As Deloitte observed, people choose to stay in a hotel this year because they feel more secure there (89% of respondents) and prefer the amplified sense of control over exposure and their own safety (86% of respondents).

In the given circumstances, industry players are in constant search for cutting-edge technologies that will provide the desired level of control and safety for their visitors.

In this regard, smart rooms are the tools that meet these needs and serve a variety of other purposes, including improving guest experience to increase revenue.

However, many businesses hesitate to implement them due to a lack of knowledge regarding their use cases and challenges. In today’s post, we’ll go over the best smart room technologies and reveal their substantial benefits to let you create a smart room blueprint for your own solution.

What Is Smart Room and How Does Everything Work?

Thanks to IoT devices, a smart room appears as an app that helps guests find, book, pay, and control their hotel stay on site on their smartphones or through a single smart hub.

The popularity and number of features inside smart room solutions are growing, making the app or the smart hub more and more accurately designed to make booking a hotel room easy, secure, and more enjoyable, both for guests and owners.

The range of applications of smart rooms is tremendous and goes beyond the ability to search for available hotels in your city or use the wireless connection and USB charges as in-room technology in hotels.

The solution establishes the basis for a hyperpersonalized experience for guests, meaning that each action, device, and facility can be adjusted to their needs at the comfort of owners.

For example, smart room technology can let the guest choose the preferred temperature and entertainment without the need to switch between separate devices. Also, travelers and housekeepers can interact with anti-virus robots that bring them morning coffee and newspapers, along with numerous other use cases.

10 Smart Room Technologies Your Hotel Can Implement Today

Smart room technology is still novel yet effective, which means a promising business advantage for hotels that adopt it before others. But nobody wants to invest in non-working solutions. For your convenience, we’ve gathered the most cost-effective tactics and tools hotels can apply today in this section.

1. Personalized Room Controls

In this case, IoT-enabled key devices (like lighting, heating, air conditioning systems, blinds, or draperies) will be connected to the hotel’s systems through a central controller, be that a smart hub, speaker, smartphone, or tablet. This way, the smart room lets guests manage multiple devices on their phones. In their turn, owners can get more control over the resources they spend.

2. Voice Control for Entertainment

There are various ways to apply voice recognition in smart hotel rooms, starting from managing TV to navigating through pay-to-view entertainment on several devices. In this regard, Amazon Echo and Alexa are the most popular devices with this function in hotels to date.

3. Smart Hubs

With smart room technology, guests and owners can improve room service collaboratively. In particular, smart hubs can let your guests order breakfast in bed, book an appointment with an on-site masseuse, and even arrange for a post-workout shower.

4. Interactive Hotel Maps

A wall map in a hotel can be enriched with augmented reality to provide more interesting and interactive experiences to clients. Depending on the level of sophistication, this smart room technology can help your guests find their way around and even tell you when their favorite restaurants are open.

5. UVC Lighting Control for Disinfecting

Smart rooms in hospitals are highly effective at killing viruses with UVC technology that is safe for humans. Among the in-hotel applications of this smart room technology for healthcare, you can sanitize packages and room keys, thus helping your guests feel safer in your hotel.

6. Branded Mobile Apps for Hotels

Letting guests control their hotel experience in an app is one of the best practices for smart rooms. When travelers can find, book, control, and review their stay in one place, you get the source of valuable information to improve your services and apply for marketing activities.

7. Hotel Robots

You can teach robots to bring towels or tea to the smart room, freeing your maids to do other work and increasing their safety thanks to social distance maintenance. Even more, hotel robots can assist people in more sophisticated tasks, like fixing technical errors, noticing poor connectivity, and notifying housekeepers about food shortages.

8. Digital Concierges

This smart room technology is an excellent way to save time on the back end without limiting the guest experience. In hotels, virtual robots and chatbots can handle the most basic inquiries, including answering typical questions about facilities or today’s restaurant menu.

They allow housekeepers to take care of the big things. Also, digital concierges are a great way to help reduce contact with guests without humans having to be there at all.

9. Contactless Tracing

The enhanced safety level of smart meeting rooms includes contactless tracing, meaning an ability to handle safe meetings and events in hotels. Such devices track movements and alert about social distancing problems, improving safety measures for crowd control on site.

10. Contactless Payment

For extra safety, it’s essential to provide your guests with the ability to pay for services without using a touchpoint. In this regard, supporting mobile wallets and providing an option to book a stay in an app are the must-have smart room technologies for hotels these days.

Top 5 Benefits of Smart Room for Owners and Guests

The idea of smart hotels is slowly catching up to and bringing forth all kinds of benefits for owners and guests. Generally, the smart room system introduces the required level of safety and personal control for contemporary travelers. Here’s the list of its top benefits.

1. Higher Security

Smart rooms are equipped with webcams, microphones, speakers, and an intercom system so that owners can see who is at their door without having to open it.

In their turn, guests can easily access their room after entering their personal pin code, without worrying about losing or stealing a key card. Some extra post-COVID safety measures include touchless technologies, maid service delivered by robots, and crowd control.

2. Better Customer Experience

The hotel experience becomes more enjoyable for the guest thanks to an opportunity to create ideal surroundings in one device and before the stay. The result is a more memorable visit with a ‘Wow’-effect and total comfort.

3. Sustainability

Smart rooms address today’s customers’ demand for eco-friendly facilities and services. IoT lighting systems and thermostats provide the next-level optimization of spending resources, bringing sustainability and cost-effectiveness to hotels.

4. Greater Personalization

With smart rooms, you can create a recreational experience that feels like home, thanks to the numerous tools that guests can adjust in a hotel and remotely in advance.

5. Quick Fixes

When something goes wrong in a hotel, full control via IoT devices makes it much easier for owners to detect problems timely and provide accurate technical assistance when needed.

Ask Intellectsoft for Help!

Although it might seem like a new idea, smart rooms are actually becoming increasingly popular around the world, thanks to the large amount of convenience and safety they provide for guests and owners.

And to make the most of hotel room technology, Intellectsoft experts recommend combining it with your existing mobile apps and hotel property management software so that everything works correctly and lets you enjoy all the business benefits of the solution.

If you need assistance with smooth smart room integration, we can help! Intellectsoft has years of experience creating innovative solutions for the hospitality industry. We are ready to apply our knowledge and skills to your business challenge.

In addition to smart hotel rooms, here is the set of extra capabilities you can get with our custom software development for travel and hospitality services:

• Legacy system transformation. We support hospitality modernization in a never-ending journey to streamline its workflow, increase the bottom line, and start creating innovative ways to serve guests.
• Mobile app development. With our help, you can streamline the way you provide amenities for customers and offer everything they need for their stay on a single app.
• Loyalty and reward system development. Build emotional commitments in your customers using our innovative loyalty program.
• Microservers and third-party integration. We help hotels streamline their digital presence by re-engineering their websites in a way that’s easier to maintain.
• Big Data services. With Big Data, you can track your guests’ journeys across your entire hotel – from your marketing efforts to their experiences with your staff and your property – all in real-time.
• Custom software integration. Our software integration with third-party systems for residential and commercial properties allows us to deliver effective solutions so you can use what you already have to maximize your ROI.
• Custom software development solutions. Set up a software solution that’s right for you to respond faster to your guests’ needs.

Contact us to hire a skilled and experienced developer team. Let’s work together and find innovative solutions relevant to you to help improve your business and achieve your goals!

The post Smart Room Technology Overview for Hotel Owners  appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

In the hospitality industry, that resulted in a huge need in implementing the best practices and innovative solutions to enhance client services. One of such is incorporating the front desk management systems in hotel institutions operating.

According to Transparency Market research, the market share of help desk software in different industries is going to reach $11 billion by 2023, and the numbers will only grow further.

The potential of key processes optimization with the software cannot be underestimated, but what exactly hospitality businesses should consider when implementing the hotel front desk management system? Are there any essential features to include? And, finally, is hotel front desk software really beneficial for the industry?

In this article, you’ll find these answers!

What Is Front Desk Management Software for Hotels?

A hotel front desk management system is a solution that facilitates managing all the front desk work within a single platform.

Thus, the hotel staff can easily input, quickly update and operatively manage the key processes of the hospitality unit using the unified system. Depending on the features the front desk system includes, this kind of software can cover nearly every front office function, including:

• Apartment reservations
• Room allocation
• Check-in and check-out
• Billing and accounting
• Guest history and critical client information

The front desk software for hotel is the right solution for optimizing the resources invested for smooth yet professional hotel management, which will not only benefit the hotel business performance but also enhance customer services as well.

According to Deloitte’s recent report, the future-focused businesses are now ready to invest into transforming the product- or service-focused center into a customer-focused driver of value. And that’s no surprise since over 84% of customers are ready to spend more for receiving better customer service (Gladly, 2020).

