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Utilizing more than 20 years of hands-on experience in the industry, Centium Software developed GuestPoint, a comprehensive hotel management solution for small to mid-sized properties. ...Read more
Magpie iHospitality is a Web-based system that integrates your website's bookings into single source of inventory with visibility on popular sites like Orbitz and Priceline. It is a complete solution for hospitality management....Read more
RoomKey PMS is an industry-leading Property Management System offering one of the market's first comprehensive, closed loop Guest Acquisition and Management Systems. This web-based solution is extremely user-friendly....Read more
Maestro is one of the leading providers of hospitality management systems (HMS) in a Web Browser Based or Windows solution, with flexibility to deploy the feature rich browser version in any environment including cloud-hosted, pri...Read more
Guest Tracker by TCS Hotel Software is a standalone property management solution designed specifically for the hospitality and lodging industry. This end-to-end system offers a full suite of add-ons tailored to your needs....Read more
Designed for the cloud and developed in San Francisco, Frontdesk Anywhere’s property management system was built for independent hotels, resorts, and management groups. There is nothing to install or download; only Internet access...Read more
Base7booking is a cloud-based property management program designed for the hospitality industry. The solution is accessible from any mobile device. The program is suitable for running a single property or multiple locations simult...Read more
Smart Hotel offers many integrated features suitable for hoteliers a wide range of sizes and industry verticals. We like the strong support it offers for Front Office & Property Management and Catering & Event Management. ...Read more
roomMaster from InnQuest is a powerful, hotel management solution. Properties in over 100 countries rely on roomMaster to manage their front office, central reservation, guest relations, housekeeping, accounting and maintenance. ...Read more
rGuest Stay is a cloud-based hotel property management solution by Agilysys that caters to businesses in the hospitality industry. It is designed for properties of all sizes and various types such as hotels, inns, lodges, casinos,...Read more
Cenium's Hospitality ERP offers an integrated system of modules for hospitality operations, including a property management system, activities management, event and catering management and POS functionality....Read more
Amadeus' LinkHotel CRS maximizes the reach of hospitality companies by distributing rate and inventory information across multiple sales channels, as well as offering reservation and rate management....Read more
Hotel and hospitality management software are tools that perform essential financial and organizational functions for hotels, motels, resorts and bed & breakfasts, as well as condos, RV parks and other forms of lodging. These functions include reservations, employee scheduling, accounting, property/maintenance management and customer relationship management.
Here's what we'll cover:
Common Features of Hotel Management Software
What Type of Buyer Are You?
Market Trends to Understand
Evaluating Hotel and Hospitality Management Software
Hotel property management systems should have strong reporting capabilities, as well as on-board business functions like accounting and employee scheduling. These features should be customized specifically for the hospitality industry to simplify and speed up your management and accounting processes—or, if they are not part of the software itself, should be compatible with the software you have.
Other essential features of hotel software systems include:
Reservations | Hotels need an effective customer-facing site that not only lets their guests book reservations online, but also integrate seamlessly with third-party booking engines. Meanwhile, you need an employee reservations system that facilitates room scheduling and availability, making it easy to identify vacancies, reservations and occupancies visually and/or through custom searches. |
Front desk & housekeeping | This includes organizing check-ins and check-outs, coding keycards, scheduling wakeup calls and tracking progress of cleaning staff, assigning them to specific rooms or tasks as necessary. |
Point of sale (POS) | POS systems are typically used for restaurants and retail stores. In the hospitality industry it’s used to allow customers to pay for, or charge to their room, products and services like restaurant meals, room service, incidentals like mini-bar items or pay-per-view, Wi-Fi, health club/spa services etc. |
Maintenance management | An essential function, it’s important that hospitality management software tracks the property ownership/rental information (leases, taxes etc.) as well as tracking work orders, scheduling preventative maintenance and communicating with maintenance staff. |
Customer relationship management | Hotel CRM software takes all the information you have about a customer and uses it to support customer loyalty and retention. It allows you to monitor guest profiles, activity history and participation in loyalty programs to optimize rewards programs and sales and marketing tactics. |
Reservations screen in innRoad
Hotel management software buyers typically fall into one of the following categories:
Franchises. Many franchises have specific rules on what hospitality software can be used, while others, such as Holiday Inn, allow their franchisees to make the decision for themselves. Make sure you discuss your software options with the franchise to get their input on which products are recommended and why.
Hotel chains. At the other side of the table, if you represent a brand with multiple properties, you need to determine whether you want a single hotel PMS across them all or allow them to choose for themselves. Ask yourself how much—and what kind of—information you want to gather from each of your properties, and whether it needs to come in automatically or if manual reporting will be sufficient. If you do go with a single unified product, be sure to consider how the needs of each property differ—you may only have one hotel in Las Vegas, but it will need some of the features associated with Casino Management Software, which may necessarily impact your purchase decision.
Large hotels and resorts. The larger the property, the more robust a system you’ll need. Large hotels and resorts typically have lots of different products and services for people to buy, more maintenance requests and more complicated reservation and scheduling needs. It should be worth it to pay more for a robust hotel or resort product that can make all your processes smoother.
Small property owners. A bed-and-breakfast or a hotel with only a few rooms will have much less robust needs than a large resort. If you are just starting out, you may wish to consider a simple, but comprehensive system that includes property management and account capabilities. If you already have software that meets those other needs, be sure your new system is compatible with your legacy hotel management system.
Property managers. If you represent an RV park, a condo or some other form of communal living, you may wish to consider property management software instead of software for hotels. That being said, if there’s a lot of turnover at your property it may be easier to use this category of software, which is designed to handle reservations and accounting for high-turnover environments.
Software as a Service (SaaS). Most software is moving away from locally installed software and toward Web-based systems that can be accessed anywhere for a monthly fee. This drastically reduces the up-front costs of purchasing a system as well as the ongoing need for an IT infrastructure. The disadvantage is that monthly costs can add up over time, but most businesses prefer the flexibility associated with SaaS systems.
Market fragmentation. Because of the relative ease of developing software, there are lots of new companies entering the hotel management software market. Many of these come from Canada and Europe and are now looking to enter into the U.S. market. Though this will no doubt lead to better costs and quality in the long run, at the moment buying decisions may be even more confusing than they were a few years ago.
Pricing for hotel property management software is usually either per room/unit or per user. Keep in mind that for an on-premise system you’ll pay a single fee, likely with an annual maintenance upgrade, while Web-based systems (Software as a Service, or SaaS) will charge on a monthly basis.
Specific questions to ask when evaluating hoteling software include:
It’s important to consider whether you need something specific to your type of property (hotel, motel, resort), or something more generic and/or basic.