What is a Property Management System?

By Paul Finch

A Property Management System (PMS) is a software application that is designed and can be implemented to meet the varied requirements of any size hotel or hotel group. A PMS should provide all of the tools that hotel staff need to do their day-to-day jobs - such as managing room inventory, handling reservations, checking guests in, assigning rooms, accommodating in-house guest needs, checking guest out, handling all billing and accounting requirements, reporting and marketing. The application should be configurable to each property's specific requirement and can be configured to operate either as a single-property or in a multi-property configuration, whereby all properties within a group share a single database.

Multi-Property functionality can help hotel chains dramatically reduce hardware and software investments, and labour expenses, by running multiple properties off of a single database / hardware platform. Centralised hardware and software can also make system support and upgrades easier as all hardware and software is contained to one central location. Hotels may also reduce labour costs by sharing common functions between properties such as reservations, accounting, sales and PBX.

Key Features

In a well developed PMS, reservation features are integrated with other system functionality, offering a complete set of features for the making and updating of individual, group, and business block reservations, including integrated deposit handling, cancellations, confirmations, wait-listing, room blocking, and sharing.

An extensive set of integrated features for the setting, automatic controlling and yielding of rates should be an important factor when selecting a PMS for your hotel as you will need this for rate quotation, rate yielding and for revenue forecasting and analysis.

Another important function you should focus on is 'Profile' handling - complete demographic records for guests, business accounts, contacts, groups, agents, and sources should be available. Profiles should including addresses, phone numbers, membership enrolments, stay and revenue details, guest preferences, and any additional data that make reservations handling and other activities faster and more accurate.

Arrivals and in-house guests should be served with easy to use 'Front Desk' features such as Dash Boards. These should be able to handle individual guests, groups, and walk-ins, and include features for room blocking, managing guest messages and wake-up calls, guest locaters and creating and following up on inter-department advisories, or traces. 'Rooms Management' should be available to handle all facets of room supervision including availability, housekeeping, maintenance, and facility management.

Posting guest charges, making posting adjustments, managing advance deposits, settlements, folio printing and checkout are just a few of the many activities that should be handled by the cashiering module. Cashiering should accommodate multiple payment methods per folio and credit card settlements including integration with Chip and Pin devices. In multi-property environments, it should be possible to cross - post guest charges from any property to any other property in the hotel complex.

An 'Accounts Receivable' feature should be fully integrated with the PMS and include direct billing, invoicing, account aging, bill payments, reminders, statement generation, and account research.

Revenue transfers, market statistics transfers, daily statistics transfers, and city ledger transfers can be easily made from PMS to a back office system via an interface if you choose a comprehensive solution.

PMS should offer you integrated features for the calculating, processing, and following up on travel agent and other types of commission payments.

A more sophisticated PMS will support multi-currency and multi-language features to meet the requirements of global operations. Rates and revenues should be dynamically converted from the local currency to any other currency. The appropriate language for guest correspondence should be automatically determined by the guest's profile language; and a country-specific address formats should be supported. The user interface should also change to the language of the user based on their sign on password.

A good PMS solution will always offer standard reporting. Reports should also be able to be customised for each hotel and new reports created as needed using built-in report writers or advanced but easy to use reporting tools.

An important factor when evaluating a solution which will work with your currently deployed systems is whether the PMS solution provider includes interfaces to third-party hospitality systems including yield management, telephone and wake up call systems, TV and video entertainment, door locking, EPOS, internet, activities scheduling and mini-bar.

For the smaller properties or independent hoteliers offering limited services, scaled down Xpress versions of the full PMS should be available. Based on the core PMS product, properties should be able to choose the relevant features they want from a menu of product options.

Installation

If you're purchasing a PMS for your hotel, you should ensure that there will be no unnecessary disruption or downtime to running your business. A good installation should not have an impact on your operation or your guests. However, detailed planning and working closely with your chosen supplier and following their guidelines and listening to their advice is essential.

For more information on Property Management System solutions available from Micros-Fidelio UK Ltd, please contact the sales department on 01753 501 607

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Finch

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The Front Desk

By Prabhash Bhatnagar

In the hospitality business the front desk plays a crucial role, it is the center of all information flow.

Front desks are usually the first line of customer service for a lodging property. The registration of arriving guests, assigning of rooms, and checking out guests are a small part of what happens here. They also keep records of room assignments and other registration-related information plus process payments.

