Any organization that offers great service or quality products typically has some great work going on behind the scenes.
For the hotel industry, this often largely involves an I.T. department that ensures the hotel management system is reliable, HR office that recruits the best talents, and more importantly; a hotel accounting software that ensures secure and reliable financial management. All these functions fall under the back office. Just how crucial is back office for a hotel or hotel chain? Every strategic decision that determines the very survival of the business is made within the back office. This underscores the vital need for a robust and effective hospitality back office software. There are a lot of benefits that any hotel or hotel chain can realize from implementing an effective hospitality back office software. Let’s look at some of the advantages of an integrated hospitality back office software solution offering inventory, food cost and accounts. 1) System administration is cheaper Implementing an integrated web based hotel accounting software solution reduces the overall cost of maintaining the hospitality back office software. The integrated web based hotel accounting software serves to reduce overall hardware and software requirements. Each hardware and/or software need often has its associated costs, thus reducing these needs helps cut the costs associated with them. Integrated solution also means that there is less chance of errors and human intervention as revenues and expenses flow automatically between guest facing modules to back office system. An integrated hospitality back office software also means that you don’t have to procure, install, and/or maintain multiple solutions from different vendors for your F&B operations, Inventory and accounting. Hotels and hotel chains normally have to install hospitality back office software for managing overhead departmental expenses such as utility bills, insurance sales, taxes and marketing expenses in their F&B environment. Relying on various hospitality back office software solutions to manage F&B costing, Inventory and accounting from different vendors can become expensive, not to mention unreliable. Integration helps consolidate these resources and costs into a powerful and effective environment. This is extremely important for the overall managing of expected financial returns. 2) Integration makes system administration easier Integrating your web based hotel accounting software with the rest of the hospitality software infrastructure reduces the overall number of installations required. This makes it easier for the various stakeholders who rely on hospitality and the back office accounting software to go about their duties. Almost every stakeholder is involved ineffective and prompt guest service and cost control process for hotels and hotel chains. From general managers to line personnel, shift supervisors to culinary staff, account receivable/payable clerks to controllers and executive chefs – each of these rely on an effective PMS and back office solution for their day job. A completely integrated hospitality solution and a simple software architecture ensure ease of operations at every level. Web based solution offers an environment that a user can access anytime depending on their user access, various individuals can sign in to the system through a web browser or via an installed app. In any case, they will be able to access and facilitate the operations with simple clicks of a button. 3) The most complex back office operations can be run from anywhere Hotel accounting managers and other personnel do not have to be physically present in the office to access functions of the web based hotel accounting software. Since the hotel software is Web based, they can sign into the system from any part of the world as long as they have an internet connectivity and an internet enabled handset. Hotel chains can centralize data, processes, and workflows, hence cutting down on resources at each property and managing operations centrally. This provides a great opportunity to top management to ensure operations are always effective and within budget. This can significantly increase the efficiency of operations across the hotel or hotel chain. Any technical glitch in the office may not, therefore, affect any element of accounts including F&B cost management, inventory management, purchases, accounts payable and accounts receivable operations – just to mention a few. Accounts personnel can process invoices and ensure they are ready to go out for payment in time even when they (staff) cannot physically visit the office. This is because they have all the data they need to prepare the invoices from a central hospitality back office software dashboard. The system automates workflows and provides alerts to intended users on mobiles and emails to provide approvals and authorize purchases, payments etc. 4) There’s increased room for accelerated growth When your web based hotel accounting software and the entire hospitality software solution that runs your business operations is integrated around one codebase, your business can effectively innovate and scale. How you go about it will depend on the hotel’s internal growth strategies.
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2020 has been unquestionably one of the toughest years hospitality industry has ever been faced. Even though Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is still impacting the global travel and hospitality industry, demand for travel is slowly picking up in many destinations.
