Briefly explain how a PMS is able to track changes made by staff on an individual
reservation, such as date changes, extra charges posted, reservation status modification.
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Answer:
Initially, when hotels started adopting Hotel PMS's, they wanted to efficiently manage guest check-in, check-out and housekeeping services. However, things are different now. A hotel property management software is not merely a piece of application that brings in a higher level of automation. Rather, it now covers the entire guest experience cycle – right from the booking process to capturing guest data for guest relationship management in future.
Be it a hotel’s general manager, front desk employee, housekeeping staff or even the POS outlet staff, almost everybody works on a Hotel PMS. Let’s see how a Hotel PMS helps each of them –
Front Desk Staff – Using a smart Hotel PMS, a hotel’s front desk staff can streamline the whole reservation process – right from accepting bookings (coming via walk-ins, OTAs, travel agents), assigning rooms, confirming the same and sending out a confirmation mail to the guest. They can also take requests for booking cancellation/modification and room upgrades, etc with ease.
Housekeeping Staff – Excellent housekeeping plays a vital role in ensuring guest satisfaction. Post checkout when the front desk staff marks a room as vacant, the PMS sends an alert to the housekeeping department. And once the cleaning is done and the room is ready, the housekeeping staff can mark the room as ready to occupy on the software. This helps the front desk staff to know rooms that are ready to move in and thus helps him offer faster check-in facility to guests. Plus, a Hotel PMS can help schedule housekeeping tasks, assign staff and track the same for timely completion.
POS Outlet Staff – Guests don’t just stay in a hotel. They use the hotel’s restaurants, bars, gyms, spas and gift shops (also known as POS outlets) too. And it is not the best experience if they have to keep paying every time they visit any of the outlets. So, in such a scenario, it is advisable to post all their POS charges (also known as non-room charges) directly to their rooms. This means, the POS staff can post their bills to their room and guests can pay the final bill while checking out. This automation via a PMS and POS integration saves time and helps avoid billing errors.
General Manager – General Managers take care of the overall administration of a hotel. They are also responsible for strategic planning to ensure the success of a hotel business. And for this, they need to leverage the power of an all-in-one Hotel PMS that helps them with KPIs and insights. A Hotel PMS provides several operational reports including history and forecast report, revenue report, reservation report, housekeeping report, night audit report, financial report, guest history report, and occupancy reports, etc. to take key business decisions.