Many hoteliers benefit from free and open-source hotel booking engines. However, there are some differences between using free and open-source hotel booking engines as compared to using closed (commercial) software. In this article, we listed five comparisons between free and open-source booking engines with commercial booking engines.

Read: Booking Engine for Hotels

As a hotelier, before you even start thinking about the features of the hotel management system you want to invest in, you should first think about how the hotel management system will help your budget hotel. Time has passed when budget hotels use excels or reservation books to manage their bookings and front desk tasks.

Nowadays, most hotels have their hotel website and social media pages, allowing the installation of booking engines in these hotel websites and social media pages. These have given hoteliers more confidence to promote and market their hotels to their guests while offering them some incentives in the process to convince them to book directly from their website. Although there are advantages of occupying your rooms vacancies through online travel agents (OTAs), there are also benefits of direct booking. Below we list some of the benefits of hotel direct bookings. 

Back in the 1970s, the first hotel property management system was introduced. However, till the present time, not all hotel has one. A survey conducted on hotel management system in 2015 discovered that:

• only 34% of hotels used special software;
• 25% of hotels still depend on paper-based format; and
• 16% of hotels had no management system at all.

Hence, it can be deduced that there are still many hotels with a non-proper management system of which do not fulfill the criteria of a modern hotel. Thanks to the new-age trends in technology that has been a blessing to the hotel industry. The revolution of technology in the front office department has empowered hotel front desk staff to be more efficient, productive, and guest-centric.

The importance of a property management system for hotels can’t be over-emphasized. A good property management system will lift a heavy load from your front desk staff and create a happy guest experience.

Gone are those days when bookings were made at the hotel front desk. Today, almost all travel planning processes are happening online from finding accommodation to booking.

In 2018, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) claimed that international arrivals increasing to 1.4 billion. What an enormous number, right? But how many hotels managed to transform this into higher revenue?

Price is a key marketing tool feature to earn profit and meeting customers’ needs. It is the cost of a product or service after thorough research, in-depth understanding, and the risk-taking phase of complex calculation.

Every hotel is trying their best to retain their customers, satisfy them and create a good user experience for every guest. However, how can hoteliers know if their effort is actually yielding results if they don’t collect guest feedback?

In this competitive age where every hotel is competing to fill up their hotel rooms, the loyalty and reward programs can be the difference between having an average occupancy and having a fully booked hotel. The majority of travelers and tourists use hotel loyalty and reward programs to determine the hotel they are going to book.