I would venture to say that no two people would come up with the same list of top three features they’d want in a hotel property management system. That doesn’t mean we have no ability to sort out the key features to look for. It just means that we would each have our own unique lists. If you’re keeping tabs at home, my top three features, in no particular order, would be: cloud-hosted, connectivity, and reporting and analytics. I know, reporting and analytics don’t get the hearts racing. But I’m a data geek. I have yet to meet a revenue manager who isn’t, and for good reason. As important as it is to be able to quickly and easily enter reservations or check guests in, it’s equally important to be able to make sense of the data streaming through the PMS.
What Is a Hotel PMS and Why Does It Matter?
Imagine a toolkit that made your staff more productive, your property more profitable, and your guests happier. It’s not a magic wand. It’s a well-designed PMS. Most property management systems offer a core set of functions with variations based on property size, type, and software vendor. Here are the features to consider non-negotiable for your property: 1. **Reservations across all your sales channels.** It d sn’t matter how guests books a room, you need to capture the reservation quickly and without error. 2. **Real-time availability updates.** You can’t afford to ove book rooms whil a guest is n a room or waste staff time updating room status. 3. **Integrated payment processing.** Manuall entering credit card inf mation i ted ous, error-prone, and s eciall dangerous when gu sts leave without s nding. 4. **Guest communication tracking.** A goo PMS offers a 360-degree view of each guest’s preferences, problems and praise. 5. **Reporting and rate management.** You hould be able to pull a lis of uests checking in the eekend 30 da s rom now in seconds. The clearer your fin cial picture i the easie it is to set prices that ma i ear ound.Toggle panel: Revisions
Core Reservation and Front Desk Features
We’ve all heard the saying, “Haste makes waste,” and with a PMS, this couldn’t be truer. The reality is that if you can’t manage your rooms and guests in a quick and efficient manner, you might very well lose the reservation altogether. This is why it’s essential to find a PMS that offers real-time room inventory management. As soon as a booking is made on Booking.com, Expedia, or your direct website, your available rooms should reflect that across all booking channels and your website. The easier making a reservation is, the more likely guests are to book a room with you. A good PMS should not only allow for individual and group bookings but should also let you set-up long-term corporate contracts with specific rate codes. A visual room assignment grid simplifies the room assignment process for your front desk as you can see at a glance which rooms are available, assigned, or occupied. This feature also lets you set a room out of order for maintenance and repairs so that you don’t accidentally double book. Integrate guest profiles facilitate guest recognition and create repeat guests.
Housekeeping and Maintenance Management
The better you streamline communication and organization between front office, housekeeping, and maintenance, the faster you can turn over rooms and give arriving guests a positive first impression. Efficient arrival, stay-over, and departure processes minimize room status discrepancies, which keeps front desk and housekeeping from playing room shuffle. Automatic reports on room cleaning times and maintenance statistics save management time by not having to compile this data and enable peer comparison to see how competitive you are within your market. Plus your PMS automatically creates priority work order lists from room checks and assigned rooms from your departing guests for housekeeping and maintenance personnel.
Channel Management and Distribution
Your PMS generates a wealth of data on occupancy, revenue, guest behavior, and operations. Access to real-time and historical reports in intuitive dashboards is no longer optional, it’s make or break for data-driven decision making. Imagine having to wait for your revenue manager to import Excel files, clean the data, and generate forecast reports that are already five days old. Meanwhile, your sales director, who relies on that forecast to set rates and allotments, is hounding you for updates on the number of group bookings made today. This kind of lag and lack of transparency can cost you tens of thousands of dollars a month in lost revenue and inefficiencies. Your PMS needs to provide instant insights into live bookings, pace, and revenue; occupancy forecast; and dozens of other vital statistics that you may customize yourself. Look for systems that offer seamless data integration with popular analytics tools like Duetto, Atomize, or Pace. The level of autonomy and customization you have in tailoring out-of-the-box or bespoke reports is definitely something to discuss with your representative.
Reporting, Analytics, and Revenue Management
Data shows us what’s working and where to pivot. Analyzing numbers, however, is a repetitive, time-consuming, and error-prone process so you need a solution that does the heavy lifting. Your PMS must enable you to schedule reports ensuring insights are delivered to you daily, weekly, or monthly without you having to log in. The system should feature auto-scheduled auto-emailed reports, meaning they intuitively arrive in your inbox when you need them. Embrace the efficiency. This sheer volume of shifting data means you can’t afford to rely on a staff member exporting and formatting spreadsheets. And it’s so easy for human error to leave you misinformed. Don’t let it happen. Become a data-driven decision-maker and a master of your property’s past, present, and future not a slave to tedious spreadsheets and guesswork.
Guest Communication and Experience Tools
Guests no longer expect a generic experience. They want something bespoke, unique. That takes knowledge of their preferences and the ability to remember their past stays. So your property management system (PMS) should automate communications based on their preferences and personal data. It’s no longer realistic for a busy front office to send those wow moment birthday or anniversary messages. Let your PMS do it with data-driven emails triggered by key dates, previous stay information, or guest satisfaction scores from your CRM or guest feedback tool. Check their feedback scores , is it too soon to ask them to review or would a coupon for their next stay be more welcome? Don’t leave it to chance or the memory of your harried receptionist. Your PMS knows what they like, what they don’t, and everything in between. Make it work for you.
Security, Compliance, and Support
Your PMS manages incredibly confidential, mission-critical data and processes. What is that worth to your business? What processes, tasks, and data could be at risk if your system went down or your data were compromised? What’s the peace of mind that comes from knowing your PMS provider constantly invests in the security, back-up, and disaster recovery systems equivalent to? No system is infallible or invulnerable. However, systems that meet the rigorous PCI DSS standards for processing guests’ credit card payments and the new GDPR regulations regarding data privacy, especially those that are cloud-based and supported 24/7/365, can virtually eliminate the vast majority of risks most independent hoteliers and small groups face. Think too about the cost of implementing and training versus the kind of training, implementation, and ongoing support you are likely to receive. If you’re losing guests because your system can’t process a booking fast or easily enough, isn’t updated regularly enough to stay current with rapid changes and updates in technology, isn’t intuitive, flexible, and detailed enough to give you cutting-edge marketing tools, the relatively small monthly cost of your system could be costing you a fortune.