As an hotelier it is important for you to fine tune your hotel marketing approach to be more than a simple promotion. You have to use latest best hotel software technology and contactless solutions to prove your hotel is safe and motivate people to book your property. Here we share few tips to help you while you plan your marketing. Focus on marketing activities with high ROI You should carefully choose the best marketing platform that your target audience responds best and plan your resources accordingly to yield the highest ROI for your hotel such as social media relation and paid advertisement campaigns. Focus on your local community International travel may take more time to bounce back, Hotel operators should concentrate on offer best deals and promotions to local community which they can take advantage. Hotels should make best use of a hotel software system and carefully choose the media which attracts local travel to refine your target and get more booking. Adjust your Revenue Management and marketing strategy When think of COVID-19 recovery phase, it is essential to line up marketing strategy with rate parity across all channels, direct bookings, any new offers and packages. Define a Flexible Cancellation Policy By executing a flexible cancellation policy, hotel properties can console guests and give them an impetus to book, while combatting OTAs that frequently make it hard to cancel. With major OTA like Booking.com and Expedia have been updating their cancellation policies frequently. Hotel operator should consider updating with a flexible hotel cancellation policy for at least next 6 – 12 Months to encourage guests to book your hotel directly from your website which is integrates with web booking engine and a hotel software. Update Digital Assets with Critical Information Hotels should make a list of all available digital assets and guarantee they are up-to-date regarding the legitimate data that will help guests in booking. For example, update all local listings about what time your hotel is open after COVID restrictions are lifted. Consider posting an announcement and safety measurements followed in your hotel property. Update your new flexible cancellation policy on all the OTA’s and metasearch. This can be easily done if you are using hotel channel manager integrated with a hotel PMS software. Send marketing campaigns to cancelled Reservations to Rebook: You should offer special package and incentives to recapture booking that have already booked your property is one of the ideal way to quickly increase occupancy. According to a study by Fuel Travel on cancellations and travel reschedule, over 50% of respondents have either cancelled or rescheduled a trip. You can schedule an email campaign using an integrated hotel software. Staying associated with past and forthcoming guests is an extraordinary method to drive bookings as travel demand increases, however to facilitate the stress of movement for upcoming guests. Consider the accompanying CRM campaigns:
Focus on your Loyalty Members Loyalty implies brand trust, and members who know about your image are bound to book during seasons of vulnerability. Make certain to remunerate your dependability individuals with customized and restrictive bundles and encounters once COVID-19 dies down. As we are adapting a life after COVID-19, hotel marketing plan will take time to effect and check what’s working and what can be improved, and how your guests perceive your messages. Your brand reputation depends on how well you interact with you customers. Want to know how mycloud hotel software can help your hotel achieve effective marketing mix to gain your potential guests. Schedule a free consultation with our experts. Belonging to strong background in hospitality and online travel technology, hotel online distribution and digital marketing; Max Starkov provides consultancy services for hotels and resorts to reach their customers on a whole new level. We got the opportunity to interview the hospitality veteran about his journey in hospitality industry and to know his profitable tips for hotel online distribution strategy in COVID-19 recovery phase.
1). What inspired you to be a Hospitality technology consultant? I have been fascinated by the lack of technology knowledge, the reluctance to adopt the latest technology innovations in our industry ever since my internships at hotels so many years ago. Now it is the lack of understanding of the digitally-savvy customer we are dealing with today and what their needs and wants are. If you as a GM understand today’s customer, then you would hire the right people with the right expertise and convince ownership to invest in the right technology applications: CRS, RMS, CRM, CMS, IoT and mobile, and invest in adequate digital marketing (DMS). 2). How do COVID, and other disruptions, impact the future of hotel distribution? COVID and the government travel restrictions crushed travel demand. In hospitality this necessitated a complete overhaul of any hotelier’s distribution strategy from the usual market segmentation channel strategy to a Feeder Market Channel Strategy. Hoteliers are now focusing on their short-haul feeder-markets and especially on their drive-in feeder markets and citizens in their immediate location in the firm of staycations and work-from-hotel offerings. People are already traveling and will continue to do so in the post-crisis period, especially on short-haul and drive-in trips. 3). How have direct bookings grown as part of the channel mix? Hoteliers have one tremendous advantage over the OTAs, wholesalers, bed banks and other distribution players: they know their destination and their customers better than anybody else. If they apply this knowledge to their distribution strategy, they would be able to increase direct bookings as part of the overall distribution mix. Do you have weekend specials, coronavirus de-stressing packages, spa packages, family packages, activity packages, special occasion and F&B packages and promotions, staycation and work-from-hotel packages, etc. that you can use to target your local, short-haul and drive-in feeder markets? 