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.
What is a Hotel Property Management System?
Property Management System (PMS) is a type of hotel management system that hotels owners and front desk staff use to manage their daily operations tasks, online booking availability, update real-time room status, organize guest lists for arrival and departure, and reporting in one dashboard.
PMS allows hotel front desk staff to check in and check out guests, real-time checking for room availability, edit existing reservations and even have back-office functions such as scheduling and assigning tasks for housekeeping and maintenance staff. A PMS provides hotels with useful tools at the tip of their fingers allowing them to take control and manage their hotels on the go with their device of choice.
Read also: Importance of Property Management System (PMS)
What are the key features of a PMS?
Dashboard
- View properties performance in a single glance
- Quick checking for guest’s arrival and departure list, in-house guest list, and guest checked-in/out list
- A convenient and mobile-friendly dashboard that display the current and upcoming reservations
- A better view of the number of bookings and the source distribution
Reservation and Guest folio
- Easier to track and add new reservations
- Simple to manage room bookings and room availability
- Synchronization of bookings from the OTA such as Agoda, Booking.com, Expedia, and more
- Simple page view for all booking sources and payment
- Ability to add customized products or services
- Easy to track payment / charge / balance
- PMS integration with reservation system
- Group reservation functions
Room Calendar
- View all your room availability at one glance
- View room status in real-time
- Close and reopen rooms for cleaning or maintenance purposes
Room Inventory
- Integrate with a Channel Manager to better manage room price and allotment
- Easily view for all the room rate plans, room availability in OTA, and occupancy
- Auto-sync room allotment with a Channel Manager
- Quickly update room rates and availability for specific days or specific dates
Housekeeping
- Manage room status based on assignments given such as room cleaning or maintenance
- Auto identify rooms that need to be cleaned or prepared for the next arriving guest
- Allow front desk staff to assign housekeeping and maintenance work
- Easily track the status of each room
- Allow housekeeper to update task status via mobile phone or tablet
- Staff can upload photos or remark on their assigned task
- Update on lost and found items
- Better plan and organize maintenance operations
- Better track and update task status
Report
- Track the reservation status and booking source
- Better understand the total amount of claims from each OTA
- Track the occupancy rate by daily or by room type
- Easier for audit
- Better prevent fraud as all activity is recorded in the system
- Well detailed activity log including date, type, user, events, and action taken
- Generate payout reports for multiples properties
- Shift functions
Group Properties
- Manage multiple properties at once such as hotel chains or property management companies at one glance
- Create a group for multiple properties
- View accumulative data of your properties at one place
- Enable and disable group at any time without affecting the data of the actual properties
Conclusion
Listed above are a few key features available in most PMS as well as Softinn PMS. We hope our post has helped you better understand what is PMS all about so you can start looking for one that is suitable for you. In addition to PMS, integration with a Channel Manager will allow bookings to be synced and managed in a single interface preventing cases of overbooking and reducing human error. Use IT to make your job easier and immediately drive more revenue. Try out Softinn PMS today, click HERE to apply for your free trial.