Making Guests Happy: Balancing Hotel Technology and Service
November 17, 2016
So, it finally happened! According to the most recent American Hotel & Lodging Association Lodging Survey, hotels are investing in technology as a
4 Ways a Mobile & Native Cloud PMS Helps Maximize the Hotel Ownership Experience
Once online, our PMS delivers comprehensive multi-property management, including central configuration, CRO, rate management, guest profile management, and multi-property reporting.
—Justin DeRise
Great hotel technology including a great hotel PMS must unburden the guest journey by removing barriers which prevent guests from experiencing great hospitality. But it must also unburden hotel ownership by removing the barriers to building a profitable and sustainable business, and realizing a hotel’s unique vision of an ideal guest experience.
This is especially true in a post-pandemic hospitality market that is both rapidly increasing occupancy, and dealing with chronic labor shortages. In short, hoteliers need a PMS that is both guest-centric and hotel-centric, that can deliver reliable performance and scalability, while promoting efficient operations and increased profitability.
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Unburdened Performance and Reliability
The PMS is often described as the heart of a hotel’s technological ecosystem. It transmits the guest and stay data which powers the rest of a hotel’s tech stack, and like a real heart, it can never stop functioning. The average PMS computes over 3,000,000 individual transactions per day, with an additional 3,750,000 transactions attributed to third-party platforms. Any interruption of this flow of data could potentially spell disaster for a hotel, disrupting operations, and turning potential “wow” moments into negative reviews. As a hotelier, you need to be focused on the health of your business and the wellbeing of your guests, not on
whether your PMS is going to be operational or able to handle your hotel’s dynamic data needs. At StayNTouch, we host our native-cloud mobile PMS on Amazon AWS, which is renowned for its unparalleled performance and near flawless reliability. AWS is designed to handle large volumes of data, processing PMS transactions in under 100ms and integration transactions in under 10ms, or in other words, in near real-time. It can also automatically scale to a customer’s load, performance and availability so that peak performance is always maintained, even during the busy hours of check-in, check-out and end-of-day.
AWS guarantees no scheduled downtime for server maintenance, and delivered 99.966% uptime for StayNTouch over the previous year. AWS can deliver near constant uptime because its service is based on redundant Availability Zones, which ensure their servers are always operational, even in the case of physical disaster. These Availability Zones are further backed up by automatic environment failovers, daily remote database snapshots and redundant data instances in each environment cluster.
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A PMS That Naturally Scales With Your Business
Your ideal standard of service should never be burdened by your technology
and neither should your business. Legacy on-site PMS systems would charge hotels for system upgrades and access to “proprietary” integrations, hindering their ability to adapt to the pace of technology or the hospitality industry. And because their PMS operated on a physical server on-site, adding new properties was difficult, expensive, and fraught with technical mishaps. StayNTouch is different. Our agile product development roadmap allows us
to deliver automatic systems updates to our clients every three weeks, at no additional cost. And because our PMS runs on AWS, our customers can easily launch new properties 一 they only need to provide internet-ready tablets and devices. Once online, our PMS delivers comprehensive multi-property management, including central configuration, CRO, rate management, guest profile management, and multi-property reporting.
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Transforms Your PMS From a Cost Center to a Revenue Generator
Your PMS should be more than a “necessary burden” on your hotel’s finances. It should proactively help your business reduce costs and earn revenue.
Unlike legacy PMS systems, a native cloud PMS requires no maintenance or upkeep costs for on-site servers, and no additional costs for upgrades and integrations. But a mobile PMS can also send fully automated and targeted offers for room upgrades, amenities, loyalty benefits, and monetized early check-in/ late check-out directly to your guests’ smartphones, allowing you to earn valuable ancillary revenue while your guests personalize their stay.
Targeted mobile messaging can have a real impact on your bottom line 一 and can allow your PMS to pay for itself. According to Mashable.com, targeted mobile messaging can provide an average 150 room hotel with an additional $65,000 of ancillary revenue each year. StayNTouch clients have earned up to an 18% conversion rate on room upsells, up to a 10% conversion on amenities, and up to a 240% ROI via automated upgrades/offers alone.
A PMS that is fully mobile can help you monetize more than just the welcome experience. Mobile and kiosk guest check-in lets you reimagine your lobby from a largely administrative space centered around the front desk, to a guest-centric space built for dining, socializing or co-working. StayNTouch’s PMS can also process hourly reservations, allowing you to expand your assets beyond nightly reservations. Now you can offer day-use rooms to travelers on extended overlays, rent space for remote workers to co-work or host meetings, or use your PMS to make golf and spa reservations for travelers looking for an afternoon getaway.
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Enables Your Employees to Deliver the Best Service Possible
Your PMS should empower your employees to deliver excellent and engaging service, not hinder them. This is especially true in a post-pandemic environment marked by increased travel and a continuing labor shortage. StayNTouch Cloud PMS features an intuitive and colorful user interface, so that it’s easy to train on, and easy to use once your staff gets up to speed. And this gives you more flexibility in your hiring decisions, allowing you to focus on candidates that excel at delivering exceptional service 一 rather than settling for ones that “get” an outdated PMS. A mobile PMS can free your staff from the front desk, allowing them to interact with guests
wherever they are in the hotel. Our PMS also automates many common administrative tasks including room assignment, bulk check-in, payment collection and reports so that your staff can stay focused on engaging with your guests, and not on their screens. StayNTouch Cloud PMS also comes with guest-facing mobile check-in, giving your guests the option of a fully contactless check-in through their mobile device or a strategically placed smart kiosk. Now, your guests can streamline their check-in, while your staff can focus on welcoming guests, answering questions or catering to special requests.
This robust automation also extends to back-of-the-house operations With persistent labor shortages, it’s crucial that hotels get the most out of their housekeeping teams. That’s why StayNTouch delivers automatic housekeeping work management based on team member proximity and workload, customizable task lists, and instant room status updates, so your front line ambassadors will always know when a room is available or needs to be serviced.
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Unburdening Ownership Requires a Strategic Partner
Technology becomes a burden to hotels when tech vendors view their relationship as a one-off transaction
instead of a long-term strategic partnership. PMS vendors should take the unique business goals of their clients’ to heart, and offer technology that unburdens their staff, management and guests. That’s why StayNTouch takes an end-to-end approach to client relations, offering transparent pricing, the option of in-person or remote
implementation, 24/7/365 customer service, and a dedicated client success manager who gives hotels a voice inside our organization. Because when your PMS vendor treats you like a strategic partner, you can focus less on maintaining your technology and more on enhancing your guest experience.
