For hotel or BnB businesses, leveraging on the Online Travel Agents (OTAs) such as Agoda, Booking.com, Airbnb, Expedia, and many more to drive booking sales is common, especially in Southeast Asia region. Certainly, this does not come free. Based on the Agency Model, OTAs will charge the business a commission, ranging from 3% to 30%, for each confirmed booking.

Pricing a product has never been easy. As a homestay reservation system provider, at Softinn, we were often asked by our merchants to help them in naming their rental price. We do not have the answer BUT we believe the article below will at least help to set you in the right direction to find one.

Every industry is currently looking for technology to make it faster and easier. This is especially applicable in the hospitality industry, where using a hotel management system will help the hotel save cost and time while also reducing cases of overbooking and human error. A property management system (PMS) is widely used to help hotels to manage their daily operations. A PMS may also be customized or might offer integration to other solutions and particular features to a specific hotel.

Finding a PMS that is a good fit for your hotel could prove to be a real challenge. However, before accepting such a challenge, it is important to first know what exactly is PMS and what to expect from a PMS.

The importance of hotel booking engines can’t be denied nowadays. People are becoming more comfortable with online booking, hence the demand for online hotel room reservations is also increasing. The power of booking engines should not be neglected as it gives a lot of benefits, most importantly reducing the number of paid commissions to OTAs. Hotels without online booking engine systems are reducing in numbers and quickly become obsolete. 

Hotel management software refers to any software that is designed to assist in a hotel's daily operations and makes their work easier. It has become more advanced in recent years due to the development of technology. There are many hotels that heavily rely on hotel management systems as they bring a lot of conveniences and make their work more efficient.

Most hotels nowadays have their own website to attract potential guests and allow visitors to make bookings. Before the guests make a booking, they will search for more general information about the hotel, hence, the hotel website must provide useful information to the guests. Besides that, it is important to showcase your hotel in a professional manner, as a hotel website will reflect on the image of the hotel, and it is important to give potential guests a good impression that encourages them to book with you. Read here to learn more about the importance of hotel websites.  

A good hotel website will consist of attributes and features that make it better than the rest. The following is five important things needed for your hotel website:

Hotel websites play an important role in representing your brand and also help to increase your ROI by collecting direct bookings. A good hotel website design is the key to turn your target audience from window shopping to a real paid customer that booked a stay at your hotel. If your website is not exciting for them, they will immediately click on the exit button on their browser and search for the next hotel.

Let’s discuss what is the Top 5 “NO” to avoid on your hotel website design that might turn your guests away. 

Some might say that offering rate parity is one of the fairest ways of conducting rate strategies. So, what does rate parity actually means? 

Hotel rate parity is when the hotels are implementing the same rate across all distribution channels including their own hotel websites. It is a legal agreement between the hotels and Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) where they agree to offer the same rate on all platforms that they sell regardless of how much commission they have to pay to OTAs. Hotels are also not allowed to undercut the room prices that OTAs display on their platforms.

It is very common nowadays that a hotel has an online booking system installed on their hotel website or social media. The hotels are able to get a direct booking from the hotel website or social media by omitting to pay the commissions to OTAs. However, not every online booking system is suitable for your hotel. For example, you currently found an online booking system is at the lowest cost, but the feature it offers is that it is not suitable for you. It is a waste for you that you are unable to fully utilize the features of the online booking system.