Benefits of Front Desk Management Software for Hotels

Before we dive into the essential features to include in the hotel front desk software, it’s essential to understand what this technology can provide to your business.

In fact, by incorporating the innovative technology solution for the front desk at the hotel, you can significantly increase the business income.

Here are the essential benefits you’ll get using the front desk software for hotel:

Reduce the Front Desk Workload

One of the core ideas of the front desk at a hotel is to provide high-quality services for the customers. The front desk staff is responsible for check-ins and check-outs, room management, customer service, and other important hotel staff information updates. The huge workload caused by these and plenty of other factors could directly impact the quality of the customer service.

The front desk software for hotels allows automating the key processes of the hotel management and effectively performing the time- and labor-consuming tasks, thus providing more opportunities for improving the customer service.

Enhance the Teamwork

When managing a large hospitality institution, it becomes more challenging to operate the hotel staff, keep them informed about the updates and assign new tasks or duties. With the hotel front desk software solution, all the employees can access their profile, review and prioritize all the tasks, and effectively run their duties.

Furthermore, this technology allows creating a single communication system that saves up hours of time needed for arranging the meetings or individually informing the hotel staff on demand: reach any of the hotel workers online!

Get a Clearer Improvement Strategy

Another great thing about the front desk software for hotels is the ability to get accurate data regarding the hospitality business performance, define the strong sides and weak points for further hotel service improvement.

The detailed analytics and multiple research tools allow getting the full information regarding the most popular hotel services (restaurant, gym, spa, cleaning or travel guides, breakfast, cleaning, transportation, etc), the most favorable booking dates (holiday seasons, weekends, or celebrations) and more.

It also helps to define the most common client pains and which services should be improved or removed (especially the unprofitable ones), which can certainly improve the overall hotel performance.

Improve the Guests’ Experience

Multiple investigations in client service have shown that leveraging hotel front desk software big data can save up to 670 working hours per year! By reducing the workload of the hotel’s front desk (calls and guests requests automation, online reservations, and advanced hotel staff management), your employees have more time and resources for interaction with your clients and providing better services.

At present, clients highly pay attention to the service quality, so it becomes even easier to turn the one-time visitors into loyal guests of your hotel.

Increase the Business Profitability

Last but not least, the hotel front desk management system is a perfect software that allows enhancing business profitability by automating key management processes.

You’ll save up on labor and improve the individual KPI of your hotel staff, optimize the key front desk tasks and boost the customer experience, which consequently results in higher revenue rates. So, what exact features do you need to look for in the best front desk software for your hotel?

Main Features to Include in a Front Desk Management Software

Hotel front desk software is much more than a simple management tool, as it includes all the necessary features needed to automate and optimize the key management processes of any hospitality unit.

Developing this type of management system is one of the best approaches to incorporate the most critical features your business requires for workflow automation and services improvement.

Let’s now uncover the most essential features a hotel unit certainly should include in its front desk management solution.

Reservation and Booking Management

The front desk system accumulates all the booking information from different channels and conducts a real-time checking of these channels to ensure the proper reservation tracking.

This software can accurately inform about the total number of apartments booked and ready to move in, calculates the most popular booking dates, and provides a detailed overview of the visitors’ reservation trends.

At the same time, it allows users to process the deposits and check the reservation status in real-time, thus optimizing the workload of the reception desk.

Check-in and Check-out Control

The other feature that reduces the hotel staff workload and enhances hotel management is the automated check-in and check-out system. With this option, the front desk employees can quickly process the customer flow and update the apartment information within a single tool.

Hotel guests can feel the difference in the service speed: their visits will be processed up to 5 times quicker than using the standard system. Additionally, hotel staff can effortlessly track room service, prioritize the tasks, and fulfill all the clients’ requests according to the front desk data input.

Automated Guest ID Registration

To guarantee the clients’ privacy yet optimize the registration speed, it’s a great option to allow users to manually upload the ID documents for their quick and safe processing. The guests’ ID, as well as all the other important information, can be stored in the hotel database and retrieved later on-demand (mostly, when it’s needed to process the booking requests from the same client).

Automated Communication Methods

In the digital era, nearly all the interaction between the clients and the service vendors comes through online services: chatbots, emails, specific notifications, and more.

It’s much more convenient, faster, and doesn’t require direct communication with the front desk staff. According to several pieces of research, people mostly prefer texting methods of communication, and less use the direct interactions (which is exceptionally important in the post-pandemic times): it’s quicker and more convenient.

By including multiple methods of communication, you can not only enhance the time needed to process the clients’ requests but also reduce the front desk workload as well.

Hotel Services Management

If your hospitality unit offers different types of services for the clients’ use, it’s a great idea to include these services management into your front desk at a hotel.

This way, front desk workers can easily update the price and availability information for each service, add the discounts and promo codes, and even analyze the trends of the hotel service use. This data gives additional directories on how to improve the existing hotel features as well as the general guests’ preferences: restaurants, cleaning, sports, and more.

Room Cleaning and Housekeeping

It’s also critical to create a single system that every staff member can make use of, especially the housekeepers. By accessing the front desk management system, they can quickly review and update the information regarding the room and its supplies, as well as the room availability status for the next booking.

Other Great Tools for Front Desk Hotel Software

To make the most of your front desk at the hotel, it’s also important to include:

• Tracking calendars – allows checking the up-to-date reservation information and avoid double bookings
• Reporting tools – assists in analyzing the occupancy level, hotel inventory, and sales to provide the critical insights needed for the profitability improvement
• Notification systems – the different channels created for both hotel staff and guests enable quick yet effective updating of the room service status, check-in or check-out information, upcoming events that might be useful for guests, and more.
• Team management – allows administrating, assigning, and supervising different tasks and track their status within a single software system.
• Guests’ service – enables automatically informing about the balance and expenses, generate receipts, and sending the critical updates (reservation, housekeeping reports, post-stay emails, and more)

Bottom Line

To conclude, the use of front desk management software is a must-have for all the hospitality units that need to enhance business performance by improving customer service.

The configured front desk system allows reducing the paperwork, operates nearly all the tasks within a single technology, and significantly optimizes the critical management processes that can impact the customer service.

Furthermore, with the custom software development for travel and hospitality you and your business can implement innovative technologies that perfectly fit the business goals and needs at a reasonable price!

Our best team of developers at Intellectsoft are aware of the latest trends in hospitality business optimization and automation. We empower hospitality companies and their workforces with the most effective technologies and innovative approaches.

Are you looking for the experts to develop your next business project? Talk to our experts right now to uncover more about front desk software development and how your business can benefit from it today!

The post Hotel Front Desk Management Software 101: Everything You Should Know About This Solution appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

And, though the first one is now considered to be a common practice every hotel implements to their development strategies, only few of them invest in guest experience improvement.

With the right software implemented, the hotel units can greatly automate daily operations and administrative tasks to enhance customer satisfaction, and boost client loyalty as well.

The hotel’s functioning requires the active cooperation of multiple departments, with each step being tracked and verified. Before the computer systems implementation, this was traditionally done manually with tons of paperwork and time-consuming managing tasks.

Now, most of the hotel management workflow in hospitality tends to be optimized. That is why one of the must-have software to utilize is the property management system (PMS).

What Is Hotel Property Management Software?

In the hospitality industry, a property management system refers to the software that enhances the hotel’s daily management workflow and specific administrative tasks.

In other words, this system is used for organizing, scheduling, and automating the specific tasks of the hotel management process to simplify the hotel operating system and increase the overall performance.

The first hotel PMS systems appeared in the 1970s and have developed into a prospective industry with a market size valued at over 2.9 billion USD in 2020. These numbers are also expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.8% from 2021 to 2028.

Why is it so important? The basic purpose of hotel PMS is to manage numerous properties within one software, employing the centralized yet automated tracking system that increases business efficiency.

Hotel property management software is exceptionally important for the hospitality industry, which integrates the functioning of different departments and various services to provide a high-quality guest experience.

Basic Features of the Hotel Property Management System

Going deeper into the main functions presented in a hotel PMS software, the modern systems feature multiple management options for different departments, including accounting, audit, maintenance, front desk, security, etc. The common features of the PMS system for hotels usually include the following:

• Marketing and Sales: client files, guest histories, travel agents, direct mails, etc.
• Accounting: balance sheets, accounts payable and accounts receivable profit-and-loss statements, payrolls and others.
• HR Management: personal files, time and attendance, working schedule, etc.
• Reservations Management: room availability, online booking, yield management.
• Front Desk: cashier, room status, guest accounts, guest credit audit, advance deposits, bonus systems, and so on.
• Call Accounting: guest information, phone call posting.
• Housekeeping: room status, room service.
• Maintenance: work orders.
• Restaurant Service: up-to-date menu, inventory, recipes, point-of-sale, delivery.