Front Desk personnel answer questions about services, checkout times, the local community, or other matters of public interest. In larger hotels or in larger cities, desk clerks may refer queries about area attractions to a concierge and may direct more complicated questions to the appropriate manager. They report problems with guest rooms or public facilities to members of the housekeeping or maintenance staff and at times perform the work of a bookkeeper, advance reservation agent, cashier, laundry attendant, and telephone switchboard operator.

Automation of The Front Desk

Traditionally all these jobs of the Front Desk were done manually and service inconsistency were very common at the front desk as there were so many intricate details to look after.

The advent of the Front Desk software or Hotel Management Software have smoothened the front desk operations providing better work process and customer satisfaction. Since most operations like registrations, room maintenance, checkout facilities have become nearly error free.

The mark of a good Front Desk software would be that personnel should be able to access all functionality associated with the day-to-day front desk operations including spa and group management.

Front Desk software system should be user-friendly, uncluttered and compact that automate the operation and management of a hotel. The software should seamlessly integrate the Front Desk operations like reservation, billing, payment, reports, bookkeeping linking to Online & Offline Reservations, Housekeeping, and POS functions on a single platform.

Checklist of Front Desk Software

To be able to properly automate the functions of the Front Desk a software should have ;

Status - available/reserved/checked-in/out/blocked - along with guest's last name is available.

Guest's details :

• reservation details
• new reservation assignment

Create a new guest :

• name
• address
• credit card(s)
• references attributes

Create a reservation :

• Assigns a guest to a specific room(s)
• Sets a period of continuous dates
• Notes method of arrival (car, bus, taxi etc)
• Prints guest check-in card

Access report :

• of guests scheduled to arrive/depart for a specific date
• Print check-in cards for all/selected guest for a specific date

Check-in guests as they arrive

Edit reservations: past, present and future - change dates, rooms etc.

• Re-assign guests to a different room
• Split reservations: account for people who may change rooms during a single visit

Add charges to the rooms including gift shop, spa and restaurant charges :

Check-out guests including form of payment(s) including checks, traveler's checks and credit cards. For non-cash payments a reference number is collected (check number, authorization code etc). :

Receive transaction data from a credit card swipe machine :

Work Shift :

Booking for the spa will be made according to following specifications :

• Treatments/space categories each with their own attributes
• Treatments booked for a specific time period on a day
• Spa charges can be charged to the guest's rooms or settled at the spa at the time of the treatment

Make group reservations for two or more rooms reserved under one name.

Prabhash Bhatnagar is Manager of Sales & Marketing, maker of hotel management system and hotel front desk software handles the key aspects of the running of client's business, including bookings & reservations, Housekeeping, Spa, POS and generating reports.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Prabhash_Bhatnagar

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Inn Reservation Software

By Lewis Waller

Do we truly need inn reservation software to help take care of our businesses? Can't we get by with the old pencil and paper method of keeping booking records and such? The fact is, most booking errors can be eliminated by using software that constantly and automatically updates information which can be readily available at our fingertips, and even printed out at a moment's notice.

The booking errors that inn reservation software can prevent alone can make a business flourish. What booking errors, you may ask? As anyone in this industry knows, there are plenty. For instance, when is the last time you've had to decline a potential client because of an already exiting reservation, only to find that the expected guest had become a no show? Or worse - that upon further inspection of your records, you find out that the reservation wasn't even guaranteed?

That's just one example. But there are other faux pas which can be avoided by using inn reservation software that are of different natures. Let's say you are off inspecting a specific unit, and you get a call from an interested client who wants to stay at your inn, and needs the information right away. Yes, you probably can receive the call without having to be at the front desk at the moment, but then you have to go all the way back to the front desk to check your booking records, leaving the client on hold for however long it takes - will the client still be waiting on the phone when you return with the information? Is this professional service?

With inn reservation software on a laptop, all of your up-to-date records are always with you. Such software packages are also totally customizable, and even configurable with most any language. Make your business more error free... allow your services to be more professional. Use inn reservation software to your advantage and see your business flourish.

For more information on Hotel Reservation Software check out Reservation Master which includes a 30 day free trial. Head over to http://www.squidoo.com/hotel-reservation-software for a full review.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lewis_Waller

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7 Benefits T&E Expense Management Software Must Deliver for Business Managers

By Ugur Akinci

We are living on the cutting edge of Web 2.0 technologies. But we are also facing a number of economic uncertainties on a global scale.

