What the PMS?

What the PMS?

In today’s Hospitality World there are few hotels or resorts which aren’t already using a PMS (Property Management System).  In order to stand a chance, in a competitive market and at a time when guests expect instant bookings and immediate responses as a basic service standard, a PMS is vital.

A PMS, or Property Management System, can help automate your business with online reservations, availability and occupancy management, payment processing, check-in/out, guest profiles and report generation, which can you help track and develop your business.

The Most Important Features of a PMS:

• Reservation Handling
• Front Desk Operations
• Integration with Channel Manager
• Revenue Management
• Check-in
• Customer Data
• Invoice & Payment
• Housekeeping
• Reports

When it comes to choosing a PMS, how do you make a decision?

You may have an idea of what you want from a PMS but there are other factors to consider.

Your Requirements – carry out a Needs Assessment on your business as it stands now, but also consider how you want to grow in the future.  List your needs in order of importance to your business.

Online Booking Engine – this shouldn’t be an option but an essential feature if you want your business to compete with other hotels and with OTA’s (Online Travel Agents).  More guests booking direct with you = more revenue (savings on commissions). 

Know your budget – your budget will be a big factor when choosing your PMS.  Don’t just consider the cost of the PMS and its License; consider any computer upgrades needed or staff training.

Customer Support – by that we mean FOR YOU!  Is Customer Support 24hrs?  Is it available in your language? Can you speak direct to someone? Or is it only a ticketing service or emails?

Google Reviews – Find your perfect system, or a few contenders, and then get on to Google and search for

reviews from customers.   PMS businesses will only promote the good reviews on their websites; you need to see if there are negatives too. 

MY RANGGO has taken a look at the various PMS’ available in the Philippines. Our free downloadable PMS Comparison Table below, should help you narrow down the options and functions your business needs.

 

We also delve a bit deeper into 3 top picks and list some extra details about Front Desk by Hotel Link, Djubo, and eZee FrontDesk. Read on to know more about them.

Front Desk by Hotel Link:

Front Desk is a simple, low cost and very intuitive system from Hotel Link (previously known as Hotel Link Solutions).  Front Desk is ideal for small to medium sized hotels, and integrates seamlessly into Hotel Links own booking platform and other marketing tools.

Key features of the Front Desk calendar include a color-coded status, customizable view of rooms and bookings across 2 or 4 weeks, access to guest booking details and day-to-day occupancy data.  A drag and drop function allows you to move your guest entries around in the calendar, to reallocate hotel reservations, which is great if you have an unexpected problem and need to close a room out for maintenance before a guest arrival.

The color-coded calendar interface carries over in to the housekeeping module, helping you to visualize the status of all rooms and manage your Housekeeping teams.  There’s also a built in function to assign tasks to housekeepers via SMS.

Front Desk allows you to createa pre-arrival and post-departure email template for guests.There is a function to view instantly the status of a guest’s bill, which you can add to easily at any time when additional services are booked or used.  For check-out the system generates a fully itemized final account/invoice for the guest. This invoice includes any costs from In-house extras such as airport transfers, meals, tours etc.and any pre-payments already made by the guest.

Finally, there’s an easy Reports Function, at just one click.  You can run reports for arrivals and departures, guest details, room occupancy, development, operations and much more.  The reports help you understand where your revenue is coming from, or even which of your rooms are most popular,to help you improve your business.

Other Products from Hotel Link: Booking Platform, Cloud-based Channel Manager, Smart Rate (price comparison against competitors), Book Now Button for website and Social Media Accounts, Payment Gateway, Mobile-optimized and templated Hotel Website inclusive of email addresses and domain name, Add-on Sales Service and Reputation Manager.

DJUBO

DJUBO offers a range of tools and products including a cloud-based PMS

The features include an easy to use booking calendar with a seamless integration with DJUBO’s CRS, Channel Manager & Booking Engine. 

The calendar continuously updates and you can manage check in/check out, and process walk-ins. Because it is cloud-based you can even manage offline enquiries.   The system allows you to hold & block out rooms, and hold an enquiry or reservation.

DJUBO’s PMS has the ability to automate guest emails and SMS, and send staff SMS notifications on guest arrivals.