These options presented are only one of the few basic features that should be included in the hotel property management system, they can be also modified and improved to provide better hotel management performance.

One of the core ideas of implementing the hotel PMS software is to create the feature-rich environment needed to assist the clients and deliver better guest service. Without having a unified system, any of the core departments such as housekeeping, front desk or accounting would take much more training and many labor hours.

That is why getting the hotel property management system is an effective yet efficient solution for the hospitality industry to enhance their workflow and increase the KPI as well.

Benefits of Hotel Property Management Software

However, the enhanced workflow is not the only reason why the hospitality industry should include the hotel PMS implementation in its development strategy. The other critical benefits this type of software can bring to the business are:

• Ensure time-efficient task management, that can cover the performance of nearly every hotel department.
• Increase the staff productivity and improve the communication between different units.
• Develop trustworthy relationships with your clients that will result in an increased level of retention and customer loyalty (for example, with the automated check-ins and check-outs).
• Enhance the online presence by implementing the online booking systems, chatbots, and an official site to your hotel CMS.
• Create an efficient revenue management system, where it’s more clear to analyze the profit-and-loss, track the balance sheet, and the other features to enhance the income and optimize the cost management.
• Manage different distribution channels to easily and effectively promote your hospitality business across partnerships, affiliate programs, and third-party booking services to boost the number of your reservations and increase brand awareness across the Internet.
• Boost the overall number of bookings in different seasons by enhancing the potential of your business via smart reporting, deep analysis, and other automated services.
• Provide accurate daily reporting for comparing and analyzing the current state of affairs and create the possible improvement strategies that will help to optimize your business performance (for instance, the reporting can be exported to the cloud storages, with the data always accessed and tracked by the team to make the important, profitable data-driven decisions anytime and anywhere).
• Minimize the double bookings and specific errors because of the task automation, which results in the enhanced guest experience, optimized staff work, and the correct business data and reporting.
• Target the hotel clients and their needs by analyzing their specific preferences and the ordering records to increase the revenue of your business.
• Contribute to the business model transformation that can result in the business development and ROI growth, as well as the mindset shift and the workflow transformation.

As you can see from the benefits stated, the importance of the hotel PMS software implementation cannot be underestimated. These benefits will not only improve the existing business model of your hospitality unit but also help your team to build an advanced system of guest service and hotel management.

Create Your Professional Hotel PMS System with Intellectsoft

There are two ways of creating the hotel property management software for your business: by manually creating the system with the guidance of your team of developers or hiring a dedicated team of developers to create a professional, feature-rich hotel system that will fully meet all your business needs and requirements.

The first method tends to be more unstable for use, as you cannot be certain about the final product quality and its stable performance. That is why investing in the individual hotel property management system is a great option for the hospitality units to develop the right software they need for providing better customer service.

Instead, the experienced team of developers can:

• Provide deep research of your project;
• Conduct profound research of the market and its main players;
• Analyze the main requirements and functions your business needs;
• Include the other technologies that are widely used in your industry;
• Present the professional PMS system with all the essential features for performance automation, etc.

That is why cooperating with a professional team of developers is considered to be the most beneficial option for launching the best hotel property management software for any business.

Summing It Up

Developing professional hotel property management software is a formidable yet essential way of enhancing your business performance in the hospitality industry. The hotel PMS system implementation not only enhances the hotel service performance but also increases the bookings, provides better client targeting, and accurate reporting of your business performance.

With hiring a professional and experienced team of developers, custom software development for travel and hospitality becomes easy as never before. At Intellectsoft, we have years of experience creating innovative solutions for the hospitality industry.

Are you looking for an experienced software development vendor for your next business project? Talk to our experts right now and let us create solutions that would enhance the industry while helping you reach your business goals.

The post Basics of Hotel Property Management Software appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

In the hospitality industry, various brands, companies, and services can see the real results from loyalty program development in only a few months: up to 10% of sales and to 15% of transaction boosting, and around 20% of average spendings lift, according to PwC recent research.

The customer loyalty app refers to the most effective and efficient method of enhancing the UX in hospitality.

However, developing a mobile app loyalty program for hotels is not easy: they should contain the basic app features, all the range of services, and high-rated user engagement. In this article, we’ll cover the main things you should be aware of before starting creating a loyalty app project.

What Is a Customer Loyalty App?

In the hospitality industry, a customer loyalty program app refers to the software that increases client engagement and makes your guests more motivated to interact with the hotel and its services, consequently resulting in higher conversions and better revenue.

Usually, this type of loyalty apps creates incentives through rewarding points, special offers, discounts, and membership cards. For hotels, it can include the restaurant menu, tourism services, range of sports and leisure facilities, etc.

A customer loyalty mobile app is also a form of marketing strategy, designed to encourage using various hotel services via their smartphone so that you can get in touch with the reception and order any of the services available within a click.

The Potential of Loyalty Reward Apps

The importance of the loyalty program development for hotels cannot be underestimated, as it is one of the most effective communication and sales channels for the hospitality industry.

With the customer loyalty apps, it becomes much easier to interact with your customers, understand their needs and preferences, inform them about the latest news and events nearby, and offer the additional services the hotel can easily benefit from.

Additionally, mobile loyalty applications are a great option to increase brand awareness and improve customers’ loyalty as well. Thus, hotel units will get higher conversion rates with fewer investments into advertising because of having more loyal clients!

And the guests can benefit from the loyalty program app as well: they can easily stay in touch with the hotel staff and order any services they need for a comfortable stay. Also, they can enjoy the personalized offers and promotions offered depending on their personal interests, and even in different languages.

The reminders and notifications will help to keep your guests always updated about anything they might need during their journey.

With the mobile app loyalty program, they no longer need to take a plastic card to use the services or open their apartments, complete the check-ins and check-outs — everything can be done in a few taps on their smartphone.

Such a well-planned strategy of loyalty program development can not only improve the client experience but also increase the overall ROI as well.

Benefits of a Loyalty Management System for a Hotel

Before we start analyzing the main features of a loyalty program app for hospitality, it’s critical to understand whether your business needs it. Knowing the core advantages of loyalty apps can help you to estimate the basic features to pay attention to during the loyalty program development.

#1 Better Client Experience

According to Forbes, More than 80% of millennials and around two-thirds of baby boomers are interested in getting rewards not just for purchases but also for engagement with brands.

With a mobile loyalty app, your business will have more loyal clients who come to stay exactly in your hotel. As a result, their preferences and guest behavior analysis can help you to define the right service strategies to develop for the higher UX.

#2 Increased Bookings

Having implemented the loyalty program app into your hotel business and provided your guests with a certain reward program, you are more likely to get the undecided travelers over the line.

In this case, a loyalty program development can become an important criterion of why visitors should use your hospitality services instead of your competitors.

#3 Saving Investments

SEMRush has reported that the average American company can lose 23% to 30% of its customers each year due to a lack of customer loyalty. By focusing on your loyal clients and enlarging their number, you’ll spend fewer costs for the marketing and sales efforts.

Additionally, loyal repeat guests can have much better conversion rates than the average one-time visitors, which makes them more valuable for your business as well.

#4 Boosted Revenue

The loyal customers who have had a great experience with your hotel once are more likely to use the additional services offered in your mobile loyalty app. If offered, they can spend more money on traveling, sports and leisure, catching events, and other services organized by your hotel management team.

#5 Useful Insights

By analyzing the guests’ profiles created in your loyalty app, you can also get a lot of insights about further loyalty program development.

For instance, with the mobile app loyalty program, it becomes much easier to collect important data like clients’ interests, preferences, and behavior to improve the existing strategy for attracting more guests to your hotel and defining the right targets for your guests’ experience improvement.

Main Features of Loyalty Applications for the Hospitality Industry

To make the most of your loyalty program development, it’s also important to understand the basic features it should cover for the right client engagement. That is why we have created the list of the most effective features you must include in a loyalty program app:

• Add push notifications and reminders to keep your clients updated about the events, planned activities, and other important information.
• Consider the loyalty program ideas like guests points, special occasion bonuses, and time-limited promotions.
• Include different programs for various areas including hotel service, hotel restaurants, bars and events, leisure facilities, local guides, and city events.
• Try to personalize your rewards system to offer different options depending on individual preferences.
• Provide easy access for your customer loyalty mobile app: online and offline performance, easy registration, and sign-in.
• Offer extra rewards for using the loyalty program app.
• Cover multiple languages for a mobile loyalty app for comfortable utilization.
• Make your app available for different operating systems: iOS and Android

These are the basic functions to know for the successful loyalty program development, but the hospitality units also can add the other features they need or want to include into their customer loyalty apps.

