In this blog we will cover how to save time with a Property Management System.
A PMS is the most effective investment an accommodation business could make to save time. If you’re looking for a way to reduce your time spent managing your accommodation business, the first thing to look at is a cloud-based PMS. There are many available on the market, to suit all shapes and sizes of business.
Here’s where you’ll save valuable time;
With money coming from several directions at once - guests, companies, OTAs - you need a tidy way to keep track of who has paid what. An efficient accounts system will also make sure no bookings slip through unpaid or underpaid. A good PMS will highlight which bookings are unpaid as you view them on a bookings calendar. It will also keep track of unpaid and overdue invoices, and allow easy reconciliation with direct payments from OTAs. You should also be able to use your PMS to store credit cards safely - something that is exceptionally difficult to do without a PCI certified credit card storage program.
If you have a number of regular companies booking your property, a PMS is essential for keeping track of what your regular companies owe. Easily invoice multiple bookings at once, and be confident no bookings are going accidentally uninvoiced.
Speaking of regular companies, a PMS will allow you to set a special company rate, so your regulars will always get the rate they’re used to. An advanced PMS will also provide your regular companies with a login page, so they can make their own bookings at their own special rate! For those with frequent corporate bookings, this is easily one of the best ways to save time. Think of all the times spent taking phone calls from agents to check your availability and make bookings - all time saved when the job is handled entirely by the PMS for you.
If you have multiple OTAs, your rates are likely handled by a channel manager. These send rates from a central location (the channel manager) out to all the channels you are connected to (e.g. Booking.com, Expedia, Agoda). A PMS will either come with a channel manager included, or connect to another provider’s PMS. If saving time is your goal, look for combined PMS and channel manager software. (which Seekom offer!) Managing your property through one application is much easier than through two, and you’ll usually save money on one bill instead of two!
A key feature to look out for in a PMS/channel manager is automatic rates management. These are tools which price your rooms for you using parameters you’ve set and the availability of your rooms. A sophisticated automated rates management will even take market data into account, and automatically charge more for busy periods. This is a great way to both save you time (no more checking the prices of your competitors manually!) and increase your revenue.
Now that your rates and accounts are handled, you probably want to take a look at how your property is actually performing. This is next to impossible to do effectively without a PMS, but is undoubtedly vital information for your business. If you ever want to take out a business loan, apply for government assistance for the business, or sell the business, then you’ll need well presented data. A PMS can give you all sorts of statistics;
An advanced PMS can even give you the statistics that top performing hotels use for their revenue management; Pace reports, ADR and RevPAR. These are essential for working out when you should be offering specials and discounts, and when you should be increasing rates and changing minimum night stay restrictions.
With all the time saved on taking care of the financial aspects of the business, you can now focus on the important things - keeping your customers happy!
A PMS can help you automate contacting your guests; through email or sometimes SMS. Set up templates with whatever you need your guests to know, and you’ll spend a lot less time dealing with frequently asked questions (“when is check in?”, “are pets allowed?”, you’ve heard them all!).
Most bookings that come through a PMS will have an email address attached. This gives you an easy way to collect addresses and set up marketing campaigns in the future. For busy periods like annual festivals and events, it’s great to be able to contact the guests from previous year’s festival and invite them to book the first rooms for the next year.
Return guests should also be visible in a PMS, so it’s easy to spot those bookings and leave them a “welcome back” note. Particularly valuable guests can also be marked as a VIP, to make sure all your staff know to treat them well.
For properties with more than a few rooms, or those using an external housekeeping service, a PMS can save a lot of time just in the management of housekeeping. Most PMS will include a housekeeping report or feature which you can pass on to your housekeepers daily. Some will even include an app, allowing staff to enter updates as they go. With good housekeeping functionality, you can confidently hand over the management of your daily cleaning jobs to staff or an external service, saving yourself a lot of management time.
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Accommodation automation is more important than ever. You will probably agree that few things are more valuable than spare time at present as an accommodation owner and operator in 2021.
Many accommodation providers are being forced to cut overheads in the midst of a global pandemic and owners are now spending more time in the office, manning the front desks and cleaning rooms than ever before. With this in mind, it’s not surprising to learn that automation technology - that takes the manual labour out of many day to day procedures, is gaining a huge amount of popularity in the accommodation industry right now.
Automation Technology can be defined as any electronic product or system that is set up based on a set of rules, to run free from human intervention. These rules will normally be used to process a set of incoming live data, and respond to this data by completing a certain task. For example - an automatic payment set up with a bank is a piece of automation technology, where the rules set up are the amount of money sent each week, the day of the week the payment is sent on, and the bank account in which it is to be sent. The set of incoming live data that triggers the payment to process to occur is the date and time.
Accommodation-specific automation technology can save property owner operators a great deal of time in various different facets of their day to day operation. Today we're going to list some of the most popular automated features used in the accommodation industry today. So read on for a deep insight into how Seekom can help you spend more time doing what you with automation in the accommodation industry.
