What could be better for hoteliers than an opportunity to learn about methods to increase their customer satisfaction, retention, and profitability–all from one of the foremost leaders of the hospitality industry? In this blog, we bring you the key points from an extensive talk with Steven Hopkinson–the Founder of Idem Labs and the Co-Founder of Insight Media and Insider TV. He founded Idem with the mission to create opportunities for hotels to strengthen their guest experience.
He is a consummate media professional with a history of setting up and operating dynamic media companies. With key leadership roles at Getty Images, DMX Music, and the Photolibrary Group, Steven has been at the forefront of the digital revolution as a key media content provider.
How To Increase Productivity Of Your Hotel?
In Stephen’s perspective, there are three constituents of group bookings: a hotel, an event planner/organizer/management company, and the guest–all should be connected seamlessly, but in reality, it’s seldom the case.
A hotel can enhance productivity by connecting with the property management system, which in turn connects them with their planners and guests.
However, presently, for groups that ordinarily book, let’s say, ten rooms or more, making these bookings online isn’t as easy as facilitating individual bookings. So the hotel ends up working with a rooming list, which for all intents and purposes is a spreadsheet.
The organizer or the planner gathers all the information from the customer, builds all of it up on the rooming lists, and sends it back to the hotel so that they can manually input all that information into their PMS–this is highly time-consuming.
The Solution
An online platform that directly connects the guests (even groups) to the hotel and enables them to self-book reservations with ease – that’s the answer to booking and customer management issues.
It can not only give a transparent and an updated view of the occupancy but also increases the possibility of your guests extending their stay as their experience is improved and made less troublesome.
Moreover, the hotel receives and saves all the information directly in-house. The connection between the hotel, event planners, the guests, provided by this online real-time-updated PMS, helps hotel managers keep track of their upcoming bookings and existing guests.
For example, they will be well aware if a member of their loyalty program has a booking to stay with them and could plan a warm welcome for him in advance.
How An Online PMS Can Help Planners
Gone are the days when corporate event planners had to use glitchy spreadsheets to keep track of the entire event. With an online platform, the guests can now fill all the details themselves on the online planner so the professionals know for sure what they are working with.
They can see the status of their bookings, and if they wish to make any modifications to any of the records, they won’t have to contact the hotel like in old times but can do it directly.
More importantly, they have access to many features within the dashboard that is set up for them – they can see current and past contracts and the floor plans of the hotel they are working with.
This makes work a lot easier for the organizers, so they are more likely to recommend your hotel to most of their customers for their personal and company events.
A PMS becomes a living breathing entity that ensures the sharing of information with the hotel via uploaded files, and the hotel can also share data with them in return.
In Conclusion
Implementing an online PMS can help hotels can increase their direct bookings and loyalty from the guests. It can also help ensure better partnerships with event and meeting planners because it eases their work and also saves them time.
Sales and hotel managers mostly work on ways to attract new leads out there. But with this PMS, they can make additional revenue from people who come into their hotel anyway, understand their needs in a better way, and help enhance the experience of their stay.
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