Conclusion

To sum up, loyalty program development is a powerful and effective method of UX empowering and boosting the business performance as well.

For the hospitality industry, customer loyalty app sare one of the best options to start with for understanding the clients’ needs and preferences, and also to build a successful strategy for visitor engagement as well.

Setting up the custom software development for travel and hospitality can help the hospitality units to cover all the features they need in their applications, and save up more resources on their launching and implementation.

Additionally, that’s a perfect investment for the hotels that need the best solution for improving the clients’ engagement and getting the additional source of the service advertising.

At Intellectsoft, we have extensive experience creating innovative technological solutions for hospitality. Are you ready to take your business to the next level, then don’t hesitate to contact us.

The post Guest Loyalty App Development for Hotels appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

For hotel cyber security, it will remain a great challenge in the future: new hacking techniques are adopted day by day, and it’s nearly impossible to predict and confront them all.

The recent research published by Research Gate shows that the appraised cost of cybercrimes will approximately reach $6 trillion per year on average after 2021.

This is why more and more organizations become concerned about their security level: they’re investing in improving their digital safety and boosting their resistance to hacking attacks and data breaches.

The hospitality industry is not an exception: hotel security systems are one of the main priorities to develop for providing maximum comfort for the guests and ensure their secure staying as well.

Today we’ll cover what hotel cyber security is, the main issues hotel cyber security counters with, and also the most popular information security tools it employs to enhance the safety of their data and systems.

The State Of Cybersecurity in Hospitality

First of all, cybersecurity refers to a specific plan targeted at a company’s data protection. Most hotels are now aware of the possibility of cyber attacks aimed at stealing the clients’ personal data, internal documents, or any other information.

A well-planned strategy of improving the hotel safety and security can, in fact, minimize the risks of being hacked, thus, ensuring the data won’t be used by fraud.

But what information hackers are usually haunting in hospitality? Basically, there are various data they can benefit from, including:

• personal data of hotel’s guests
• bank card information
• employee data
• critical business information, etc

McKinsey’s best-suggested practice to improve hotel cyber security is to build a unified, integrated cyber defense that can protect the entire hotel infrastructure.

The most productive way to get started is the cyber attack assumption, after that try to build an accurate and effective strategy of building the system resistance to all the weak points discovered.

The IT experts insist on implementing an integrated defense to improve hotel security, as it can cover the most common security threats and secure the infrastructure as well.

Tools to Solve Common Cybersecurity Issues in Hospitality

One of the most essential cybersecurity recommendations for hospitality is employing the best IT technologies to get the organizations secured from a variety of common threats.

These usually include different sorts of viruses, internal attackers aimed at getting the network access, hardware theft, spoofing, unauthorized insider access, unauthorized outside attacks, and service attacks as well.

In general, the most effective protection tools and techniques used for safety and security in hospitality industry include the following:

Intrusion Detection System

This technology analyses all the events that happened in the internal network or any other system to detect suspicious activities, intrusions, and attacks.

The so-called intrusion refers to the efforts used to target the system’s confidentiality, availability, or integrity, which can result in system errors and data loss.

Intrusion detection systems can inform about the following types of attacks:

• Internet attacks (criminal connects to the system from the Internet or the outside networks)
• Authorized attacks (users authorized in the system try to find the vulnerabilities to get access to the secured information or those who misuse and abuse the privileges to get the profit).

Physical Hotel Security

This point refers to keeping all the networking equipment and computer systems updated and secure. In practice, it means not only purchasing the new equipment but also setting up limited access to it for third parties.

Hotel System Firewalls

The powerful yet effective combination of soft and hardware equipment can assist in tracking the device traffic of different computer networks, which is a must for hotel cyber security.

A hardware firewall is a device that can be attached directly to the network, while the software firewall consists of the specific program files targeted at improving the hotel Internet security and is installed on devices (computers, phones, tablets, laptops, etc).

Encryption Procedure

One of the most popular measures that can prevent data breaches and minimize the entrance of most hacking attacks is encryption. Basically, that’s a process of transforming the information so it becomes impossible to get.

For hotel security, encryption becomes a perfect method of ensuring data confidentiality, which is critical not only for the hotel’s management and service systems but also for the guests and visitors.

Biometrics

The technology of biometrics can greatly assist in the authorization procedures, as it benefits the user authentication systems and more. As a rule, the most popular biometrics systems record the physical characteristics of each individual and compare them each time during the authorization processes before providing full access to specific data stored in the system.

The main examples of the physical characteristics used for biometric technologies include voice recognition technologies, fingerprints, face, retina, or iris identifications. By implementing the biometrics form of authorization you can significantly enhance the hotel cyber security and ensure your users and the entire management system are fully protected.

Vulnerability Detecting Software

Last but not least software listed in the cybersecurity recommendations for hospitality is the vulnerability scanning software. Basically, that’s a specifically built software targeted at scanning your hotel’s systems and resources (both internal and for public use) and pointing at the possible vulnerabilities you should definitely pay attention to.

Furthermore, with the vulnerability detecting software, it becomes way easier to track the entire system performance and define which parts of the hotel security enhancement still need to be improved and what are the best practices for resolving these issues.

Access Limitations

To improve the hotel Internet security, it’s also essential to set up limited access to the critical or more vulnerable systems and resources.

By implementing the access control, you can significantly improve the authentication and authorization processes to ensure the access to the specific systems and resources will be available for a limited number of people.

Why is it so important? According to the Varonis Global Data Risk report, over 53% of companies have over 1000 sensitive files open to every employee. For hotel security, it means that after the employee password is known to the criminals, your system can be easily hacked by anyone and anytime.

Improving Cybersecurity: Protect Customers’ and Company’s Sensitive Data

According to the recent trends and effective measures to protect hotel safety and security, there are 3 key points of building the integrated cyber security infrastructure. Let’s now cover them in detail.

#1 Find Your Dedicated Team of Developers

The first step every company should start with is IT recruiting. A well-built team of IT developers can become one of the most effective ways of improving hotel Internet security.

Infrastructure groups need to always track the latest “trends and tendencies” in security, employ the most effective cyber tools and brainstorm some new ways of detecting the system’s weak points and how they can be resolved.

#2 Always Stay Focused on Security Improvement

Instead of paying a hard look only at the very first stages of security improvement, it’s critical to understand this process should be tracked permanently. So, it’s useless to make some changes to the hotel security procedures and exclude them from the priority tasks for the future.

However, organizations should create multiple scenarios to simulate the possible variants of cyberattacks for learning and practice. Furthermore, a clear understanding of each member’s responsibilities in crisis situations, as well as the plans of how to act in critical situations with the team members and public, can help to create a powerful strategy of defending the hotel Internet security.

#3 Use the Effective Security Tools

The experienced IT experts know that none of the security software, antiviruses, and other tools can ensure your hotel system is 100% secure from cyber attacks. Nevertheless, hospitality units still need to implement the most updated software and hardware for their data security.

In practice, that means dividing the process of improving the hotel cyber security into 3 phases: preparing and protection; defending and detection; responding and recovering. If one of these phases is omitted, your hotel security can become a tidbit for fraud and hackers.

Final Thoughts

To conclude, it’s almost impossible to predict the possible cyberattacks in hospitality and be 100% sure they won’t happen again.

However, with powerful solutions and effective security tools, your hotel can get ready for any sort of hacking threats and successfully confront the criminals.

Using professional custom software development for travel and hospitality can become a perfect solution to start improving your hotel cyber security, protect your system data and your guests as well.

We, at Intellectsoft, know about the importance of safety and security in the hospitality industry. Our dedicated team of developers empowers hospitality companies and their workforces with innovative solutions and approaches to ensure their successful performance online. Are you and your organization looking for some?

Talk to our best experts and find out more about hotel security solutions and how your business can start benefiting from them today!

The post Cybersecurity for Hospitality: How to Protect Sensitive Data Stored Online appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

Or let’s imagine an even worst-case scenario, when you have to go up to the room with your suitcases on your own to find out the room key does not work.

None of these scenarios would give a nice first impression of your hotel to new visitors. Luckily, there are so many technologies available to enable you to avoid these situations.

According to the latest research, today there are more than 700,000 hotels and resorts around the world. This industry only keeps growing and developing every year and is worth more than $570 billion. According to IBISWorld, there are now 91,000 hotels in the United States alone, bringing in about $190 billion annually.

With the adoption of biometrics like fingerprints, face or iris scanning, or even voice recognition, biometrics have the potential to revolutionize the hospitality industry.

