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Are you utilizing a Property Management System? If not, you’re losing money.
Let me explain how you can turn this around.
Welcome to another edition of Hospitality Property School.
I am your instructor, Gerry MacPherson.
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Introduction to Property Management System
I have been getting questions about choosing the right PMS or Property Management Systems.
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Your property management system or PMS, also known as a front desk system, is the heart of any hospitality property. It is the systematized mechanism that oversees and coordinates the relationship between the customer and your services.
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Without one, a hospitality property will labour to professionally manage all of their daily operational tasks.
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What are the benefits of a property management system?
In choosing the variety of options available to you, it’s important to think about what features would best suit your hotel, resort, inn or bed & breakfast.
Here are the top features you should consider when making your selection.
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A system that streamlines your front-desk management
Your PMS should give you all the tools you need to be totally systematized in running your hospitality property.
To give your guests the best customer service from the moment they arrive, to the moment they leave, you should be able to easily:
- Check guests in and out
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- See all of your reservations on a calendar page
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- Add additional rooms and extra sale items to a booking
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- Add rate-plans to existing rooms
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- Closeout specific rooms for a thorough cleaning
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- Ability to move existing bookings
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- Produce invoices
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- To keep track of your returning guests
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All the information you need in one place, with the ability to complete necessary tasks faster.
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Gives you freedom from your desk
Your system should be cloud-based.
No matter what device you are using, you need to be able to access your backend system.
You need to have the capability of going about your day and still keep an eye on your reservations. All you need is your smartphone or tablet.
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Books with Tips & Strategies for Your Hotel, Resort, Inn, Bed and Breakfast
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Manages sales channels effortlessly
If you don’t have a system that allocates your rooms in an orderly fashion, you run the risk of double booking your rooms – resulting in upset guests, lost revenue, and wasted time to try to remedy the problem.
That is why the PMS you choose should also serve as your channel manager. This means that travellers booking hotels through online travel agents (OTAs) see your availability as it is updated in real-time because your property management system distributes all of your available rooms across a number of booking sites.
The channel manager element should:
- Allow for live rate and availability updates
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- Allow you to manage all your booking sites from one place
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- Allow you to upload your inventory 400 days in advance
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- Allow you to easily see an overview of how your channels are tracking
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Because your inventory is automatically decreased across all sites when a booking is made from any site, no manual work involved, and you maximize your revenue. This method of distribution is called the ‘pooled inventory‘.
Pooled inventory means that you evenly distribute all your available rooms across a number of sites – including your own website. In this case, all inventory is automatically reduced across all booking sites when booking made from any site.
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Accommodates international bookings
Making sure global travellers can easily book with you should be a top priority for any hospitality property. Your property management system should help you do this by:
- Allowing you to partner with international OTAs. The more sites it connects you to, the better.
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- For example, Little Hotelier connects with hundreds of different booking sites. https://www.littlehotelier.com/
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- Providing multi-language & currency options. It should support at least 5 languages and at least 80 different currencies.
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The fact that global travellers can go to your website and book means that you don’t need to manually accept bookings.
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Let me know if this is making sense by leaving a comment.
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Manages guest communications
Your property management system must make it easy for you to communicate with your guests in a systematized way. This means that you can send pre and post-visit emails, and customize each email template to match your brand’s look and feel.
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If a guest’s experience is inconsistent, it will reflect badly on you. All hospitality property – regardless of size – should strive to be as professional as possible. Each and every guest needs to receive the same level of service.
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Increases revenue per customer
In addition to increasing your number of guests, you should also work on increasing profits from each guest.
Your property management system should allow you to:
- Package extras like late check-out, breakfast, and spa packages
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- Customize upsells
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- Add extra sale items to reservations during your guests’ stay
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Upselling relevant products and services to your guests can give them a more pleasant stay while adding to your bottom line.
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In conclusion
A property management system simplifies your front-desk management while giving you freedom from your desk. It manages your sales channels, accommodates international bookings, streamlines your guest communications and increases revenue per customer. In general, it helps restructure your property system to make your hospitality property life easier.
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Are you currently using a property management system and if so which one?
Let me know in the comments.
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You will have access to this episode for the next six weeks and then it will get locked in the vault for Hospitality Property School Group members only.
When you see that we have something new, don’t mark it “Unread” or file it away in the belief you’ll read it later because you might miss your chance.
To see all the other valuable material you’d have access to as a member of the Hospitality Property School Group, check out the short video in the episode post-show notes.
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In the next episode, I will talk about 7 Secret Strategies That Hotels Can Use to Benefit from Online Travel Agencies.
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That’s it for today’s episode,
Until next time, have a fun day.
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Make sure you have signed up for your episodes of INNsider Tips. You can find the link in the show notes.
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⇒ TO READ OR LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE ON KEYSTONE HOSPITALITY PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT:
https://keystonehpd.com/property-management-system-what-you-need-to-know-229
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