Maybe you're about to begin your journey and open a new or refurbished small hotel. Perhaps you're a new tenant of a brewery pub that also has rooms. Here, I'll help you to understand all the ways you can maximise the easiest profit from your accommodation business by using our hotel management software.
In this article I breakdown some of the terms, concepts and processes that might be unfamiliar to you, even if you've previously worked with a different hotel booking system.
Property Management Software for hotels acts as the central hub of an accommodation business, managing pricing, availability, bookings, guest communication and of course, it should also be bale to process credit card payments.
To increase operational efficiency' property management systems also integrate with a choice of point of sale systems (EPOS software), accounting software, keyless door entry for guest rooms and restaurant table booking software. Linking automatically to these is one of the many ways you can streamline operations by reducing manual, repetitive daily tasks where information from one of the systems you are using needs to be manually entered into another.
Interacting with bookers and driving positive reviews on sites like TripAdvisor is a key element of guest management. Having all of the information about a guest's booking on your reservation system, easily available via a user friendly interface is crucial to responding quickly to queries and managing guests checking in or check out.
Role based access means staff only get features and functionality appropriate to their job function and seniority. You may not want reception level staff having the ability to change pricing, view financial reports, export guest's data etc.
The Caterbook Dashboard screen has a summary of the day's arrivals and departures. It's obvious to staff which bookings have any outstanding balance with a simple and visual colour code - booking references in blue are paid, red have yet to be settled. Hotel staff can click into a guest's booking and from there review any balance and charge a previously stored card in a couple of clicks, raise an invoice and mark the guest as checked in or out.
The Arrivals and Departures panels also indicate any bookings where an early check in or late checkout have been added to the booking - a simple but important driver of additional revenue, but something that must not be overlooked. Additionally, the Dashboard indicates any bookings that have had specific extras booked for that day, like flowers in the room on arrival, or a packed lunch for a guest mid-stay.
Custom housekeeping schedules show reception staff which rooms have been cleaned on the dashboard and are ready for check in.
All the day's guest registration forms can be printed, with an online form being completed by guests ahead of arrival from a scheduled email template. The day's departure invoices can be printed in bulk with a couple of clicks, reducing staff workload.
Most importantly, Caterbook is intuitive, quick to learn, and easy to use, even for staff who may be not necessarily be comfortable with other computer systems.
Offering a range of pricing points is achieved by staff creating multiple rate plans, such as Room Only and Bed & Breakfast. Each different rate can have it's own deposit policy (card for security, first night's stay, full booking value etc) and cancellation policy (non refundable, 2 days, 7 days etc.) A rate is set up once, and applies to all rooms that have pricing set under it. Rates can be configured to be publicly available via your website and telephone/walk ins, and / or be specific to particular sectors like Online Travel Agents, Corporate bookers, GDS.
Pricing can be easily entered by staff - updating every Saturday only until the end of the year for example take just a couple of clicks.
Dynamic pricing rules enable your room prices to change based on the number of days between booking and arrival, and the number of remaining room of each room type. For example, if the booking lead time is 7 days and only 3 double rooms remain on any day in that range, increase their price by £20.
Caterbook has the ability to automatically close out your online room inventory after a certain time, on specific days of the week. With this feature you can better manage staff rotas and not have unexpected and unwanted arrivals late into the evening.
You can analyse your business performance with a range of management reports, including Sales, Average Daily Rate, Direct Revenue Ratio, End of Day and our Pace report, which compares your forward bookings at the start of the current month with the same period over the past 2 years. These are important management tools for hotel owners to plan marketing campaigns when occupancy rates are lower than anticipated.
Caterbook comes with a number of useful out-the-box email templates which can easily be edited, or you can create your own from scratch. These templates can be sent manually from within the booking record, or automatically when particular events happen like a new booking is made or cancelled, or a guest is checked in or out, or timed to coincide with the properties earliest check in or last check out times. For example a pre-arrival welcome email with directions and parking could be sent automatically 4 hours before your earliest check-in time.
