Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) serve as popular platforms for travelers seeking package deals, accommodations, flights, tours, and various travel services. They play a crucial role in distribution channels, extending reach and boosting bookings.

Yet, while OTAs offer extensive reach, they come with the drawback of commission payments on each booking. To guide decision-making, this blog post provides a detailed analysis of the pros and cons of online travel agents. 

In today’s fast-paced world, technology has revolutionized various industries, including hospitality. Delays in hotel check-ins can significantly impact guest satisfaction, with even a 5-minute delay reducing it by 50%. Long queues at hotel front desks during check-ins are now a thing of the past, thanks to the self-check-in hotel kiosks.

In this article, we'll delve into the advantages and disadvantages of hotel kiosks and how they're reshaping the hospitality landscape.

As a hotelier, ensuring a seamless guest experience is essential for maximizing revenue. However, managing bookings across platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com can pose challenges, including double bookings and overbooking. Syncing your Booking.com and Airbnb calendars resolves these issues.

Ever wondered how hotels effortlessly manage bookings and keep everything in sync? The secret lies in two powerful tools – hotel booking engines and channel managers.  While the Property Management System (PMS) also plays a vital role in this choreography, my focus in this blog post will be exclusively on the dynamic duo of booking engines and channel managers as they team up to streamline the booking process, maximize room occupancy, and elevate overall guest satisfaction. 

In May 2023, the Malaysian Inland Revenue Board (IRB) officially declared its intention to implement the new electronic invoicing (e-invoice) system, starting with the initial phase targeting 4,000 businesses. The implementation is scheduled to start on 1st Aug 2024 for businesses achieving an annual sales threshold of RM100 million. 

~Updated on 19th February 2024~

In response to the recent announcement in Malaysia's Budget 2024 presented in Parliament, a significant development is on the horizon that may cast a substantial impact on the hotel industry. There is an increase in the Sales & Services Tax (SST) from the current 6% to 8% which will take effect from 1st March 2024. 

JeeShen, the founder and CEO of Softinn shared his thoughts on embracing technology for better customer experience in the hotel industry along with fellow speakers  - Assoc. Prof. Ts. Dr. Md. Shohel Sayeed, Faculty of Information Science and Technology (FIST), Multimedia University (MMU) and Ts. Dr. Ong Lee Yeng from FIST MMU.

In his presentation, JeeShen dissects the technology stack used in one of the oldest industries - Hospitality (or Hotel). He will talk about the usage of cloud technology, robotics, and automation in the hotel and uncover the algorithms that work behind the scene while a traveller plans their trip.

Employees are considered to be the most valuable asset of the organization. They are the people with skills, knowledge, and experience that bring value to the business. Hence, the crisis in the shortage of staff would be an issue for hotel businesses and could affect the revenue too. 

Let me share some of the ways that could help hotels to handle the shortage of staff effectively.

Kiosk Solution has been widely used in many business industries such as airports, F&B, and hotels. 7 years ago, Resort World Genting installed its very first kiosk at the hotel lobby to start introducing a self-check-in service. As the world has been hit badly by the Covid-19 pandemic, many more hotels are starting to adopt hotel kiosk solutions.

In the current state of affairs, if you're one of the 50% of hotels that don't use a channel manager, you're probably spending hours every week uploading and updating rates, wondering where parity issues have been coming from, and tugging your hair out wishing there was a way to make it all more manageable and more efficient.

Many hotels have already adopted an intelligent tool that can assist them in updating room rates and availability and close rooms for a specific period for all connected OTAs. This solution is referred to as a channel manager! Engaging a cloud-based channel manager to help you manage your properties is a key growth driver. It will help you improve your hotel's efficiency, thus, resulting in more guests and more hotel revenues. In this article, we will dive in and learn about STAAH MAX Channel Manager.