A good Cloud based hotel PMS will offer in depth functionality to manage guest facing services, provide real time intelligence, comprehensive reporting and e-distribution with standard subscription plans, thus allowing a hotelier to take some good financial and revenue-maximizing decisions.
Today, hotel software can help hotels better manage their hotel operations, without incurring any additional costs on infrastructure or software license fees. A cloud PMS will typically replace redundant server based softwares, or move hotels from manual system to automated processes. However, it is a challenge to choose a cloud PMS that will best fit your hotel needs.
With the same challenge in mind, we have put together a list of top 10 essential features you must look for in a cloud based Property Management System, but before you go out looking for best features of a new generation PMS, you must ask yourselves three very basic questions
1. What features do I need in a PMS, for my hotel to run efficiently, improve my guest experience and revenues?
2. What monthly budget do I have to subscribe to such a system?
3. Does the company have experience in developing and delivering such systems?
Always keep in mind, that a PMS system is an investment that you do for a successful hotel business. Without a PMS, you will spend more time in managing your reservations and may lose on acquiring new customers.
Here are the top 10 essentials for a cloud based PMS
1. Access from anywhere
You should be able to access your PMS solution from anywhere, all you need is a smart device like phone, tablet or laptop and the internet connection. It means it needs to be a cloud PMS system.
2. A Consolidated solution – Integration to a channel manager
It is utmost important for you to be able to distribute the rooms in a property in an arranged fashion, so that you do not end up with double bookings the rooms, this may hurt your business and risk revenue. So a cloud PMS should be able to integrate with the channel manager, if you are not using one right now, you should consider using one, because it will
- Connect all the reservation sites in one place to automate.
- Synchronize room inventory and rates.
- Avoid duplicates bookings
With an integrated channel manager, the inventory automatically reduces, each time a booking is made across any site, so it reduces the work and saves time and money.
3. Enhanced Revenue Management Solution
Your customers want to experience a holistic stay while they are on your property, this gives you the immense opportunity to increase the revenue per customer. A PMS system can help you achieve this goal by:
- Helping you add extras like breakfast, gym & fitness package, spa packages and others.
- Customize these extras
- Add more products and service offerings for your guests and help them in a more delighted stay at your property. Using such a system also empowers your property to increase the revenue and also spreads a positive word of mouth
4. Guest Engagements
You should look for a PMS system which helps you communicate with your guests in a more planned way. You can use template emails and automate them before and after your guest stay, thereby giving a more professional outlook. It also helps guests experience a uniform experience throughout their stay at the property.
5. Reporting, Measuring and Improvising
If you are a budget hotel or a new hotel, you should be able to get some advanced reporting solutions, so that you can track your efforts and increase the revenue of your property.Ideally, you should be to get reports which can help you in knowing the following
- Direct bookings
- Bookings per site
- Best booking site
- What promotions worked for you
- Your income reports
- Outstanding payment reports
6. Social Listening
We all know, social media has become so prominent that people love to share their experience of holidays online, websites like tripadvisor, booking.com and many others leverage these social signals and give user the power to review your hotel property. So as a hotel owner, you need to focus in maintaining the online reputation of your hotel, because it can hurt or increase the reservations. Opt for a PMS which is integrated to other website and helps you keep track of your online reputation.
7. Interface friendly
Understanding that the other operations of your hotel property are equally important, a cloud PMS must be able to connect with systems like accounting, room lock interface, payment gateway and many more. This integration helps you automate the entire operations, thereby reduce the infrastructure and resource cost.
8. Eases Front Desk Management
Apart from increasing revenue, managing the front desk operations is a very critical task your PMS system should be able to help you with.
You should be able to do the following in an ideal PMS system:
- View reservations for a month on a single page.
- Add or remove additional rooms and extra items for a booking
- Add new tariffs to the rooms
- Generate invoices
- Guests check in and check out
- Memorize your return customers
9. Maintenance Management
One of the most essential features of a cloud based PMS is to track the property ownership. It also includes the schedules, advance bookings, communication with the maintenance staff of the hotel property. Property maintenance is essential to attract the guests.
10. Integration with POS
This feature enables hotels to invoice and accept payments for services rendered at the restaurants, bars, health club, business centre and other sales outlets of a hotel.
A PMS integrated with a POS helps you in saving time, money and resource. Now that we have figured some of the most essential features, let’s find out how much it is going to cost you to get a new generation PMS.
Most PMS will offer online tutorials and 24/7 support, so hotels can get started on PMS immediately and without much assistance. All you pay is a small subscription amount each month and get to use a cloud based PMS.
Looking for a PMS system that gives all the above features which can help you save time and money? Try mycloud PMS before you actually buy one. You get a free 30 days trial!
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