With this, new levels of efficiency and safety can be created. Let’s learn more about future biometrics for hospitality industry in the article!

What Is Biometric Technology?

Biometric technologies are solutions that are commonly used to identify a person based on some aspect, namely, a person’s unique physical or behavioral characteristics.

The basic premise for biometric technologies is that each person can be accurately identified by their intrinsic qualities.

Biometric authentication technology is now widely used in corporate and public security systems, home appliances, and various programs.

Convenience is also one of the driving forces of biometrics since you no longer need to dial passwords or carry different keys with you.

There are two types of biometrics used to recognize a person. The first type is biometrics based on physiological characteristics. The second is behavioral biometrics. Physiological identifiers include the following:

• facial recognition
• fingerprints
• finger geometry (the size and position of fingers)
• iris recognition
• vein recognition
• retina scanning
• voice recognition
• DNA matching
• digital signatures

How Does the Hospitality Industry Use Biometric Technologies?

Components of the hospitality industry such as hotels, resorts, and others often face the challenge of ensuring the safety of guests while maintaining all the amenities.

If your hotel has a lot of security measures, guests may not like it and they may never come back. If, on the contrary, security measures are weak, this can lead to theft or something else.

Then what the solution will be here? How does the hospitality industry provide security while maintaining comfort and convenience?

The best solution is biometrics, which can take full responsibility in case of any problem. The uses of biometric technologies can make life easier for hospitality businesses such as hotels, as well as improve operational efficiency, safety, and convenience in many ways.

One of the ways to use biometrics in hotels and other establishments in this domain is to implement registration using fingerprint or face recognition. Biometrics are already actively used in hotels in China.

FlyZoo Hotel in Hangzhou allows guests to select the floor and room number through a mobile app. Upon arrival at the hotel, there are several options for local and foreign check-in.

The first is that locals can register by scanning their faces through a mobile app. Another option is for foreigners who can check in by scanning their faces through vending machines located throughout the hotel lobby.

It has never been possible to avoid all the formalities associated with hotel check-in, but using biometrics such as fingerprint or face scanning can speed up the process dramatically.

In the same way, hotel staff control guest access to different parts of the hotel, for example by requiring a finger scan to access the pool.

Another way to use biometrics in hotels is to avoid key cards that allow guests to enter their rooms. Instead, a person just needs to scan their fingerprint, which greatly simplifies the system.

There is no need to keep an inventory of keys, give out new ones to guests if for some reason they have lost their own.

Biometrics is also widely used to pay for various additional hotel services. For example, requiring your fingerprint to authorize any additional payments for your hotel stay, such as ordering food or drinks in your room, spa treatments, or purchasing various in-room entertainment, will allow you to quickly and accurately bill upon checkout.

It will also help save guests from unnecessary expenses. A child cannot independently order what he wants, without her mother’s biometrics.

Benefits of Biometric Technology in the Hospitality Industry

Access Control System

Ensuring security in the hotel is one of the most important tasks, especially in terms of increasing threats to the hotel business associated with infringement on the lives or rights of guests.

For each team managing the hotel, one of the main tasks is to ensure the security of confidential areas and restrict guests’ access to storage rooms, warehouses, and other technical areas.

Biometrics can easily help with this, which will allow you not to worry about the fact that some visitors can get into one of the technical rooms.

Previously, keys and locks were widely used to control the access of staff and guests to the hotel premises. Typically, cleaners, like other hotel workers, had to constantly carry a huge number of keys with them, which could easily get lost.

In addition, it was always necessary to run and close or open rooms in case of a visitor’s loss of room keys or other problems. With the help of biometric security technology, such problems can be easily avoided, as the fingerprint will become the only key to all areas of the hotel, which greatly facilitates the work of technical staff and saves the hotel from unnecessary problems with visitors.

You can also monitor in real-time the access of staff to restricted areas of the hotel, such as guest rooms, washing rooms, etc. You can track which room a particular hotel employee has entered, thereby roughly understand their location.

Improving Staff Efficiency

To continually meet the needs of guests and provide them with an excellent hotel experience, managers must continually hire more and more employees.

But with the increase in the number of employees, it becomes more difficult for hotel management to keep track of the working hours of each employee and manage them effectively.

Fortunately, biometric identification technology can help with this. After all, such technologies are aimed not only at improving the safety and convenience of customers but also to facilitate the internal management of the hotel.

The use of biometric will help you easily monitor staff time, improve employee efficiency and ensure transparency in payroll accounting. Biometrics are also used to track visits by hotel staff, which reduces the likelihood of theft and other unpleasant things by several times.

Personalized Guest Experience

According to one study, 41% of hotel visitors visited the hotel more often and stayed in only one hotel if an employee could recognize them without giving their name. In another survey, 62% of hotel guests believe that such actions by staff will greatly improve their experience of the hotel.

Using biometric technology can help you easily refer to a visitor by name, as well as obtain information about the visitor and their preferences, without having to ask for any additional information.

For example, a guest arriving at a hotel scans a fingerprint at the front desk, after which the concierge will immediately receive all of his personal information, room, and service preferences, to make his stay at the hotel as pleasant as possible.

Conclusion

The adoption of biometric solutions has grown exponentially in a very short period. This technology began to be used all over the world in various industries. The hospitality industry is no exception.

You no longer need to rely on traditional methods of security, registering guests, granting them access to rooms, and tracking hotel technical staff.

All these functions can be replaced by the introduction of biometrics, which will radically facilitate hotel management and create even greater comfort for visitors.

In addition, invoicing visitors for hotel services becomes very easy. Customers can also feel secure if they only enter and exit the hotel using biometric scanning technology.

Combined with CCTV cameras, biometric technology can be the best weapon against security threats. A huge network of hotels around the world, which are found in different parts of the globe, creates a complex and confusing system that requires centralized resource management and the exchange of data between different departments. This can be easily achieved with biometric solutions.

Not all companies can provide quality custom software development for travel and hospitality services. That is why you need to be very careful while choosing a vendor that could help you with the implementation of such an idea.

The professionals in Intellectsoft have years of experience in developing innovative solutions based on biometric technologies for the hospitality industry.

Feel free to contact us, so we would take a close look at your project and offer you the best possible solution.

The post Benefits of Biometric Technologies for Hospitality Industry appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

As our guide on top hotel technologies of 2021 shows, improvements like increasing customer comfort, service optimization, workflow automation, and smart marketing are gaining momentum.

That’s how smart rooms, mobile keys, and blockchain solutions appeared and became widespread.

However, you need money to install all these up-to-date technologies. In the given circumstances, revenue management systems can assist grand hotels and boutique guesthouses alike in generating more funds.

The core value of this technology is the same for hospitality representatives of any size: it will help capture the maximum value your visitors are ready to bring to your hotel. In this overview, we’ll explain how it’s possible and which parameters this software should possess to be truly effective.

What Are Revenue Management Systems (RMS)?

The notion of revenue management software refers to the diversified set of strategies aimed at increasing the profitability of your company or organization.

Starting from the American Airlines case, the businesses have recognized the advantages of linking value to the specific conditions and yielding more revenue from the segmented pricing. Basically, RMS realizes this idea in technological terms.

The exact appearance of revenue management activities can be different, but all of them refer to finding the perfect place, time, and offering for an accurate service recipient.

The application of revenue management software reveals its best once you supplement this strategic move with the advanced plan containing the best profitability boost practices already used in your hotel.

If you don’t have this plan, here are the things to consider while making it:

1. Precise forecasting. Set the budget limitations for the nearest season and in a long-term perspective. This way, you’ll better understand your current situation and the exact revenue the technology should generate to boost your profitability.
2. Analyze your competitors. Determine the traits and characteristics your key competitors possess. Assume which of them leads to greater profitability than yours.
3. Define the key audience groups. Try to mastermind what are the main categories of your visitors. Are they sole low-budget tourists and businessmen? Are they couples of different income levels? Or is your facility a hostel that attracts one audience category because of constant price dumping? Collect as many assumptions as possible.
4. Check your technical weaknesses. To get the maximum of the existing software, determine the vulnerabilities of your existing one first. For this, make sure your website has good performance indicators, there’s an online booking engine, and you can do business with your clients online effectively. If any of these parameters are not elaborated, check our guide on hotel management software specifics and refer to our tech specialists to get a consultation.

Why Your Hotel Needs Revenue Management Solutions

Once you’ve collected the set of your hypotheses and ideas, hotel revenue management systems will provide a concrete set of tools to work with them and optimize your resources smartly.

The technology will divide your visitors into segments and offer to supply what they will surely buy. For example, you can provide an extra night for a discounted price for the visitors who arrive late at night, assuming they are likely to oversleep the checkout time and won’t mind spending one more night in the city.

