Today’s market has many apps for hotel management. Each has its own unique USP and benefits. But, changing your hospitality game would need more than just an app. So, how do you know which one is your best choice?
At the core, your hospitality management app aims to achieve one goal, efficient and automated operations. If the software you are opting for fails to support your business growth, it is not your best choice.
Pro Tip: Your go-to software is ideally the one that gives you an integrated management experience for all your key functionalities like PMS, RMS, and reputation management systems. It is agile, lean, and scalable. This will not only help you improve your efficiency but also save your time in the long run.
Here are some of the top areas a management app can help your business perform.
1. Cost Efficiency
One of your hotel business benefits from a hotel management app is the significant cost reductions in operational costs. Although the first installation may leave an impression of added financial liabilities, this one-time investment returns a long way.
- Labor costs: Automating processes like hotel booking, real-time room availability checks, and guest tracking frees up both valuable time and human resources. This creates an opportunity to optimize your workforce. You can either reduce operational costs by cutting down on your staff or distributing them towards more focused areas to improve service qualities.
- Marketing costs: Reputation management is one of the robust features of a hotel management system. Managing your hotel reviews across multiple platforms from one dashboard brings you one step closer to your customers.
The most significant benefit is that it ensures your hotel performs well even on a tight marketing budget. You can use regular content to engage your audience to build a sustainable customer-brand relationship.
- Channel distribution: Installing a hotel management app can benefit your inventory distribution massively. Inventory distribution trackers manage and track your logistics in real-time across all channels to keep the guess-work out of the system. It allows distribution channel managers to manage both availability and visibility across multiple distribution channels.
Pro Tip: Opt for a cloud management system. This will take your cost efficiency to a whole new level.
2. Marketing Efficiency
Having an all-in-one, suite hotel management app streamlines your marketing efforts. It not only makes your campaigns robust and efficient but lowers down customer acquisition costs while improving retention in the long run.
Here are a few areas where you can see steady improvement.
- Branding: The first principle of building a brand is staying in front of your customers at all times. Having an application to do this job is of immense benefit.
It is one of the most intimate yet cost-effective ways to engage your audience. Getting your message through to customers daily who downloaded your app is more accessible. Thus, next time whenever they research accommodations, your brand will be on top of their minds.
- Integrated communication system The key to effective marketing communication lies in omnipresence. Be where your customers already are. Your hotel management app is an effective strategy in this regard.
You can now integrate your app with different social media channels that you promote your brand on. This way, you will always keep your customers inside the engagement loop. Even if your customers have missed your recent insta post or viral tweet, they will get the latest updates from your brand.
3. Superior Sales
The best hotel management apps do more than just save your valuable resources: time and money. It creates opportunities for new business and revenue generation that is sustainable and scalable. More importantly, it gives you the place to test your solutions and offerings on your customer base based on collected data.
Here’s How it Achieves So?
- Revenue management system: Revenue management allows you to track your revenue generation based on the month, quarter, and annual. But its most significant benefit is that it will enable you to optimize your pricing and distribution strategy. Backed by past data on customer behavior and industry trends, you can now predict future demand precisely.
- Marketing intelligence Your hotel management software’s superpower lies in creating opportunities for sales.
It allows your business to harness the power of contextual marketing, creating hyper-personalized account-based offers.
This is achieved based on rich customer data and behavioral patterns collected over a period of time. The software also helps you generate demand for hotel rooms via strategic reputation management campaigns for long-term and short-term business goals.
What’s more? With the real-time data at your bay, you can now tailor services that are in demand that are directly backed by data collected from your customer’s booking journey. You can alert your guests of limited-time offers and discount campaigns all in real-time.
- Integrated loyalty programs :There is no doubt that loyalty programs are the best performing push sales strategy. But, your hospitality app can improve its efficiency exponentially.
Here’s how. Your app acts as a unique platform for your audience, both active and potential customers, to collect virtual cash points that they could redeem later. Gamification of actions can stimulate your sales pipeline.
4. Superior Customer Experience
Customer service is the make or break point of your hotel business. No matter how many resources you put in, if your property fails to deliver an impactful experience to your guests during their stay, there are high chances your business will be forgotten soon.
The best apps for hotel management understand how critical customer experience is for the success of your business. The following are a few areas where your app can help your business over-deliver your customers each time.
- End-to-end customer service: Keeping your customer service on point is critical for both long-term brand building and short-term customer experience.
Your app can do it all for you. Integrate your management app with capabilities where your guests can sign in to perform everything they wish. From booking rooms, ordering services, and purchases to opt-ins for upgrades.
The app can be used to collect reviews in real-time. This can create an opportunity to alleviate any negative experience with your brand quickly.
- Tour guide: Your app not only services your guest during their stay but throughout their travel. Your app can act as the best tour guide for their stay. Having a knowledge base about the best eateries, local attractions, and sightseeing spots integrated with an interactive map adds immense value to the overall experience of your guests.
- Language customization: If you have to deliver more than just experience, you need to work on customer delight.
Removing the language barrier between your guests and hotel representatives is sure to attract a lot more loyal customers in the long run. Having an inbuilt translator in your app can ensure you deliver a complete experience to your boarders.
5. Competitive Advantage
In a competitive market like the hotel industry, staying ahead of the crowd is an essential success. Having an app for your business allows you to gain unfair advantage over your competitors in the long run.
Your app is your one-stop place for finding rich consumer insights that will act as a lead magnet. It will allow you to tailor your marketing and sales strategies in favor of your business. You will have access to industry data and your existing customer base, and their unique behavior with your brand. This will allow you to gain traction from reiterating your customer retention policies and acquisition strategies for both long-term and short-term gains.
Parting Notes
An efficient hospitality app is like your best employee at work 24*7. It is your best help. But please focus; it is still ‘help.’ No matter how much software you install, the real work still anchors you.
To ensure that you always stay on top of your game, stay in close contact with your customers. Understanding your customer’s pain points and acting upon them in time can open doors to new revenue channels or sales. Remember, the hospitality business at its heart is about delighting your customers with an unforgettable experience. Whatever actions you take should add up to the core goal.
Only then can you see your hotel taking shape into a profitable business and, in the long run, thrive.