Reports and auditing functions include automated daily Sales and Front Office reports. A detailed report can be sent to the General or Operations Manager daily, via email allowing them to track hotel performance in real-time. Other report functions include a guest database, agents, reservation and enquiries database. Convert more enquiries with an auto generated ‘Pay to book’ quotation email.

Other Products from DJUBO: Central Reservation System (CRS), Channel Manager, Booking/Payment Engine, Hotel Sales Analytics, Meta-Search Advertising, Cloud-based Point of Sale, Online Reputation/Review Management, Hotel Rate Shopper & Price Intelligence, Intelligent Revenue Manager, Booking Engine for offline travel agents.

eZee Front Desk & Ezee Absolute

eZee Front Desk offers a range of tools and products including a cloud-based PMS

eZee offers a cloud-based PMS, eZee Absolute and a desktop-based PMS, eZee FrontDesk.

eZee FrontDesk integrates within-house, and third-party Booking Engines and Channel Managers, as well as Restaurant POS.

There is a mobile app for reports, including detailed modules covering housekeeping, maintenance, laundry management, minibar and banquet.  This PMS covers shift management and payroll, and boasts more than 500 third-party hardware and software integrations with Payment Gateways, Financial Accounting software, keycard door locks etc.

eZee FrontDesk also has direct benefits for guests in the form of a self check-in kiosk.

eZee Absolute is a complete cloud-based, hotel management mobile app, with a digital assistant. Here all major hotel management operations can be undertaken or viewed including housekeeping, night audits, review management, guest requests and data analysis.

As with eZee FrontDesk, eZee Absolute boasts seamless integration with its in-house, and third-party, booking engines, channel manager and restaurant POS; plus more than 500 third-party hardware and software integrations (as mentioned above).

The hotel back-office software has an all-in-one cashiering center, protected by PCl-DSS certification (The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard).  Here you cancentrally manage your company accounts, bills and payments, and OTA’s (Online Travel Agents).  There is a credit card center helping you to authorize,capture, verify, refund and extend sales, in one place.  And also an ePayments function helping you to collect booking deposits from guests via an online payment link sent to them.

For your guests, this PMS comes with a mobile guest self-service portal.  Guests can self-check-in, request for additional in-house services or notify of any housekeeping issues.  With the Meal Plan and Packages function, you have the ability to create various rate and meal plans and sell them as packages to your guests via the guest self-service portal.  This PMS also boasts an express check-out option.

eZee Absolute can integrate with the Review Management System, Critique; allowing you to track, manage and respond to all online guest reviews.  It also includes an Email and SMS marketing and scheduling function.

eZee Absolute includes a Multi-property system; a single login for multiple properties.

eZee offers a range of pricing plans for their PMS; from as little as $50 to as much as $350, depending on the eZee system you choose, the number of rooms and number of third party integrations required. eZee aims to provide you with the tools required to meet the specific needs of your hotel.

Other Products from eZee:  Hotel Software, Booking Engine, Channel Manager, Hotel Loyalty Program Software, Review Management System,Competitor Rate Analysis, Guest Feedback, Cloud-based Restaurant POS, Digital Restaurant Menu, Third Party Interfaces, Hotel Mobile App

Why are these PMS tools or solutions important?

Some businesses hold the belief that having a Property Management System is an unnecessary expense; especially when they can just opt to use either manual reservations, or use free platforms such as Google Sheets, invoicing, etc. But for as low as $25, hotels and their employees can more easily manage bookings and the day to day running of the hotel.

A PMS should remove or, at the very least, significantly reduce incidences of over or double bookings.  Check-in and Check-out becomes a quicker, more precise process for your guests, eliminating queues at Front Desk and guest frustrations.  

At the touch of a button, rooms can be removed from the inventory whilst maintenance is carried out and arriving guests, originally allocated that room, can be reallocated to a room without distress.  SMS texts can be sent to housekeeping, restaurant staff or concierge alerting them to a guests’ arrival and GM’s can access extensive daily reports to assist them in running the hotel.

 

The bottom line of it all though it that a PMS can provide the guests with a seamless stay which will ultimately be good for business; but equally as important, it can optimize occupancy and income for the hotel as well. 

If you automate your day to day hotel operations, everyone can focus more on ensuring a great guest experience.  And, Happy stress-free employees = Happy stress-free Guests!