What’s important: such an idea will be a data-driven decision.

Also, the software allows tracking typical consumption behavior during the stay. For example, your RMS shows only business-class visitors order dinners, while those who choose standard rooms eat elsewhere (or don’t eat at all).

In this situation, at night, you can leave extra bottles of water or drinks in the cheaper rooms and proactively offer restaurant food to business-class visitors at the time of typical orders.

As a result, you’ll get the maximum revenue for each visitor category in your hotel.

In essence, hotel revenue management means providing the maximum value for each individual guest.

Resources optimization in revenue management can have various manifestations in your hotel. It’s not only about supplying food and rooms cost-effectively.

When it comes to personnel, you can avoid the idle time problem and inaccurate price setting in the selected days of high and low season. As the sum of all these small advantages, you’ll increase your overall revenue significantly.

With revenue management technology, you’ll stop offering your services blindly. Instead, you will increase the loyalty of your visitors and the accuracy of each resource spent in your hotel.

6 Key Contributions of the Effective Revenue Management System

1. Better allocation of resources. Revenue management solutions should establish an environment where the perfect match between what you sell and what your guests buy constantly happens. Thanks to the intelligent algorithms that constantly track supply and demand, RMS proposes the most effective solutions.
2. Cost optimization. With the better-allocated resources, you don’t overpay on features and amenities your visitors don’t fancy. On the contrary, you’ll increase the sales of the items already liked.
3. Taking advantage of fluid pricing. Hotel revenue management systems will help you capture maximum from changing rates. By reacting to the demand dynamics automatically, you can increase the price of your services accurately.
4. A better understanding of your competitors. With the revenue management software, you’ll get an all-in-one overview of everything happening in your market segment. This way, you’ll get the full picture and will change prices smarter and more accurately.
5. Easy scaling. Of course, you can rely on your own observations and make decisions on the resource allocation manually. But if you have ambitions to grow and become a big hotel, automation of the key processes is what you’ll need first and foremost.
6. Informed decisions. One of the main contributions of hotel revenue management systems is collecting loads of essential data about your hotel and guests. With this information at hand, you can become more accurate in your assumptions and decisions and know what your customers really want — even if they don’t articulate their wishes proactively.

Things to Consider before Implementing Hotel Revenue Management Services

Like any technology, hotel revenue management software requires specific knowledge and proper understanding of what the project aims are from the executives.

Revenue management by itself is a complicated area where numerous specialists work and different metrics are adopted.

Nevertheless, the technology should be easy-to-use and unite all these distinct parameters in one solution. This way, all the workers in your hotel can work with it and detect the information needed for them to work.

Checklist to an effective hotel revenue management introduction:

1. Determine where you are today. You need to provide a detailed picture of the current state of your hotel.
2. Set your ideas and hypotheses. Make assumptions on the profitability boost needed, resources available, and guest categories.
3. Find a reliable technology vendor. While choosing, check the professionalism and discuss the project in detail prior to paying.
4. Keep in touch with your vendor. While implementing the software, communicate the progress with your vendor. This is needed to adjust the project on the way.
5. Pass the training. Due to the software complexity, all the workers who work on your hotel’s profitability must learn how to use it.
6. Test your hypotheses and improve them. Don’t expect revenue management software to be a magic button that will increase your profitability in a day. You still need to input the data and do something with the conclusions. Consider technology as the tool that will help you work more accurately and analyze information better and faster.

Ask Intellectsoft to Design and Install Hotel Revenue Management Software for You

You can look for a freelance revenue manager to increase your hotel’s profitability — or get more accurate, sophisticated, and professional equipment instead.

Intellectsoft developers are ready to install customized hotel revenue management systems of any appearance for you. Upon request, we can empower the software with other technological innovations of your choice.

Check all our capabilities in custom software development for travel and hospitality — and feel free to contact our consultants if you’ve found yours!

Intellectsoft is a software development company specialized in delivering top-notch digital solutions to companies of different sizes and representing various industries.

Let our experience serve your project aims too! Talk to our experts, and let’s decide on the software that will help your hospitality business profit!

The post Revenue management system for hotels  appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

According to the recent Deloitte report on consumer behavior trends, only one-third of respondents feel safe attending in-person events, and only half are ready to stay in a hotel.

In the given circumstances, the importance of each guest and conference visitor has become tremendous. The previous “common” tiny mistakes and difficulties turn out to be severe and costly nowadays.

In the new harsh reality, it’s inexcusable to search for a missing phone number, contact an important guest, or not invite the potentially interested client to an event.

If before 2021 it was recommended to automate these processes, today it’s already a must. Consider getting digital solutions to attract, work with, and stimulate each client.

And our guide will explain the specifics and conceptualize the need for implementing online event management software for your business.

What Online Event Management Software Can Do

In essence, event management software is the set of technologies that assist in coping with handling conferences. Usually, its toolkit is wide, ranging from planning the event to maintaining the customer base long after the happening.

The main purpose of this software is to automate and optimize the existing processes and client base.

Even though investing in event management tools may sound like a low-priority task for a business owner these days, the possible improvements can bring you good in a long-term perspective. Among all, the solutions facilitate effective planning, engaging new and existing clients, and establishing solid networking.

The set of enhancements also includes an easier registration process, solid assistance to the sales and support team, and even next-gen content optimization. Check the top 5 improvements in the list below!

5 Common Spheres of Applying Event Management Solutions

1. Registration. Event management software features enable building all-inclusive registration pages. Your clients can fill them from computers and smartphones, and you will have all the needed information stored in one place.
2. Sales. The functionality of event management software includes tracking sales in real-time, creating effective promotional campaigns, and working with mechanics like “early bird” tickets in one place.
3. Communication with clients. The remarkable feature of online event management software is working with the segmented client base in a language they understand better. Thanks to automated emails and event planners, your clients will get the information they need on time.
4. Networking. The developers recognize that people attend conferences to make new connections. Thus, event management software features include the enhanced matching techniques to facilitate finding common interests and starting conversations with other conference attendants.
5. Landing pages. In some cases, event management software can include customizable templates and design elements to build attractive and working web platforms to create a marvelous first impression.

5 Benefits of Event Management Software Implementation

1. Full automation. You no longer need to feel and control data manually. The purpose of a well-developed event management solution is to minimize the human effort on hotel maintenance. This way, you can save time and money on completing more important business tasks.
2. Next-level engagement. The toolkit of event management solutions includes various mechanics to increase attendee participation. This, in turn, leads to a higher event ROI. In simple words, an event management platform helps to make the most from the clients left.
3. Sophisticated reporting. The capabilities of this software type include enhanced statistics and an ability to draw solid conclusions from the data available. With more data you have at hand, you can make more accurate decisions and establish a more flexible business approach.
4. Cost-effectiveness. The general purpose of the software for event management is to make routine processes faster and effortless. Thus, even the most expensive technology works better for spending optimization than its absence.
5. Faster planning and execution. Event management tools collect all the data needed for gathering successful conferences: detailed analytics, various types of social media integration, and top-performing marketing instruments.

3 Key Things to Mastermind for Getting a Really Good Software for Event Management

First and foremost, event management technologies are designed to improve the existing processes.

Thus, you need an established system first. Before ordering, think of all the present and potential weaknesses your current event management possesses. After making this preliminary step, proceed to meet these recommendations:

1. Determining your needs clearly. The purposes of applying event management systems software are multiple, and your task is to get the top-matching solution for your particular case. That’s why the best software providers always start by discussing the project details. Together, the client and the executor can negotiate on the custom appearance and the specific toolkit.
2. Choose your top priority. There are multiple event management software features, and you should determine the thing that concerns you the most. Ask yourself a question, “What should I enhance as soon as possible?”. The answer may refer to task management, processes optimization, or participation encouragement, for example. In turn, your software solution should have an appearance that is corresponding to your top priority.
3. Find a reliable provider. The major part of a really good coding solution in the area of conference and event management software lies on the development side. That’s why we don’t recommend trying to cut costs here — especially if your project includes sophisticated features or includes mobile app development. The better your software is made, the better results it will bring you, and the longer it will work.

As you can see, strategizing on software implementation is the major part of software development.

No surprise here: there’s no need to invest in expensive features of the technology blindly if your business will never use them. In this case, the more you think before buying, the better tool you can get from your software provider.

10 Advanced Software Features Your Event Management Tool Should Have

Here is the rating of top-demanded software elements for event management in 2021. Note that this list is not complete: we recommend negotiating with your program provider on the particular features your business needs.

