencies (OTA) and are widely used in the hospitality sphere. OTAs are integrated with HMS systems to show up-to-date information over all distribution channels. Thus, customers can book rooms not only from the hotel's website but from OTAs as well.

Analytical Features

It doesn't matter if hotel owners run small or large-sized business - they need to track income and expenditures in any case. That's why they should be able to draw a report at the end of a specific period, keeping finances under control.

Revenue management.Using the feature, it's simple to monitor the financial situations and understand when there's the time to take actions and maximize profitability. By monitoring everyday income and expenses, hoteliers can easily find out what led to gains or downfalls.

Building reports.Forget about building reports in Excel - generating reports via HMS is fast and simple. In addition, it's easy to collect information about any metrics you'd like to check like staff performance, OTA results, guests statistics, and more.

Staff Management Elements

Working in the hospitality industry means watching over both external and internal clients. With a well-designed HMS, it's extremely easy to monitor the agenda or contact employees.

Tasks delivery. In order to run a business, managers certainly need to assign tasks to their employees, and hospitality services are no different. HMS helps with the assignment and process monitoring as well as plays the role of an effective communication means.

Back-office management.In order to keep all the relevant details about employees, hotel managers integrate their HMS with staff management channels. This way, they can add information about current shifts, salaries, sick leaves, and days-off of their staff members and simply review it when necessary.

Interactions with Customers

Finally, let's get down to the most important part - engaging customers. Mind that by checking your guests' reviews and adapting services to their wishes you can greatly improve their loyalty.

Customers data management. Currently, the most successful businesses learned to personalize their customers' experience offering them services according to their taste. And an HMS is a great resource for storing all details about the guests, including their contact details, preferred payment methods, rooms booked, list of spendings and so on.

Notifications and surveys. Hotels usually send notifications prior to customers' arrival, during their stay and shortly after check-out. So it's easy to collect feedback and offer additional services and entertainments. Finally, a booking confirmation sent to an email address is simply a sign of everything going on as planned.

Why Use a Hotel Management System?

We live in a world of high-tech solutions in every sphere - from finances to agriculture. Currently, more and more travelers tend to book rooms and services online, so hotel owners should be prepared to cope with this type of activity.

In addition, hotel management systems are developed not only for customer interactions but for improving the workflow in general. They help to monitor internal processes and provide high-quality services.

Finally, hotel management software is great for storing all the important details about your guests in one place. And you can use this information for greeting the guests properly or offering them activities to their taste. This is beneficial for both the company and the hotel as it helps to boost guests' loyalty and gain more profit.

As you can see, a well-developed hotel management system may become a great asset to the business, improving your team's performance and helping to keep up with competitors.