Most hoteliers know that a good property management system (PMS) costs money. But with the right PMS selection, it’s possible to earn more money than you spent without significantly increasing your revenue or your average daily room rate. A hotel PMS not only allows you to automate the day-to-day operations of your property, but it also allows you to create processes that will account for lost revenue and identify gaps in your annual income. Here are four ways that you can benefit from a PMS that you probably didn’t even realize.

Reservation Consolidations:

Something is bound to be duplicated when you’re running two different extranet sites, a direct booking engine, taking email and phone reservations. But when you use a PMS to consolidate your channels, your duplication is greatly reduced. Human error is essentially non-existent, and guests and staff are happy. In fact, when your systems are out of sync for whatever reason, your property is open for the wrong kind of business; overbookings! These overbookings cost you in the long run because not only do you lose on the immediate revenue, you also lose on potential future revenue because your guests lost confidence in staying with you.

Even though you may have done the right thing and paid for the overbooked guest’s alternative accommodation, the damage has been done. Their negative feedback could seriously impact their review of your property, trickling down to other potential guests as well. On the flip side, if a guest doesn’t show up, and your staff forgets (or gets too busy) to release the room manually, you’ve also lost the revenue. Wouldn’t it be nice to go directly to the PMS and send the availability out to all channels?

Commission Reporting:

Calculating commissions for OTAs and Travel Agents can be tedious and nerve-racking. After all, you can never be sure how many reservations came through these mediums with a manual system. Without real-time, automated figures, you could end up paying more in commissions than you ought to for more reservations than were booked. A modern PMS system will have commission reports that provide you with all the information needed to pay Travel Agents and OTAs accurately. The nice thing about a PMS system is that if the commission report shows you owe less than the invoiced amount, you can easily find the discrepancy and make any necessary adjustments.

Cash Balancing Per Shift:

A hotel PMS helps a hotelier keep track of their investment by managing your cash drawers and keeping your property accountable for both incoming and outgoing cash. Did you know that most properties lose an average of $1,000 per year due to cash handling mistakes, and most hoteliers are completely unaware? Hotel PMS software allows you to see all transactions that originate in cash. They look at totals at the end of every shift and with the push of a few buttons, they can identify any discrepancies. This is a must-have for hoteliers that like to keep their books on the up and up.

Adjustment Logs:

To err is human; or at least that’s what the adage says. Well, it’s true! A good PMS allows a hotel owner to see what adjustments are being made throughout the day. An owner can see whether those adjustments are legitimate or not and who was responsible for making them. Adjustment reports help hoteliers catch accounting errors such as when a reservation agent changes a reservation and accidentally changes the rate to the wrong price too. By using adjustment reports, hoteliers can keep track of every dollar the property should have collected and identify training needs among their staff.

Closing Up:

A reliable PMS system will not only assist you in the daily operation of your property, it could also save you a significant amount of revenue loss. However, hotel PMS systems shouldn’t be evaluated only on the topics discussed in this article. A PMS should be a good fit for your property regarding functionality, scalability, and user-friendliness. If you’re in the market for a reliable and robust hotel PMS system capable of running your property more efficiently, contact our Sales Team to schedule a demo today. 

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InnQuest Software is a leading technology provider for the hospitality industry. For over 25 years, innQuest has combined hotelier experience with innovative technology to deliver an all-in-one solution that empowers hotels to attract guests, drive customer loyalty, and increase profits. Our flagship property management software, roomMaster, helps manage over 5,500 properties across 100 countries. InnQuest develops scalable solutions ranging from a Hotel PMS, Cloud PMS, Channel Manager, Hotel CRM and helps properties enable guests to Book Direct. We believe that everyone deserves a great guest experience, whether they’re staying at a small B&B, a thousand-room resort, or anywhere in between.

Call us today at 1.813.288.4900, or email us at sales@innquest.com. We will be happy to walk you through innQuest’s solutions.