1. Smart lists. If you’re interested in getting easy-to-use registration, consider this tool. Basically, smart lists are segmented leads you can use to create a personalized experience for your attendees right after signing in to your event.
2. Analytics. For more accurate communication with your clients, consider incorporating essential metrics. Ask your developer to add settings for retargeting campaigns, conversion rate analysis, and integration with social media.
3. Widgets. If you need a quick website fix, request event management programs that have embeddable widgets. With them, you can add registration areas, conversation spaces, and sponsor spots hassle-free.
4. Social integration. Let your software enable sharing through social media channels so that clients can promote your services among their followers. Don’t underestimate the influence of user-generated content on your business performance!
5. Mobile app. Let your attendants access the conference schedule, check information about the participants, and communicate with their colleagues in your app! Later, you can use this tool to gather these people again.
6. Push notifications. As practice shows, push notifications reveal their best as real-time announcements during the event and reminders about the upcoming events.
7. Voting mechanics. Gamification and asking users’ opinions work in social media awesomely. Why not use them in your event management software? Enable real-time polling to bring power to your conference attendants. Let them change the schedule and invite a speaker once again, for example.
8. On-site check-in. Facilitate the registration process and make it compliant with the new social distancing reality. Online check-in can be your branding instrument and the place for sponsorship spots too.
9. Email campaigns. Consider connecting the email program to communicate with your client database effectively. Thanks to the personalization techniques, you can enhance this traditional marketing tool with more accurate messages and efficient templates.
10. Promo codes. Another marketing tool that matches event management technologies perfectly. Sell more tickets and test various psychological techniques in one place.

Where to Get Event Management Systems Software

If you’re looking for a place to get event management solutions, feel free to contact us! We’re Intellectsoft, a software development company offering various types of top-notch digital solutions for businesses worldwide.

From us, you can get multiple custom software development for travel and hospitality, and event management software is among them too.

If you already have a project idea in mind, just talk to our experts! We’ll discuss your future software in detail to ensure the delivery of a solution truly needed, without costly ads-on and irrelevant features.

By the way, if you need the complex technology that unites various sophisticated tools working smoothly, we’ll be happy to build them for you too! In this case, we’ll engage the most experienced developer in our team and put all our time-proven expertise at the heart of your software.

The post Indispensable Features of an Event Management Software in 2021 appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

According to the PwC, over 70% of hospitality executives report they have already started developing the technology solutions like IoT and various mobile applications for booking, room, and service management because of their high potential and numerous benefits for the hotel’s better functioning.

Today, we will cover the basic information about the mobile concierge app, why they are so popular nowadays, and what features of the concierge app can be really beneficial for the hospitality industry.

Let’s get it started!

What Is a Mobile Concierge App?

A mobile concierge app is an innovative software solution for hotel room management that can radically improve the guest’s experience and ensure they’re comfortable staying in a hotel.

That is a hotel application that allows clients to request various types of concierge services from their smartphone: from taxis, flights, and restaurant booking to the room service, transactions, and check-in and check-out formalities.

The core idea of the hotel digital concierge is to improve the comfort of the guests and optimize the hotel’s functioning: discover and manage the guests’ requests in one application.

The Potential and Benefits of a Mobile Concierge App

In fact, there are plenty of reasons for implementing the concierge service app for hotel business whether it’s one hotel or the entire chain. Let’s review the basic benefits you will get along with the mobile concierge software launching.

Communicate With Other Hotel Staff or Resolve Guests’ Requests

The mobile concierge app will help to find the hotel worker in one click instead of hours of seeking the hotel workers to ask them for the room cleaning. Any service option can be requested with one click.

Inform the Customers About the Important Updates

No more newsletters, papers, or boring dialogues at the reception desk! Find all the information you need in the hotel application. If you still have any questions left, contact the hotel manager via mobile and get professional answers on them.

Offer the Full List of the Hotel Services

Are your guests wondering about the additional services for their comfortable staying? All of them can be reviewed in the hotel concierge app, and you can purchase them in advance as well.

Enjoy the hotel gym, swimming pool, restaurant, or various options of room service with simple access on your smartphone.

Assist Your Customers With Different Problems or Requests

Offer your mobile concierge app as an online helper which knows the weather, can contact a hotel staff, unlock the door or simply order extra food and drinks right to your suite.

Providing Better Confidence for the Employees

The mobile concierge applications can provide the hotel staff with additional help for better and more efficient request processing, thus optimizing the entire hotel workflow.

As a result, they will be always updated on the guests’ requests status and what things are scheduled for the certain room at any time.

Gain Customer Insights

If you want to get feedback for your hotel, there never can be a better time to ask for completing a simple form via the hotel concierge application.

It goes without saying that people are more likely to answer the questions in a few taps instead of filling the paper form on the reception. Besides, digital surveys are much easier to process and analyze, which can be also used for hotel service improvement.

With these features available, plenty of hotel corporations and the most luxurious resorts have already included this software in their basic set of hotel services.

And, as time goes by, in the next few years we expect even more hotels to adopt this technology, as the remote services have already become an indispensable part of our present being.

Main Features of a Mobile Concierge App

Due to the recent report by PwC, 81% of travelers want greater digital customer service from hotel brands.

So, what features you should include in the mobile concierge service to cover all the needs of your guests and get the most for your hotel business? Here, we will cover the most critical of them, and some suggested by Deloitte Digital.

Transaction Payments

In the times when all the world is now implementing a contactless system of payments (or else called PayPass) to their systems, the hospitality industry can easily incorporate this feature into the mobile concierge system.

Thus, when a guest wants to pay for the additional services, complete the check-out procedure, or pay for the following few days to prolong the stay, the person no longer needs to go to the reception desk.

Besides, in such a way the hotel can also ensure the clients’ and working staff’s safety, which is a critical feature during the pandemic.

Contextually Dynamic Updates

While considering implementing a digital hotel concierge, it’s a great idea to include the algorithm of updating the information page with personalized and relevant consumer content.

For example, if your guest is interested in the local events for the current week, or any other indoor event held by the hotel, then the mobile concierge can suggest various events and occasions that might fit the widest range of guest’s needs.

According to Evergage, 98% of marketers say personalization advances customer relationships. Thus, by making your application more customized and full of different suggestions for specific customer preferences and needs, it becomes much easier to turn a one-time visitor into a loyal client of your hotel.

Additional Hotel Services

The PwC report has also shown that over 70% of potential hotel residents are more likely to book a hotel with different tech improvements. But if they aren’t aware of the list of useful services while staying in a hotel, both sides are losing.

A customer will lack personal experience and is more likely to choose another hotel for the next vacation or business trip, whereas the hotel can lose the potential loyal customer and the revenue a person could bring to the hospitality unit.

However, with all the hotel services on the smartphone, the consumers can simply review the list of services offered via hotel digital concierge, and pick up the one which they need most.

Additionally, they are more likely to use these services with one-click ordering, since they no longer need to look for the hotel staff or call anywhere as the conversation with the managers is done via the mobile concierge.

Optimized for Different Devices

Needless to say, at present, most hotel bookings and service orders are done using a smartphone.

For instance, over 64% of hotel residents book their room on a smartphone, and up to 25% of them have checked in using a mobile device. And these digital trends are only expected to increase in the future.

That is why, make sure your hotel concierge app works across different devices, like smartphones, laptops, smartwatches, and others. This will help you to popularize your application and improve its user experience rate.

Automated Notifications and Room Management

In most modern hotel corporations, which have already implemented the digital hotel concierge, the mobile concierge is used as the digital assistant, whose task is to improve the personal experience of the guests and make their stay even more comfortable.

With some advanced features of the room service that include door opening with a mobile application, wake-up call, and getting the latest updates on the recent requests, the guests are more likely to stay there again.

Besides, these features have been already applied in FlyZoo Hotel in Hangzhou and can be easily completed via the FlyZoo mobile application.

Just like the concierge application, it allows having 24/7 communication with the hotel service staff and get all the requests done in one tap via the hotel app.

Challenges of Implementing the Hotel Concierge Technology

Along with the features that can greatly benefit your hotel business, it’s important to cover the challenges you will surely face while starting to develop the concierge application for the hotel.

Here we will review the most critical issues for the hotel concierge technology development:

• Reluctance to make investments in mobile concierge development. Just like any other new technology, developing a personal concierge app for hospitality requires smart investing, and because not everyone can realize the importance of this technology for the hotel service quality, the lack of investments is now one of the most common problems of app development.
• Being not ready to change other aspects of the hotel functioning for the application implementation. It often happens that the antiquated accounting data is stored in papers, without any digital copies, so if you want to automate your all services, then it’s time to consider the radical transformation of your hotel service system.

These are the main challenges of the mobile concierge implementation, which are common for nearly every hotel unit. But, we can assure you, as long as the optimization process is done, you will get a much higher ROI for your business.