These two factors generate new demands on T&E expense management software because companies are struggling to do more with less. The margins are thin with no room for error or waste.

The companies are therefore trying to cut down their business travel expenses without, however, sacrificing anything from the way they file, manage and report their data. If anything, they are asking for more granularity, modularity and control without increasing their IT overhead.

So here is what the ideal T&E software of the future should look like to cater to an increasingly choosy and sophisticated clientele base:

1) Multi-Policy Capability. Most companies today do not have a clear business travel policy in writing. Even when they do, their T&E software more often than not is designed for a single "default" policy that applies across the board, from the CEO to the graphic designer in the multimedia department.

A great T&E software would allow the managers to create different project accounts and then match the expense reports against different policies entered into the system. Why should the Chairwoman of the Board be limited to the same room or rental car allowance as the junior sales engineer who joined the company just a week earlier?

2) Open-Ended Horizontal Integration. The T&E software of the future must be able to manage not only the meals, hotel, air and rental car expenses like most traditional T&E systems do but other type of expenses as well like Internet and web-related expenses, railway and sea travels, training expenses, professional fees, and even medical expenses, etc.

The program should be open-ended enough to accommodate any and all expense categories without sacrificing anything from scalability or reliability.

3) Vertical Modularity. The ideal T&E software should be modular enough to allow the managers the select their own level of vertical integration in handling their business travel accounts.

For example, at the one end of the vertical integration spectrum should be the T&E expense submission and reporting application alone.

At the other end, the program should be able to hook up with any hotel or car rental booking program, or credit card module, on the one hand, and the company's Accounts Payable or Payroll modules, on the other.

With a software like that, a company would not have to pay for any unnecessary modules since the program does not come as a "take it or leave it" chunk.

Why should, for example, a company pay an expensive hotel-air-car booking module if all travel arrangements are already made in-house? If a client wants just the bare-bones T&E functions, she should be able to get only that and save money.

4) Platform Independence. The ideal T&E software should be platform agnostic. That is, it should be able to run not only on any OS (Windows, Mac, Linux) but should be accessible with any device ranging from the traditional desk-tops to PDAs and iPhones.

It should be browser agnostic as well (IE, Firefox, Safari) so that it can be accessed through the Internet from any spot on earth.

5) Zero Local IT Overhead. The T&E software of the future should eliminate the need to buy expensive software and hardware and maintain them locally. There should be need to download any security updates or patches and no need to hire a team of highly paid engineers just to keep the T&E servers running properly 24x7.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution delivers that promise by shifting all IT responsibilities to the vendor. That's why, if the data security issue is addressed and resolved properly, an ideal T&E software will probably be delivered as an SaaS product over the Internet.

6) Audit-Ready Compliance Capability. We are living in a post Sarbanes-Oxley world in which all publicly owned financial institutions in the United States are mandated to document their business transactions. Since under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 company managers are personally liable for unauthorized and improper expenditures in their departments, they take the need for consistent, secure and systematic documentation very seriously.

A great T&E software must thus generate detailed reports showing which travel requests were approved or denied when and by which supervisor on the basis of which policy, etc.

7) Secure, Unique and Time-Stamped Tagging. It must also tag each transaction (including T&E related e-mail requests, expense filings, faxed receipts, etc.) with an encrypted, unique and time-stamped code to prevent fraud and post-facto alterations.

Visit http://www.web2expense.com today for a cutting edge T&E Expense management software that satisfies all the conditions discussed above. Take the 30-day free trial option and test drive without any obligations.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ugur_Akinci

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Promote Your Hotel With Hotel Search Engines

By Gardner Wilkinson

Did you know that 85% of web users rely on search engines to locate hotel information? This may not come as a surprise to you, as we all know how effective search engines are and how useful they are in looking for information.

There is no doubt that search engines have become the market makers of the Internet and an effective way of promoting hotels online. They connect travelers and hotels from all over the globe, and enable them to find exactly what they want, when they want it. Various search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN give travelers easy access to 1000's of hotel websites online, making it convenient for them to look for hotels. But in order to target a specific audience who are only looking for hotel accommodation and are interested in getting the best hotel deals online; Hotel Search Engines have entered the market.

What are Hotel Search Engines?

