Getting the Most Out Of Guest Services
Posted on 14. Nov, 2009 by Sascha Voevodin in Blog
Why do hospitality sites install guest services like High Speed Internet Access (HSIA), Video on Demand (VoD), Mini-bars, etc. into their properties? Mainly, it is to attract a certain clientèle and (hopefully) create a new revenue stream. But how can they get the most out of their guest services?
The answer: Interfacing. Pretty much all sites these days have a Property Management System (PMS) to handle their reservations and guest accounts. So why not interface their revenue generating guest services with their PMS?
If a guest is checking out and their staff has to print out their accommodation bill from the PMS, then a phone bill from the telephone system, then an Internet bill, and so on, it can get pretty confusing – not to mention all the time and paper wasted. With every additional task the reception staff have to perform, the potential for lost revenue increases when one of the bills is overlooked (especially at 10am when the reception desk is ten deep with guests in a hurry to check-out).
Irrespective of the size of the property, it is now possible to interface all your guest services with your PMS to consolidate all revenue streams into one simple bill. Easy for your staff; easy for the guest; and easy for the manager! No more wasted time or paper and more importantly: no more lost revenue through human errors.
One of the other benefits to interfacing their guest services with the PMS is greater control and automation of tedious and time consuming tasks. For example, when a guest checks in or out, many PMS can trigger events in the guest service systems: enabling/disabling phones (with the guest names displayed); creating/deleting HSIA accounts; enabling/disabling certain VoD channels; etc.
Many people are surprised at what guest services can now be interfaced with a PMS. As technology advances, engineers are finding all kinds of ways to make our lives easier. Take the humble mini-bar for example. For a long time, hospitality sites have seen the mini-bar as a constant source of lost revenue: staff fail to ask and guests fail to declare… Yet paying staff to spend a few hours interrupting guests to check and restock their mini-bar is seldom cost effective and does not do any favors for the sites’ goodwill with the guests. Unfortunately, it is usually not until the housekeeper gets there to find a few empty bottles and candy bar wrappers that the site realize and have to try and recoup the costs from a guest that’s long gone.
So, what’s the solution to this ongoing problem? Interface the mini-bar to the PMS! Some engineers (probably sitting around a hotel room emptying the contents of a mini-bar one night), have come up with a clever mini-bar that is full of sensors to detect the removal or replacement of any items. It can then send that information to the PMS to charge the guest and also communicate with an inventory control program that can order replacement stock when they reach a predetermined level.
There are many ways that interfacing guest services makes running a hospitality site easier and can increase their return on investment – contact us to investigate your options today!
