hospitalityPulse sheds light on the hidden financial impact of room assignment and check-in operations
[Santa Cruz, Calif. – November 7, 2016] – Spending for hotel IT has hit an all-time high in 2016, and experts are predicting that many of the systems that already have high adoption rates are also on schedule for an upgrade in the coming year. While much of the focus lies on new CRM and mobile solutions, it is easy to forget how a perfectly customized hotel stay can be easily spoiled. Be it due to category overbooking or last minute inventory changes, a hotel can quickly find itself unable to assign the best room for each guest.
A new technology that needs to be on hoteliers’ radar – and placed into their 2017 budgets – is one that takes the guesswork out of room assignment. An automated room-allocation solution optimizes the room assignment for every guest – every time – with consistent efficiency. Guests are assured of getting the most possible room features and preferences they requested during booking, while the hotel avoids inventory fragmentation, costly downgrades and unnecessary complimentary upgrades.
“Often, more than half of a hotel’s guests are not checked in to their pre-assigned rooms,” said Pierre Boettner, hospitalityPulse CEO. “This may be due to overbooking situations, room’s housekeeping statuses, or competing last minute guest requests. Apart from the negative impact on repeat business and fidelity from guests who are unsatisfied with the rooms they receive, hotels with non-optimal room allocation face true costs of downgrades and of unnecessary and expensive complimentary upgrades. All of this should draw hoteliers’ attentions to the need for room allocation software and improved optimization in 2017.”
Here are 10 reasons why hoteliers should add Room Assignment software to their 2017 budgets:
- A room-allocation solution saves operating costs. Instead of spending hours manually pre-assigning while trying to figure out how to best balance the house, which upgrades to grant, or what downgrades to swallow, the roomPulse engine provides an optimally balanced inventory in minutes.
- It enables hoteliers to achieve a significantly higher fulfillment rate of room-feature and bed-type requests. That leads to higher guest satisfaction, having a direct impact on review scores and ancillary revenues. The end result is higher ADR and more bookings compared to your competition.
- Room-assignment software enables staff to quickly recognize and consider the most valuable and loyal guests and then assign availability-based complimentary upgrades. That in turn fosters loyalty and creates incremental future repeat business.
- It automatically recognizes guests who book direct vs. third-party channels like OTAs, and it rewards direct bookers with the best rooms to be assigned first. This supports a hotel’s direct sales strategy which ultimately leads to more direct bookings and less commission to be paid to third parties.
- With a system deciding on the most optimal, and balanced room assignments, hoteliers will see fewer large, and instead more and smaller upgrades. This results in less opportunity costs for complimentary upgrades that must be awarded due to overbooked base room categories and more happy guests receiving upgrades.
- An automated room-allocation system dramatically reduces downgrades, and with that reduces the reimbursements hotels typically pay to guests that get downgraded, leading to direct cost savings.
- Front desk agents supported by an automated room allocation system spend less time during check in searching for an optimal room. A more efficient check in reduces guest dissatisfaction, and with that creates better reviews and with that the opportunity to create higher ADR and more bookings.
- Agents spend less time at check in. That means less costs at front desk operations, more time for other tasks or a smile and a friendly, welcoming conversation with the guest, instead of staring at a screen to find a room.
- An optimally balanced house means less fragmented inventory which equates to more rooms to sell or upsell to, which means more revenue per day.
- Rooms optimally assigned means less friction and interruption of housekeeping processes and with that a further reduction in operations cost.
To increase customer satisfaction and secure guest loyalty, hoteliers not only need to cater for a personalized and mobile booking experience, but they need to deliver on the newly created expectations.
“Pairing the positive revenue effects of optimal room assignment with the tremendous efficiencies in operations allows for a quick ROI,” Boettner said. “This area of digitization needs to be moved up the priority list for hotel technology investments in 2017.”
For more information on room-allocation software and the roomPulse solution from hospitalityPulse, the technology leader in automated room assignment solutions, visit www.hospitalitypulse.com.