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a huge increase in the use of contactless check in systems. Express Check-In automation allows an online form to be automatically sent to your guests via email prior to arrival. This lets the guest complete the check in process ahead of time so they can skip the visit to the front desk on the day of arrival. Not only does this avoid the need for face to face contact, but it also significantly decreases the workload for your reception staff.
Gone are the days of having to swipe your guests cards through your EFTPOS machine every time you want to take payment for a booking. Many property management systems now offer built in payment gateway integrations which allow you to capture and charge the card automatically at the time of booking. Some properties also set up rules to automatically take a deposit or hold funds. This is a far safer way of taking credit card payments and will save you a ton of time.
If you are running an accommodation based business, you are probably no stranger to scheduled email automation. This technology allows you to automatically send booking and payment confirmations, plus any additional information your guest may need prior to arrival. What many properties haven’t used however, is automated emails for upselling purposes. Products such as UpsellGuru allow properties to send emails prior to arrival offering guests the chance to upgrade their room and add any extras. This has proved to boost revenue significantly and can be fully automated.
Automated revenue management systems update room rates based on market demand and fluctuations in occupancy. The systems are configured based on a set of minimum and maximum price limitations for each room and check your own price against your competitors every 2 hours. This ultimately leads to far higher revenue earnings, as well as the peace of mind of not having to worry about whether your prices are correct.
Properties that automate their room locks and gate controls save time and money on managing and replacing room keys. Many accommodation providers have implemented systems that generate and send unique room access codes to each guest. Not only does this add another step to the contactless check in process, but it also makes the check in process far easier. QR codes can also be generated via phone apps to access rooms.
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In this blog we will outline five major reasons why using a Channel Manager benefits you as an accommodation provider.
What does a channel manager do for an accommodation business?
A channel manager connects you to online travel agents (OTAs) like Booking.com, Expedia and Airbnb. It tells them how many rooms you have available each day and what your prices are. When someone makes a booking through an OTA, a channel manager collects all the bookings together in one place.
The best advantage a channel manager gives you is the ability to list with multiple online travel agents. The more channels you can connect to, the more people will see and book your property over others. A good channel manager will allow you to connect to all the big name channels, as well as many smaller channels. The goal is to get as many eyes on your property as possible.
A channel manager will keep your availability consistent across OTAs and your website, greatly reducing the possibility of overbookings. Most channel managers also include availability managements tools so you can, for example;
If you’ve used big OTAs before, you may have noticed that they are very particular about properties displaying the same rate across all channels - they call this rates parity. Some will even incur punishments for not having rate parity - for example, they might place your property further down in their search results. If you are using a channel manager, it is very easy to send the exact same rate to all channels, and avoid these punishments
OTAs (Online Travel Agents) take commission from all bookings they receive for you. Ideally you want as many bookings as possible coming to your own website instead, so you pay out less commission. A channel manager not only provides a website booking screen for you to use, but will also let you set a lower price on your website to attract more direct bookings.
One of the best things a channel manager can do for you is help manage your rates. Set minimum night restrictions on long weekends (to reduce your time spent cleaning!), link a non-refundable rate at -10% your normal rate, or set up an advance purchase rate. A channel manager makes all of these easy to do and easy to keep track of.
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As we waved goodbye to the year that was 2020, many of us were probably guilty of thinking the arrival of 2021 was going to provide some sort of magical end to the ongoing stresses of running an accommodation business during a global pandemic. So if you woke on the first day of 2021 with a mixed feeling of dread and disdain at the prospect of having to fight through another year of tight financial margins and personal sacrifice, you are certainly not alone.
Although there is a far brighter outlook for 2021, there is still a huge amount of market uncertainty leaving many hotels, motels and holiday parks at a loss on the best pricing decisions to make moving forward. Room rates seem to be the one thing most small to medium sized properties consistently get wrong at present. Whether it be through not changing rates frequently enough, or dropping prices unnecessarily low, poor rate management is making the lives of small to medium business owners harder than it needs to be.
If any of the above resonates with you, or you can happily admit that you don’t know quite as much about pricing rooms as you would like, then you will be glad to know that there are a range of tools out there that take the guesswork out of rate management. The rise in popularity of Automated Revenue Management technology means that small and medium accommodation providers can now gain access to all the benefits of a full time Revenue Manager, at a fraction of the cost.
Keep reading to learn 5 reasons why you should implement an Automated Revenue Management system this year from our Customer Success legend Brook Chamberlain.
One of the main rate management trends seen since the Covid-19 pandemic began is the tendency for accommodation providers to drop prices in order to capture a larger share of their market in periods of low demand. Although this may seem like a good strategy to increase occupancy percentages in theory, it often leads to a price war where all accommodation providers in your market suffer. Because an automated revenue management system regularly looks at changes in market demand compared to your own occupancy, you can avoid unnecessarily selling rooms at rock bottom prices.
Will my busy season still be busy? When will international borders open? Will there be another lockdown? These are all considerations that have probably crossed your mind when trying to set your pricing for the next year. Because most tourism and accommodation markets will continue to be unpredictable in 2021 it is important to make pricing decisions that are reactive to fluctuating changes in demand. An automated revenue management system will check the market against your own occupancy to detect any significant changes in market demand roughly every 2 hours. Prices will be adjusted instantly if required.
