What is a Hotel Property Management System (PMS)?
Hotel property management systems (PMS) manage all aspects of hotel business operations, including the delivery of superior guest experiences. Traditionally, a hotel PMS was defined as software that enabled a hotel or group of hotels to manage front-office capabilities, such as booking reservations, guest check-in/checkout, room assignment, managing room rates, and billing. A hotel PMS replaced time consuming, paper-intensive processes. Today, hotel PMS technology has evolved well beyond the front desk. A hotel PMS is now a critical business operations system that enables hoteliers to deliver amazing guest experiences.
Benefits of cloud-based hotel property management
The consumer's travel journey begins by selecting a destination while simultaneously shopping for a hotel. That pre-stay shopping and booking interaction, their on-property engagement with the hotel and its staff, their in-room experience, and their sharing of feedback on social media post-stay are all part of their guest experience. Hoteliers are challenged with providing a personalized guest experience while operating an effective hotel business. Today's hotel PMS solutions help hoteliers deliver the experience guests want, while efficiently managing their business. Hotel PMS offers many benefits for a hotelier's business. They include
Easy hotel check-in/check-out
- Provide anytime, anywhere service to your guests using a mobile-enabled cloud-based hotel PMS. Untether your front-desk staff so they can check guests in, assign rooms, enable guest services, and check guests out wherever there is internet connectivity
Mobile housekeeping
- Increase housekeeping efficiency with instant updates on housekeeping mobile devices when customers check out, freeing up rooms for cleaning. Enable greater flexibility with room management and improve response time for room-service tasks. Identify and manage room-maintenance needs, ensuring rooms are clean and in perfect condition
Integrated hotel back-office systems
- Connect operations and financial processes by leveraging prebuilt integrations to accounts receivable, accounts payable, payment gateways, hotel industry applications, and property infrastructure devices. Integrate accounts receivable and commission handling. Ensure accurate guest folios for faster, more accurate billing.
Effective hotel distribution
- Increase room occupancy and ADR through real-time rate and availability management across distribution channels. Boost sales through direct booking channels on brand website.
Guest data
- Centralize and secure customer data and improve the quality and accuracy of guest profiles with reporting and analytics. Understand customer buying patterns so you can define more targeted packages and services. Ensure compliance with national and international data-compliance rules
Selecting the right cloud hotel PMS
Choosing the right hotel property management system is critical to the smooth running of your hotel operation. It pays to understand exactly what you do need, and what you don't need. The 2020/2021 Smart Decision Guide to Hotel Property Management Systems provides the information you need to make a smart decision and find the hotel PMS that best fits your need. This research report, conducted by Starfleet and sponsored by Oracle Hospitality, provides a checklist to use when evaluating hotel PMS, a list of must-ask questions for vendors, a roadmap for buying decisions, and valuable insights from industry insiders and experts.
How to deploy a cloud-based hotel PMS
Until recently, hotel PMS solutions were often managed on premises. On-premises solutions include hardware that can take up a lot of space. Resources were needed to manage the systems and software updates, upgrades, and patches that needed to be scheduled and installed manually by onsite staff.
Cloud-based, mobile-enabled hotel PMS platforms offer hotels an innovative way to engage with guests while enabling hotels to reduce IT costs and simplify their infrastructure. The systems are administered by the vendor and are easy to use. Updates, upgrades, and patches are done automatically, saving hotels time and money.
The benefits of cloud-based hotel PMS solutions include:
Faster innovation in the cloud
With a cloud hotel PMS, hotels can bring new properties online more quickly. Each new release brings new capabilities to help deliver great guest experiences, improve operating efficiency, and increase employee productivity.
Lower IT complexity and costs
With a cloud hotel PMS, hotels can lower upfront capital expenditure on software and hardware. By going above-property, hotels can also reduce IT complexity and IT costs.
Increase in RevPAR and ADR
With a cloud hotel PMS, hotels can effectively manage rates and allocation of rooms to various distribution channels, helping to maximize occupancy, rates, and revenue.
Enhanced customer lifetime value
With a cloud hotel PMS, hotels get a single customer master with comprehensive guest profiles that allow them to personalize and differentiate guest experiences.
Extend the value of your cloud hotel PMS through integrations
Traditionally, a hotel property management system was defined as a system that enabled a hotel or group of hotels to manage front-office capabilities, such as booking reservations, guest check-in/checkout, room assignment, managing room rates, and billing. Hotel PMS delivered a software platform that replaced time-intensive, paper and spreadsheet-heavy processes.
However, hotel PMS technology has evolved and greater integrations offer services that extend well beyond the front desk. Hotel PMS is now a critical business-operations system that enables hoteliers to deliver a seamless and contactless guest experience. Hotel PMS now integrates to other onsite services that impact the guest's complete experience, including.
Integrated hotel PMS and POS—Better together
Guests rate their hotel experience in a collective, not piecemeal, fashion. Which means they desire to receive the same level of personalized, exceptional service across the property, whether they’re in the lobby or a restaurant. To meet such expectations, it’s essential for PMS and POS systems to operate as one, and that’s exactly how OPERA Cloud and MICROS Simphony POS are engineered: to be better together. An enhanced interface between the two yields unprecedented information sharing, allowing hotel and restaurant staff to be equally aware of reservation details, guest needs and individual preferences. For example, using Notes and Guest Messages, front desk staff can document a guest’s food allergies, which can be viewed by Simphony and OPERA users. Such integration also permits restaurant transactions to be posted directly to the folio for better accounting and dispute resolution. And at a time when guests are increasingly demanding self-service technology, Simphony kiosks and OPERA combine to offer them a safe, secure, time-saving way to purchase items.
Cloud PMS from Oracle Hospitality
Hoteliers' demands for a property management system are many: orchestrate hotel operations, manage guest preferences, manage room inventory and rates, and evolve constantly all while keeping data secure. That's why Oracle Hospitality created OPERA Cloud Property Management.
Take a product tour of OPERA Cloud PMS today.