When travelers make a hotel reservation, they expect a seamless experience , or they may decide to stay elsewhere. For hotels, meeting this expectation means moving away from manual processes and investing in booking software that allows travelers to book a room when they want on the channel of their choice.
Whether online or offline, behind every effortless booking experience is a fast, reliable, and fully integrated hospitality management system. Here we explain how hotel reservation systems work, the key benefits of an integrated platform, and what to look for when selecting reservation software .
We’ll also show you how to harness this powerful technology to capture more reservations, streamline booking processes, save time and costs, and increase guest satisfaction – whether you operate a hotel, hostel, motel, B&B, or vacation rental company.
A hotel reservation system is software used in the hotel industry to manage room inventory, rates, and bookings. It may be housed within the hotel’s property management system (PMS) or may be standalone software connected to the PMS.
The reservation system acts as the central hub of the reservation ecosystem, which may also include a website booking engine, channel manager, and revenue management system. When integrated, these modules work together to help hotels manage room availability, distribution, reservations, and revenue.
First, the hotel’s revenue manager loads the hotel’s rate codes, inventory, and restrictions into the system. The information is then populated into the PMS and distributed to the hotel’s booking channels with the help of channel management software. These channels may include the hotel’s website booking engine, online travel agencies (OTAs), the global distribution system (GDS), wholesalers, and metasearch sites.
When a traveler books a hotel room on one of these channels, the information is passed back to the reservation system and the PMS, where it is stored for retrieval when they check in. At the same time, availability is updated on all distribution channels.
Of course, this process is contingent on two-way connectivity between the reservation system and the other components. If the components aren’t integrated, the revenue manager must perform these tasks manually, a time-consuming and error-prone process.
The terms “hotel reservation system” and “hotel booking engine” are often used interchangeably in the hospitality industry, but they actually refer to different things. A hotel reservation system is the central hub where reservation information is stored from all booking channels, whether by phone, OTA, GDS, sales department, or online booking engine. A website booking engine, also called an internet booking engine (IBE), is software that allows guests to make a reservation directly on the hotel’s website.
Streamline reservations with award-winning software.While most hotel chains and mid-sized properties moved to a digital booking system years ago, a surprising number of small hotels, hostels, inns, B&Bs, and vacation rental operators still use manual processes. This puts them at a distinct disadvantage over their more tech-forward competitors.
Here are just a few of the benefits of using a hotel reservation system:
Travelers want to book a room without having to email the hotel or wait on hold. With a website booking engine, guests can make online hotel bookings at any time, from anywhere – generating reservations while you sleep.
By automating tasks like rate shopping, inventory management, guest communication, and email confirmations, an integrated hotel reservation system reduces labor costs, prevents costly errors, and frees staff to handle more complex tasks.
When guests book directly on your website, you don’t pay a hefty commission to an intermediary. That’s why direct bookings are typically a property’s most profitable booking channel.
You can advertise multiple room types, promotions, and packages on your website or social media channels, targeting a broad range of traveler budgets and tastes. Many third-party sites don’t offer this flexibility.
When travelers book on your website, you can upsell them to premium rooms and cross-sell onsite services and add-ons like breakfast, dining, spa, and recreation.
Most OTAs don’t share guest contact details when forwarding a booking. When guests reserve through your website, you collect this information directly. Using guest messaging tools , you can invite them to start planning their stay, upgrade their room, or order an amenity.
When travelers book through your website, they can make changes or cancel directly with your property, giving them peace of mind. As a lodging operator, you can implement deposit and cancellation policies as a safeguard in case of no-shows.
With a channel manager integrated with your reservation system, you can simultaneously update pricing and availability on all booking channels. This will help you increase occupancy, maintain rate parity, and prevent pricing errors, overbookings, and lost sales.
With a payment gateway connected to your booking engine, credit cards are automatically validated, and deposits are processed quickly, reducing input errors, delayed payments, and chargebacks.
FREE EBOOK Increase profitability and direct bookingsThere are lots of options when it comes to choosing a hotel reservation system. To find the best software solution for your hotel operations, look for the following key features:
Discover the top hotel reservation systems that receive high ratings from hoteliers.
Cloudbeds provides a cloud-based, fully integrated hospitality management platform with all the tools you need to ensure a seamless reservation process. See the section below for more information.