The problem with dropping prices to boost occupancy is that it often leads to far higher variable costs, and significantly lower profits. Therefore it is important to strike the right balance between occupancy percentages and your average daily rate. In a lot of cases being fully booked means you haven’t charged enough for your rooms and will end up having to spend significantly more on cleaning and restocking rooms. Automated revenue management systems work to optimise profits, which means trying to get the highest possible rate for each room, even if that means having a slightly lower occupancy percentage.
An automated revenue management system is designed to be just that - automated. This means setting the system up, letting it run and barely needing to touch it again. Rates are based on a minimum, maximum and median prices which act as the hard limits of the rates generated. Competitors are selected in your area that have active revenue managers working for them so you can be confident that changes in market demand are based around real human decisions. This leaves you free to spend more time off site with the confidence that your rates are in safe hands.
Ultimately the objective of any revenue management system is to make your property more money, and it is no secret that an effective dynamic pricing model is the best way to maximise occupancy and revenue percentages. Here at Seekom, we generally see a 10-15% boost in overall revenue for new properties who move from a seasonal ‘set and forget’ pricing strategy, to the RoomPriceGenie automated revenue management system we integrate with. This sort of revenue gain has been the make or break for some properties who have been on the cusp of going under due to the covid-19 pandemic.
Seekom iBex are proud partners of RoomPriceGenie and offer a full 2 way integration to their automated revenue management system. If you are interested in learning more about RoomPriceGenie you can visit their website here at roompricegenie.com. If you are interested in trialing the system, we offer a free one month obligation free trial. Simply send us an email at support@seekom.com to begin the process.
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Using a Holiday Park Property Management System (PMS) at your park is essential in today's industry. Seekom has 5 Tips for using a PMS for all you Holiday Park owners, managers and staff out there to make sure you are getting the most out of your Property Management System.
Every day more and more operators of Holiday Parks are finding they need to be working as efficiently as possible to make sure your operation is smooth, scalable, and making you work smarter - not harder.
From development announcements and updates, to channel manager tips and local events and website knowledge.
Keep reading to get the inside scoop from our Support and Website Team Leader - Elizabeth.
Manage your cancellation policy. Set a policy that is realistic. It should be restrictive enough that a late cancellation or no-show still incurs a penalty, to prevent losing revenue if you can’t resell a room. But it should be flexible enough that you’re not causing a lot of admin work trying to enforce a very restrictive penalty. 24 or 48 hour cancellation penalties are often a suitable middle ground. You can also consider adding a non-refundable rate using your channel manager, giving guests the option to choose a lower price in exchange for a stricter policy. Whatever you choose, make sure it is easy for your staff to learn and enforce. The more complex your policy is, the more likely it is for human error to happen when staff need to enforce it.
Whichever PMS you choose, try to keep up with its developments. Holiday Park Property Management Software is ever evolving to meet the changing needs of its users. Keeping an eye out for new development announcements means you’ll know whenever there’s a new feature that could add value to your business.
Make the most of your website booking screen. First, make sure you have your own website booking screen! Most channel managers include a website booking screen to install on your website. Your website is your best marketing tool, and should be your favourite booking source. It’s the only channel that you have complete control over, and the only one without a 10-15% commission on it! Make sure you are already collecting the right information from website bookings; not just the obvious like names and contact details, but extra bits that can help you smooth the check in process like tent/caravan/campervan choice, vehicle size & registration number, and ETA.
Keep track of local events and adjust your rates accordingly. Be aware that some events will increase demand for roofed accommodation only, some will affect sites more, and some will cause an all out rush for both! It’s often best to keep sites at a constant (or perhaps seasonal) price, but self contained accommodation can easily fluctuate in price as the market demands.
Be listed on the right sales channels. In addition to listing with the more holiday park focussed channels (e.g. BookIt, Campermate), consider if any of your self-contained units are suitable for listing on the more hotel focused channels (e.g. Booking.com, Expedia, maybe even Airbnb)
Seekom iBex is a great PMS choice for holiday parks. We connect to all the most popular channels for holiday parks, including integrations with TOP 10 and Kiwi Holiday Parks. Our PMS also comes with included front booking screens, which are easy to install on your website (or get in touch with our web team to discuss a new website!)
There are lots of ways to get in touch with Seekom support, so help is always available! We are available by phone, chat and email. We also hold monthly free training webinars, to keep your staff up to speed, along with the occasional specialty topic webinar whenever we have something new and interesting to share.
Seekom iBex PMS just turned 18 years old, and has long been the preferred choice for holiday parks.
Over its long life, it’s had lots of little enhancements just for holiday parks added. There are custom fields available for your website booking screen, so you can have guests enter their vehicle type and length on booking. There’s a property max pax cut off, to prevent accidentally going over council occupancy limits. After Hours Cut Off allows for flexibility in accepting late bookings - prevent roofed accommodation from being booked after reception closes, but allow tent sites to book late and check themselves in!
Get in touch with our sales team for a free demo, or to find out if iBex PMS is the right fit for your holiday park.
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