Conclusion

As you can see, the concierge application is now one of the most popular technologies that every hotel tries to implement in their workflow.

By launching custom software development for travel and hospitality, hotels can get higher revenue, increase the number of loyal customers and enhance the quality of the services offered to their guests.

We, at Intellectsoft, cooperate with hospitality companies and their workforces by providing innovative solutions and approaches for improving their business performance. Do you and your organization need an efficient and effective concierge solution?

Talk to our experts today and start reaping the benefits of modern technology tomorrow!

The post Mobile Concierge App Development for Hotels: Basics to Know appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.

In the hospitality industry, hotel rooms are the primary inventory, which affects the entire business operations, no matter whether it’s the small independent unit or the large hotel chains.

The implementation of a hotel inventory management system can, in fact, provide you with efficient solutions related to booking management, room supplies stock, etc.

According to McKinsey, there are 2 main benefits hospitality units can get with hotel inventory management: interacting with their new customers, holding the existing ones, and receiving better revenue by improving their service delivery.

But there are much more to consider for inventory management in hotel industry, so let’s now dive in to discover the main information you should be aware of before its implementation.

What is a Hotel Inventory Management System?

In fact, the hotel management system software consists of a set of automated software modules that help the hotel staff to operate the list of the various functions.

This system enhances the hotel processes management, provides important information about the reservations, room supplies, guest transactions, overall hotel unit revenue, and more.

Here we will list the critical hotel management system modules, which are to be implemented on the first-come.

Booking System Software

It goes without saying that cooperating with the external hospitality providers which can offer your hotel services to potential consumers is more expensive than managing your own system. For sure, such popular services as Booking.com or Airbnb can directly sell your rooms with high fees.

However, the creation of hotel management system software is now a cost-effective solution for launching specific applications which perfectly fit all the needs and targets of a hotel unit.

Additionally, the specific booking management software can receive, process, and analyze the details of reservations provided by the tour operators, travel agencies, and automated online bookings.

Furthermore, such a system provides a better understanding of the booking management, knowing the room availability and its reservation status, thus completing the remote reservation automatically.

That feature is exceptionally useful now when all the visitors are concerned about minimizing the social contacts during pandemic times.

Room Management Module

However, the hotel inventory management is not solely about the booking operations. One of the most initial inventories of any hotel unit is their rooms. And, to provide the best services to their visitors, the hotel inventory management system is one of the most effective options for constantly enhancing business development.

For instance, you can manage the room status, its standard supplies, and availability, or else block the rooms for cleaning, repair, or renovation.

As a result, you will always be aware of the real state of affairs with the room management, can account for your spendings on the room inventory, and make sure all your visitors will be provided with the rooms ready when they complete the check-in procedure.

Guest System Module

Another great option you should consider for your hotel management software is implementing the guest applications module to the hotel system.

This method will help provide better communication with the hotel visitors, inform them about the payments and transactions made in the hotel, thus making their stay more comfortable and safe.

Besides, with that hotel management system software, it becomes much easier to introduce all the hotel services to your visitors at once, so they can always find something for themselves: fitness centers, remote workspaces, restaurants, and additional services – plenty of rooms for enhancing the customer experience.

These applications can be introduced at the stage of booking or checking in, and offer personal offers, additional services, and some other useful information that might enhance the experience of your guests.

And, after they have checked out, they can also get some specific promotions for their next trip. Thus, you can easily turn the one-time visitors into loyal customers of your hotel.

General Management Application

That module type is exceptionally important for the detailed management and tracking of the hotel’s internal processes.

Such operations as guest transactions control, staff resources management, employee’s personal information, specific hotel fees, promotions, and discounts’ details – by concentrating all this information in one place, you can significantly increase the hotel workflow.

Besides, according to the recent research, that’s a great option for your hotel employee training and development, duties, responsibilities, and tasks assignment, which is simply a must for your successful hotel functioning.

By separating and tracking the guest purchase behavior, staff workflow, you can put your hotel management onto the next level of development. That’s why this hotel inventory management system is now highly appreciated by the separate hotel units and the hospitality chains as well.

Benefits of a Hotel Inventory Management System

The implementation of inventory management in the hotel industry has a lot of different benefits for the hospitality businesses, and that is one of the key reasons why it’s so popular in the hotel management systems nowadays.

Let’s now discover the initial advantages you will get along with launching the hotel inventory software.

#1 Preventing the Risks of Rooms Overselling

With online sales, it often happens that the same product or service has been purchased simultaneously by different clients.

And, if the products can be additionally manufactured and delivered to the consumer, this is nearly impossible for the hotels to find the additional apartment for their guests. In most cases, this problem appears during the holidays and vacation season but can be easily resolved with the hotel inventory management system.

#2 Enhancing the Hotel Inventory Management

In general, being aware of the real situation with the critical hotel inventory units can greatly help you to manage and track all the internal processes of your hotel.

Furthermore, that system can also provide you with a better understanding of the weak points which should be improved firstly, so your guests will be always provided with comfortable and professional services, which means increasing your business ROI.

#3 Saving the Hotel Investments

One of the most critical tasks for any hotel unit is how to provide the best services with the most cost-effective strategies. The hotel inventory management system application is the right solution for this target, as it helps the hotels to reduce their dependency on the external hospitality services by using their specific software, and, which is more, get more revenue of the room sales.

Besides, that is a perfect method of getting the reports about the hotel functioning, and estimate the costs needed for the certain hotel department.

Furthermore, by analyzing the financial reports, you can get the important data of the processes that need to be optimized, and get the latest updates about the implementation and efficiency of the changes.

#4 Staying Informed of the Room Availability

Being aware of the real situation with the room reservations provided by hotel inventory management software, you can easily define the strategy for the hotel development.

For example, if there is an excess of rooms available during the off-season, it’s a nice option of delivering specific promotions, discounts, or some other great offers for your customers.

This can significantly increase the seasonal ROI, as well as ensure you are getting the most of your hotel management.

Additionally, this will help you minimize the risks of the rooms’ stock-outs and excess stock, so you won’t lose your clients because of the inconveniences caused by the internal system errors, and will always have a stable and high revenue from your hospitality business.

#5 Getting Better Profit from Your Hotel

The profitable business solution for the hospitality industry definitely includes process optimization. Needless to say more, the hotel inventory management software is a perfect option for getting the most from your hotel management, analyze the booking tendency, helps to define the weak points, targets, priorities, and build the best strategy for your hotel development.

All these improvements can not only enhance the consumer experience but also greatly increase the business ROI: the more clients you have, the more cost-effective strategy you follow – the more revenue you will get from your hotel unit.

Challenges of a Hotel Inventory Management System

Nevertheless, there are still lots of pitfalls and challenging tasks that the hotel inventory management software needs to resolve.

That is why, before you start building your hotel inventory management system, you should also be aware of the following challenges in this area:

• Hotel inventory management system implies huge investments of costs, time, and efforts. This is to make sure all the core ingredients of the inventory excellence are utilized in your software. According to Deloitte, these components include the inventory strategy, analytics, process planning, and monitoring, data visibility, and access, business management tools, etc.
• Constantly monitoring and improving the system gaps. Again, the hotel inventory management software as any other digital software needs to be updated and improved on a regular basis. This is caused by security purposes, and also is critical for the processes optimization and improvement, but not really everyone is ready to invest huge sums of money in that project. But we also must admit, those who have already given it a shot, have got much more benefits of the hotel management system software.
• Last but not least, inventory management in the hotel industry also needs to track plenty of different processes for ensuring the overall hotel performance optimization. That is why, the hotel inventory management software usually includes not only one specific area, like staff tasks or booking systems but needs to unify all these into the complex hotel management software. Such a great challenge usually becomes the initial criteria of why most developers reject the projects of creating this type of software.

Conclusion

To sum up, the hotel inventory management software is a must for optimizing the hotel’s internal processes and enhancing the customer experience in this area.

This kind of software for the hospitality units can provide you with better revenue, make your investments more cost-effective, assist in creating the detailed strategy of the processes completing, develop your customer service, and lots of other perfect benefits for the hotel units.

That is why nowadays we can see the increasing demand in hotel inventory management software creation.

Our professional team of Intellectsoft developers has been studying the latest trends in the hospitality industry and is always ready with innovative ideas for custom software development for travel and hospitality.

Are you considering implementing the hotel inventory management system for your business?

Contact our team right now to get professional solutions regarding any type of software for the hospitality industry, and discover how your company can get benefits from it today!

Our support department is 24/7 here to guide you through the software development process and provide you with the initial information about the project details.

The post A Simple Guide to Hotel Inventory Management Systems  appeared first on Intellectsoft Blog.