Just as how Google and Yahoo search engines are capable of searching for anything and everything on the face of this earth, Hotel Search Engines are specifically built for the Hotel Industry. All the traveler has to do is log on to any of the Hotel Search Engines and enter the destination he wishes to visit. He then gets a list of hotels to choose from. Not just that, he can also compare rates, amenities and images provided by the hotels. Hotel Search Engines greatly benefit the traveler by offering him the ideal accommodation for his trip.

By listing your hotel website on any of the popular Hotel Search Enginesyou can drive 'qualified traffic' and not just 'traffic' to your website. This helps enhance your business opportunities to a great extent and create a greater probability of travelers visiting your website. Hotel Search Engines help maximize your presence on the Internet to a very focused audience at an economic cost and reach out to millions of accommodation searchers online.

Through Hotel Search Engines travelers can view your hotel details and directly visit your hotel website for reservations. This way you can build your property's brand on the web and increase the number of bookings you generate from the Internet.

Recently iXiGo launched a Hotel Search Engine, covering 4500 hotels in 320 Indian cities. iXiGO's hotel search accesses more than 30 leading national and international hotel booking websites, enabling comparisons of room tariffs of the same hotel across multiple sites within a few seconds. iXiGo sorts accommodation by price, star ratings and amenities and also allows detailed views for maps and photos; all in a single web page.

Ase.net is another popular hotel search engine and considered as one of the best ways to search for hotels, motels, inns, and holiday rental accommodation anywhere in the world. It has more than 150,000 individual properties in its location based hotel search engine, many with multiple web pages so that the traveler can compare prices from different suppliers.

Hotelrooms.com allows the traveler to check out some of the most popular vacation destinations for beach hotels, spa resorts, suites and luxury hotels. It has a list of some of the best hotel specials for cheap hotel deals and the best discount rates.

Ghumichale.com is another comprehensive hotel search engine wherein a customer just has to select the city, and enter the search button. The search results give hotels comparison results after searching over 900,000 hotel deals across the globe. The traveler can then make his decision by comparing the prices and check the hotel images from the database of over 20,00,000 images and over 24,00,000 hotel reviews. It covers all types of hotels, from 5 star and 7 star hotels to budget or economical hotels.

There are various Hotel Search Engines that have entered the market and it is up to you to choose which one would be most beneficial to your business.

Also keep in mind, that once you manage to generate traffic to your website through these Hotel Search Engines, you should also be able to allow the guest to pay up immediately and give him a confirmation in real time. This is possible by having a good booking engine for your hotel website. A comprehensive booking engine will allow you to instantly close a sale and stop the customer from moving on to a competing hotel website.

Hotel Search Engines are slowly gaining popularity and will soon become an indispensable part of the any traveler's agenda. So hurry! And get yourself listed on the Hotel Search Engines and you will soon witness a drastic change in your hotel business.

I recommend Resavenue for more information on hotel search engines and hotel reservation software.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gardner_Wilkinson

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Upgrading Your Hotel Property Management System to the Opera PMS

By Amber Lee

Opera PMS and the Sales & Catering program. If you are unfamiliar with using a hotel property management system then you may find this system to be a bit of a challenge. You can purchase this program with or without the Sales and Catering interface.

Believe it or not there are still a lot of properties that do not offer a modernized PMS System and Sales Program.

Prepare to spend a lot of time working on the configuration that needs to be completed with care and correctly. The time spent will save time in the long run. I recommend that when planning to convert that frequent meetings and recaps are being conducted to make sure the Management Team is all on the same page.

Once the PMS System is completed and you are ready to go live, I suggest that Management is around and available to assist where needed. Put some coffee and cookies out in the lobby and prepare for a long night.

Guests do not care about your new system and they certainly don't want to be held up at the front desk. Make sure the Staff is properly trained before they work with the guests.

The hotel sales manager will need to create a Profile on all of the accounts. From there the group block will need to be built and any Events will need to be entered. Once all is entered, the sales person can conveniently check space and room availability. Similar to Delphi and other programs, this will show what meeting space is booked and check the cap on the Group Rooms that was entered in during configuration.

The hotel sales manager will also need to enter in their prospects. During the configuration you can establish some nice features such as automatic traces. These traces will ensure that no potential account gets ignored or forgotten. The sales manager clicks on their activities and the traces will be there. Traces are automatic, or manual and can be changed.

