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The hospitality industry continues to face challenges with accommodation providers particularly struggling due to staffing shortages.
Property managers and owners find themselves time poor as a result, and the thought of changing their hotel booking system seems an impossible challenge.
Consequently many small hotels in the UK with incomes from a mix of bar, restaurant and room bookings, are busy driving turnover on the F&B side, meaning the easiest profit - from accommodation bookings loses their focus.
We have one simple question for property managers;
With rising costs for ingredients, stock, fuel and staff, the profit margins for every £100 of F&B takings are growing smaller by the day - and those margins are hard earned. By contrast, the cost of delivering a room for the night has not seen comparable increases in the costs to deliver.
In short, accommodation and particularly direct bookings, provide more profit per £100 than food and beverage, but so many properties are still not maximising this value revenue source.
Caterbook is a one stop solution that can make the reservation process streamlined and easy, for both your guests and your staff.
Our web based hotel software shows up to the minute availability for staff to manage both walk in customers, and telephone booking enquiries. Our online booking software sits on your existing website and can take bookings without needing a member of staff, and can even take a deposit payment at the point of booking using our payment gateway. The built in channel manager links to online booking portals, ensuring that all your rooms are available to be booked everywhere you choose, with little manual management.
For hotels working with online travel agents and the GDS, it's possible to apply a simple uplift to your existing public rates to cover some of the booking fees you are charged by these providers. For savvy guests who compare online reservations from different sources it is clear your hotel rooms are cheaper when they book direct.
Channel management means you don't have to think about manually closing out availability and pricing on the booking portals. If your hotel rooms are full in Caterbook, you're full everywhere.
Whether reservations are received via the channel manager, as online bookings from your own website or manually entered into the hotel reservation system Caterbook can automatically send out customised confirmation, and pre and post-stay emails and SMS messages from templates, ensuring a consistent guest experience.
The online booking engine can accept payments or take cards for security at the point of booking. Drive more direct bookings with promotional codes, where you can include giveaways like a free bottle of prosecco rather than just a pricing discount on the stay. Online reservations are commission free with Caterbook.
Batch create, print or email the day's departure invoices in a couple of clicks.
Caterbook supports dynamic pricing, where rates are adjusted based on the booking lead time and rooms remaining. Changes are even pushed to the web booking engine and channel management system.
Post food and drink from your hotel EPOS software to the room for settlement on checkout.
We often see independent hotels who just have a facebook page and no website, and many of those who do have a website have no online booking system in place. Even worse, is a website with a link to one of their online travel agents. It's easy to accept online bookings with Caterbook, and importantly these are commission free and included with our reservation system.
As a hospitality tech company we help businesses like yours to become more efficient every day. Caterbook is a complete software system, giving you tools to work in new ways for the modern age. If your existing hotel booking software is complicated and staff uncomfortable with it, it can lead to mistakes and results in a poorer guest experience, negative reviews and reduces profits.
If you think you can't afford Caterbook, think again! If you get one additional booking per month through using our reservation system then it has offset it's financial cost significantly.
We regularly speak with properties without any online booking systems in place, who don't make the connection that their low occupancy is linked to a very limited online presence. Having a facebook page does not facilitate online bookings in the way that a true hotel commerce platform like Caterbook can.
Having limited availability on your channel manager through manual updating, rather than working in real time reduces you chances of ever achieving full occupancy. Having no online booking options on your website where guests can make direct bookings means you are giving business away, either to your competitors or giving a slice of your profits to the OTA's.
To find out what's different about our hotel booking software click below to arrange your in-person demonstration of Caterbook via Zoom. There's no pre-recorded video or script, we'll personalise your demo to show how switching to Caterbook can resolve pain points with your existing booking system.