4). What are your tips to increase control in a blended hotel distribution world? Systemic underinvestment in technology, knowledge and digital marketing in our industry is the main reason for the rise of the OTAs and Bedbanks. These players did not come from some other planet, we allowed them to emerge and grow at the expense of our own incompetence and underinvestment in everything digital. How do you exert control of your distribution mix? Start by enforcing strict rate parity. Review your property website – is it mobile-first? Do you have Schema markup and Google AMP in place? How is the site SEO: on-page and technical SEO, inbound linking? Have you updated your Google My Business local listing? Have you retained a relationship with your digital marketing partner agency throughout the crisis? These are all fundamentals that would allow your property not only to survive, but prosper in the post-pandemic era. Focusing on your past guests and repeat business should become a top priority versus chasing new customers. Past guests and loyalty members are already familiar with the property, its location and product, the only thing now is to convince them that the property is safe to stay at. Past guests and repeat business will rule the next 24 months! The big question is what else can hoteliers do in this environment of weak travel demand and severe budget cuts? I believe selling on value versus selling on price alone can compensate to a great extent the budget limitations and online dominance by the OTAs. Hoteliers must remember and relearn how to sell on value versus price alone! Be creative: it is not difficult to figure out what customers that have been locked at home for 6 plus months – we have all been there – would love to experience at your property and its surroundings. 5). How can hoteliers deal with wholesale distribution dilemma? Intermediaries have always played a role in hotel distribution. Even in the pre-Internet era, intermediaries contributed to 25% of hotel room nights. But ignoring the direct channel and allowing the intermediaries to usurp your distribution strategy is a major failing of our industry. Did you know that independent hoteliers in Europe have allowed the OTAs and bedbanks to have an 80% market share of online bookings vs 20% via the hotel website? The situation is not much better for many hoteliers in North America, Latin America and APAC. Smart hoteliers utilize their knowledge of the digitally-savvy travel consumers, technology investments and digital marketing expertise to maintain a healthy distribution mix of directs and intermediary channels. In the post-pandemic world any hotelier should “own” their short-haul and drive-from feeder markets and “delegate” to the intermediaries only the long-haul and foreign feeder markets. You do that by employing solid revenue management practices and RMS technology; enforcing strict rate parity, implementing CRM program and technology to engage and retain your repeat customers, investing in digital marketing initiatives in your short-haul and drive-from feeder markets. 6). What are your tips for a profitable hotel distribution strategy? In these difficult times with low occupancies, catastrophic ADRs and RevPARs and staff operating on a skeleton-crew fashion, launching elaborate and expensive performance marketing campaigns to acquire new guests are out of the question. Therefore, with your post-crisis marketing strategy, the goal is to achieve maximum returns with minimum budget. Here are some of these initiatives that will help you achieve that:
As I mentioned, underinvestment in technology is one of the main reasons for the existing over dependency on the OTAs in hospitality. In addition to revamping the property website, its merchandising and SEO, and introducing contactless check-in, I believe CRM technology is the most urgent technology hoteliers need today. Why? In the post-pandemic period repeat business will save the day. Acquiring a new customer is 10-15 times more expensive than retaining your existing customers. How do you retain your customers? By utilizing a CRM technology and having a robust CRM marketing program: customer data platform (CDP) with cleansed guest data from all silos; RFM value customer segmentation based on how valuable are these guests to the property; pre-, in-stay and post-stay marketing initiatives, marketing automation and drip campaigns, etc. The CRM technology allows any hotelier to create a Reward Program or a Guest Appreciation Program and reward repeat customers for their loyalty. A cloud CRM technology costs several dollars per room per months and is worth every penny! About Max Starkov Max Starkov is a hospitality digital strategy, technology and marketing executive, consultant and expert with 30 years of industry experience. Max has spent his entire professional career in hospitality and online travel, focusing on hotel digital strategy, technology and marketing. Max has consulted hundreds of major hotel chains, boutique and luxury hotel brands, independent hotels, resorts and casinos on their digital technology and marketing strategies. As an online travel expert consultant with the major expert knowledge networks, Max has consulted hundreds of Wall Street analysts and investment bankers on the online travel marketplace, hospitality industry technology and marketing, online distribution strategies, OTAs, TripAdvisor; travel initiatives by Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. Max is a published author of hundreds of articles, opinion articles, white papers and best practices guides and is recognized “thought leader” in digital technology and marketing strategies in hospitality and travel. Max received the most prestigious industry award, the HSMAI “Top 25 Most Extraordinary Minds in Sales and Marketing” and served on the HSMAI Digital Marketing Council. For 20 semesters Max has been an adjunct professor, graduate courses, on hospitality technology, online distribution, digital marketing and CRM at New York University’s Tisch Center for Hospitality Studies. Max has an MS in Economics of International Tourism & Hospitality, Sofia University and an MBA in E-Commerce degree, Beta Gamma Sigma Honors, from Fordham University in New York. Content Source: https://www.mycloudhospitality.com/blog/expert-opinion-by-max-starkov-on-hotel-online-distribution |
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December 2021
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