The goal is for the Sales Person to enter in their prospects and inquiries. By doing this you can easily change a tentative booking to a definite booking in one click. Contracts will automatically be printed, sweet and simple. And the properties history can be available at any time. Lost business can also be calculated and reviewed.

There are many benefits to Opera. It takes some practice and time to learn. It is important that the Management Team understands this system so they can train and support the staff. The Front Desk Agents should be property trained before they are put out at the desk. Time, patience and drive will make you a pro at a good program.

Amber Lee is currently working as a Group or SMERFE Sales Manager at a big city airport hotel. See more of Ambers Hotel Sales Managers Tips and Helpful Hints on her website at The Hotel Sales Managers Elite Alliance Sign up for her Ezine and get even more tips delivered right to your inbox. http://www.hotelsalesmanager.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Amber_Lee

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How to Generate Revenue with Hotel Call Accounting Software

By Rito Salomone

Communication services are essential to the majority of hospitality guests. Many business executives and travelers demand efficient facilities that can keep them in touch with home base. It is imperative for sophisticated hotel billing software to account for telephone charges, Internet usage, equipment fees, surcharges and taxes in real time.

Virtually every major hotel has some form of call tracking or call accounting software. The declining cost of telephone calls has seen a decline in revenue. Gone are the days when hotels could command huge margins for simply picking up the telephone. At one time, it was not uncommon for hotels to mark up telephone calls 80 to 100 percent. Sometimes your telephone charges could account for a larger cost than the room rate.

In the past, a decent hotel call accounting system would generally been left in the back room logging long distance call records from a PBX serial port. The system would apply exorbitant rates and post them to the property management system. Tariff updates from the manufacturer were usually ignored (since the updates usually contained lower billing plans).

Hotel telecom revenues are now declining at a steady rate of 3 to 6 per cent per year. Hotel general managers and comptrollers are forced to become more creative to meet bottom line objectives for communication. The traditional call accounting system cash cow now needs to be fined tuned to adapt to new technologies and market competition. The answer lies in the creative use of new call accounting modules or more appropriately a communication management system (CMS).

The proper utilization of a hotel call accounting system can still derive huge benefits. Guests that get busy signals will find alternate ways to make telephone calls. It is of utmost importance for properties to track the number of busy signals, overflow or blocked calls. This can be accomplished through the use of traffic reports that identify grade of service and peak calling hours. These reports often recommend the proper number of trunks or lines for the property to run smoothly.

Long distance calling has been declining for years. However local and toll free calls have been fairly steady. The use of billing thresholds can help increase revenue. Certainly a guest that talks for thirty minutes on a local call could be charged a small amount for facility usage. Some hotels have turned to adjusting room rates a fixed amount to compensate for lost telecom revenue.

The rise of internet usage has forced many hotels to provide free internet access. This has compounded the problem for the telecom department. Many guests and business travelers have found other convenient means of communication (IP services, instant messaging, email, cellular phones) that are not part of the infrastructure of the hotel property. The advent of flat rate VoIP providers has given the business traveler the ability to bypass toll charges. A modern communication management system should be capable of adding internet usage charges into guest folios.

Proactive hotel properties use call accounting reports to determine calling patterns that show where guests are calling. These statistics help the hotel target marketing and negotiate better tariff plans. Night auditors have always been asked to reconcile daily transactions. However most failed to reconcile the transactions against the actual telephone bill. Examining telephone company records versus the call accounting records helps to ensure that all calls are being recorded, billed and appropriately surcharged.

Many hotel call accounting systems are missing critical information. Often extensions are not identified correctly as guest rooms, conference rooms, VIP or administrative. This can result in inaccurate billing and lost revenue. Properties should ensure that their call accounting system is loaded and configured properly on a monthly basis. Most banner properties have a preset tariff table that is deployed among all properties. System administrators should ensure that all properties follow the same guidelines.

As more communication facilities are offered by the property, the communication management system will be required to account for hotel cell phones, calls made with authorization codes, internet service, hand held devices and other guest amenities.

Discover more about call accounting, internet usage, hotel billing and telephone reporting from Resource Software International Ltd. (RSI).

Rito Salomone is the president of Resource Software International Ltd. (RSI). He has 17 years experience in the field of communication management solutions.

For more information you can review: http://www.telecost.com or http://www.callaccountingsoftware.com or contact the author at rsalomone@telecost.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rito_Salomone

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