Your property management system (PMS) isn’t there so that you can spend an afternoon playing with all the cool features, as fun as that may be. It’s there to enable you to elevate the guest experience and increase revenue. One of the ways a PMS does this is through integrations with specialized software, such as online distribution channels, payment gateways, and guest messaging apps that power automation and boost your bottom line.
NB: This is an article from WebRezPro
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Here are five PMS integrations that are especially effective at driving revenue.
Analytics
To steer an effective business strategy, you need to know how your property is performing and how it compares to others within the market.
Business intelligence and analytics platforms give you data-driven insights based on your property’s own data (including reservation and guest data and performance KPIs) as well as benchmarking data to elevate your marketing efforts. All the data you gather doesn’t make you any money if you don’t take the time to synthesize it and figure out what it means, which is where these integrations come in.
An integration between your analytics platform and your PMS automatically shares real-time booking data from your PMS with your analytics system, streamlining data aggregation for more accurate analyses.
Online Distribution Channels
Though OTAs (online travel agencies) charge commission fees, it usually makes sense to use them because they broaden your reach and therefore your revenue. If you work with a high number of OTAs, consider integrating with a channel manager, which enables you to manage them all from one place.
When your PMS integrates with an OTA or channel manager, information flows automatically between both systems, eliminating double entry and reducing errors. When someone makes a booking on an OTA, that booking shows up in your PMS. When a direct booking is entered into your PMS, availability is automatically updated across all connected OTA channels, preventing overbookings. You can update OTA rates from your PMS too.
Payment Processing
Most people don’t walk into your hotel prepared to pay with a sack full of cash like old timey bank robbers. Nowadays, guests use cards, which is why you need electronic payment processing methods that connect with your property management system. Your revenue will grind to a halt if you have no way to collect it.
This is where a payment gateway integration comes in. It allows you to take card payments through your PMS and is absolutely necessary if you want to accept payments online. It streamlines on-property payments too, eliminating manual keying errors. Through the integration, credit card information travels securely from your card reader and online booking engine to your payment gateway, which encrypts the data and sends it to the payment processor to authorize the payment. Once the bank approves or denies the transaction, the response is routed back to your PMS (this all happens within 2 or 3 seconds!).
A payment gateway integration makes payments more secure too, using tokens (placeholders) in place of credit card data so that credit card numbers themselves are never actually in your system. This means that even if hackers gain access, they will find the vault empty, metaphorically speaking.
Speaking of payments, you should also invest in a point-of-sale (POS) system integration. POS integrations enable you to send restaurant, spa, or gift shop charges from your POS system directly to the guest’s reservation in the PMS, eliminating the need to add charges to reservations manually and avoiding errors (no accidentally adding that $60 steak as $6 at the end of the night…or having an awkward conversation with the guest about it when they check out). POS integrations provide a seamless, convenient experience for guests too, allowing them to settle their entire bill upon check-out instead of having to take their wallet out numerous times during their stay. Make it easy for guests to spend, and they will spend more!
Revenue Management
When your availability and market conditions change, your pricing should change as well. For instance, if you only have one room left, that room should be more expensive, but if occupancy is low, you may want to let rooms go at a discount.
Revenue management software (RMS) gives you rate recommendations based on a number of variables, such as availability, time of year, and competitor pricing. It enables you to set optimal rates and reset them as conditions adjust. With this automated software, you don’t have to guestimate what you should do…or be left behind when your competitors do it first.
When a revenue management system is connected with your PMS, your PMS automatically sends pricing and availability data to the RMS for analysis and receives accepted rate recommendations in return.
Guest Messaging
Guest messaging integrations give you a convenient way to contact your guests and for them to contact you. They enable you to offer upsells (more revenue right there) and ensure your guests are satisfied, which prevents lost revenue. (If guests aren’t satisfied, they won’t come back and may even write a review to tell everyone just how long it took to get those extra towels.)
People don’t always want to call the front desk these days. Texting or using an app is much quicker, and guests don’t have to be in their room to do it. They can shoot you their room service order while they’re still relaxing down by the pool, and you can have it ready for them by the time they get back up.
When your guest messaging solution connects to your PMS, reservation data in your PMS is shared with your messaging platform in real time to trigger routine, personalized communications (no need to text every guest by hand!). Guest data collected by your messaging platform can also be added to reservation folios and guest profiles in your PMS.
