Why Your Hotel Needs PMS Integration With Channel Managers and Booking Engines?
Why Your Hotel Needs PMS Integration With Channel Managers and Booking Engines?
PMS integration is the capability of a property management system to connect with existing hotel software and vice versa. PMS integrations enable other hotel systems such as a channel manager, booking engine, or payment gateway to operate seamlessly with the PMS.
Why is integration capability important for Hotel PMS software?
Connecting your property management system with other software is important because your PMS is the lifeblood of your hotel.
The hotel PMS interface controls, automates, and accelerates a huge range of operational procedures. Its power is magnified when you integrate it with other solutions to create an entirely cloud-based hub to run your business.
1. PMS integrations simplify hotel reservations
Property management system integration is an essential tool for hotels who want to stay competitive in the massive digital marketplace. Hotel bookers now have access to vast amounts of information through search engines, comparison websites, and online travel agencies (OTAs like Booking.com, Expedia, and Airbnb).
Accommodation providers list their room inventory and rates on as many OTAs as possible to increase their chances of attracting potential guests.
2. PMS integrations streamline hotel operations
Hotel PMS integration solutions enable the convergence of essential departments such as sales, front desk management, payment processing, and revenue management.
With seamless integration, sales teams can accurately forecast demand based on real-time occupancy data, while front desk staff can efficiently manage check-ins and check-outs without manual data entry errors.
Payment processing becomes more secure with integrated solutions, reducing the risk of fraud. Revenue management benefits from access to comprehensive data on room rates, allowing for dynamic pricing strategies to maximise revenue.
The ability for your PMS to share relevant information with other internal systems, including data from external channels, doesn’t just eliminate any need for time-consuming manual work on your behalf, but also empowers you to make better business decisions, leading to increased revenue.
Benefits of PMS full integration vs direct connection
You may have seen some PMS software with direct connections to a few OTAs, but they sometimes charge a set-up fee per OTA and connectivity quality may be poor, inevitably leading to overbookings. Particularly in the US, hoteliers can also miss out on key channels that drive a lot of bookings like Airbnb and Hopper.
Let’s look at four major benefits of opting for a full integration between your PMS and a channel manager:
1. Automatically list your rooms on booking channels at the same time
Integrating your PMS with a channel manager updates your rates and availability in real-time across every single channel you list your rooms on. This means that there’s really no restriction on how many and what kind of channels you want to integrate with in order to sell your inventory.
A ‘direct connect’ PMS limits your hotel to a few online travel agencies, unlike a full integration that allows you to connect with not just multiple OTAs, but also valuable channels such as GDS and hotel metasearch like Google Hotels, Tripadvisor, and Trivago.
Automation of inventory and rate distribution across different channels makes the process super quick, accurate, and extremely efficient, while expanding your reach and increasing your revenue.
2. Attract more guests and get ready to be fully booked
Your PMS integration with a channel manager will boost the visibility of your hotel brand. With the ability to connect more channels, you can significantly enlarge the audience and geographies you can capture, and help target the specific guests you want, resulting in more bookings and higher occupancy.
For example, SiteMinder’s channel manager integrates with over 450 OTAs around the world, and you can connect to as many as you want. This puts your property on the global map, and a full integration with your PMS makes sure you can effectively manage all these reservations.
3. Achieve better guest experience by reducing overbookings
Double bookings and overbookings are a big challenge for hoteliers who run their property manually. It’s simply too hard to manage channels and reservations in a timely manner, especially when you have to log into various extranets.
With a full PMS integration, the channel manager and PMS will seamlessly work together to process and update reservations, so you don’t have to log in to each OTA extranet and risk making mistakes. The same applies to cancellations, so any cancelled reservation will be bookable again within a few minutes.
PMS with direct connections tends to not have the same connectivity strength as channel managers because they are primarily meant for property management, not specifically designed for channel management. This can cause unwanted double bookings and eventually, disgruntled guests that negatively affect brand reputation.
A full integration of PMS with a channel manager makes these headaches a thing of the past. Because the stable communication between the systems happens in seconds, hoteliers can rely on the PMS connection, empowering them to improve customer satisfaction and guest loyalty.
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