How can a hotel PMS enhance the customer experience?

Today, hotels are seeking the help of suitable property management systems (PMS) more than ever. A perfect PMS not only helps save time and money but also improves the guest experience. Using a PMS allows hotel staff to focus on meaningful relations with guests, which can help to boost customer satisfaction.

In this blog article, guest blogger Gjermund Damgaard explains what a hotel PMS is and how hotel managers can use one to enhance the guest experience and satisfaction. 

What is Hotel PMS? 

A Hotel Property Management System (PMS) is a digitalized system adopted by hoteliers to streamline operations and reduce paperwork. The impact of the software is in the management and scheduling of daily operations in a hotel. Activities addressed by this technology include front desk duties, reservations, housekeeping, billing and invoicing, and feedback collection. Without a Hotel PMS, all these activities would be done manually and take a lot of time to complete.

Apart from the client-centered activities, Hotel PMSs allow managers to formulate room attendant sheets, manage meetings, and arrange conference calls. With no PMS, managers and supervisors would spend a lot of time trying to place everyone where they should be.

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How Hotel PMS can help

Housekeeping

To begin with, Hotel PMS has introduced mobile housekeeping to improve the response time when customers check out. Hotels utilizing this functionality get instant updates when the room is free for cleaning to deploy their staff to restore the rooms quickly.

Once a room is being cleaned, the housekeeping staff can then coordinate with the front desk to estimate when the room will be ready for use. Then, once a room is cleaned, the PMS can alert the front desk team that the room is ready for its next occupant.

Front desk

A Hotel PMS has had a significant impact on the front desk activities, especially guest check-ins and check-outs. The standout front desk tasks regarding Hotel PMS include room management, night audits, guest registration, and check-in and check-outs. This PMS functionality controls remote bookings by guests through mobile apps, websites, and phone calls to the relevant hotel.

The front desk staff is responsible for confirming the bookings, canceling them, assigning rooms, and handling client inquiries. Handling all the requests remotely saves time for clients who do not have to report in to make their reservation or cancel it physically.

Non-room charges

Hotel PMSs can also play a significant role when it comes to non-room charges - the hotel bar, gym, spa, and restaurants. Rather than forcing guests to pay for each service individually, a PMS allows guests to tally their services together onto their final hotel bill.

Administrative duties

Besides the Hotel PMS’s role in boosting customer experience and satisfaction, the software significantly streamlines administrative duties. The greatest beneficiaries from this are general hotel managers. A manager’s obligation is to formulate a strategic plan that would guarantee the success of the hotel business. Consequently, an all-in-one Hotel PMS allows them to monitor all the critical performance indicators (KPI) within the company.

The crucial provisions of the Hotel PMS for managers comprise financial reports, guest history, reservation reports, customer feedback metrics, guest reservation history, etc. Having all this information in one place provides managers with the opportunity to plan ahead based on current progress and trends.

Types of Hotel PMS  

Hotel managers have different forms of PMS at their disposal. Choosing the most suitable one for the relevant workspace depends on what the manager aims to achieve. The common types of Hotel PMSs include Hybrid Cloud, Legacy, and Web-native cloud Hotel PMS:  

• Hybrid Cloud Hotel PMS - This front-end application is accessible through mobile devices or a computer browser. It can locally be installed for use in the premises and be utilized outside the hotel, but with limited functionalities. The main advantage of Hybrid PMS is that it is still reliable even when there is an internet outage.  
  
  
• Legacy Hotel PMS – This software operates on a local server accessible through local desktops. It, however, calls for massive investments in hardware, servers, and a license fee in addition to an efficient IT team. Their role is for maintenance and proper management of the system to avoid downtimes.  
  
  
• Web-native Cloud Hotel PMS – Of all other forms of PMS, this is the most convenient one to use. This is because it is accessible anywhere, at any time, and through browsers or mobile applications. Furthermore, Web-native is a cloud-based PMS hosted either through a private or public cloud. Compared to Hybrid and Legacy Hotel PMSs, this software is cost-effective and offers so much for much less. Plus, there is no need to have a technical support team to fix a Web-native system, as its developers mainly run it.      

Hotel property management systems (PMS) are undoubtedly a major revolution in the hotel industry. Their significance is not just felt by customers of relevant hotels, but also by the staff, and their managers too.

Gjermund Damgaard works with the sales and marketing department at Booking Ninjas. Before joining the Booking Ninjas team, he spent several years as an electrician, working behind the scenes with a variety of systems and programs both online and more local on different machines. He developed a desire for technological advances and property management for business which led to him going fully into the marketing space. Driven by this passion, Gjermund makes use of his deep understanding of how these systems work and employs this in helping property management businesses create an online presence backed with years of experience and the most advanced technology.

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