At present, the importance of customer experience has already exceeded the pricing and product quality: people pay way more attention to the client service and support, rather than the product or service itself.
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!