You can also send links in an email template for credit card payments, either a deposit could be taken with the assurance of the 3D Secure authentication, or a template could be sent at 8pm, allowing the guest to pay their booking balance ahead of departure.
Custom SMS messages are also supported, which are great for in-stay guest communications. A classic use case would be to schedule a text for 30 minutes after the guest has been checked in by staff, advising to book a table in the restaurant.
One of the key features of small hotel booking software is the ability to automate availability management and room rates across all your online travel agencies (OTA's). Whenever a new hotel booking is entered (or for that matter cancelled,) from whatever source, updated room availability is pushed to all connected channels.
Caterbook can link with hundreds of distribution channels, many of which you might not have heard of, but these are used by leisure and business bookers every day. Many independent hotels are limited by their existing hotel management software, and can only work with just a couple of well known online booking channels, and so miss out on valuable opportunities that other accommodation providers in their area are picking up frequently.
Managing reservations from multiple booking channels becomes easy with our channel manager and the chance of double bookings is significantly reduced (the truth is that no booking software can honestly tell you their software would never, ever experience a double booking.)
Usually charge a commission per booking, typically between 10% and 20% of it's value. Examples include Booking.com and Expedia. Some OTA's have unique, non-commission based business models, like Hoo.
Shows listings of a property across different online channels, including the properties' own web booking screen, e.g. Google's free booking links, Trivago.
Sometimes known as wholesalers or bed banks, these sites distribute your availability to other leisure or corporate booking sites often in niche vertical markets. Examples : Hotel Beds, HyperGuest.
Local and regional tourism sites historically didn't have a real-time booking engine, but now the majority do. Online bookings through these sites frequently are for longer duration of stay, and DMO's will often promote their area strongly during shoulder months to increase in-bound tourism. Examples : Destination Plymouth, Visit Lake District.
The GDS is a collection of linked hotel booking systems used by both leisure and business travel agents. Bookings tend to be high value, for example 4 delegates at a conference, having hotel rooms booked for 2 nights.
Any hotel reservation made via a channel manager will usually come at some cost to the property, whether that's a booking commission or an annual subscription. Online reservations taken via your own website in contrast are commission-free with Caterbook.
Think about it like this. If your profit margin on a 1 night booking is 50%, and you're paying 20% in commission, that's actually 40% of your profit. So making the most of online booking software to drive more direct bookings really does make sense.
Many properties these days, particularly tenanted pubs with rooms, are relying solely on Facebook for their online presence and this is a big, big mistake. You can only get direct online bookings via a website booking engine, and Facebook can no longer embed those.
Small hotels and pubs can drive more direct bookings, reducing their commission payments and increasing profits by encouraging repeat bookings with promotional codes. These are an integral part of Caterbook, and allow properties not just to give a discount on bookings, but can provide giveaways like a free bottle of fizz in the room - far cheaper (and more memorable for the guest experience) than a 10% discount on a 3 night stay.
A payment gateway works in conjunction with a Merchant ID (MID) from your bank. The payment gateway is responsible for authorising (or declining) a card transaction, and the MID arranges for the transfer of funds from the cardholder to the merchant.
Our payment gateway "Caterpay" is a part of the online booking software when guests are making direct bookings on your website. It can charge a deposit at the point of booking, or simply verify the card "for security" in the event of a no-show.
Additionally, the virtual terminal pops up as a card capture screen to charge or verify when hotel managers and staff are manually entering bookings in Caterbook.
A really important point of difference over using a hand-held terminal for processing cards is that once a card has been charged, it can be rebilled for up to a year after the original transaction, and refunded up to 6 months later. As payment processing goes, this is far more convenient for hotel businesses and guests alike.
It's worth mentioning again that our email templates can contain a number of different types of link, allowing a guest to verify their card, make a deposit payment for a pre-determined amount, and pay the full booking balance.
In striving for efficient small hotel operations, having to log in to an OTA's extranet to get card details, to then enter into a hand held terminal is a real drag. It's time consuming and prone to error, and also, difficult to reconcile.
With Caterbook, OTA bookings are imported complete with their securely 'tokenised' card details. When you want to charge or verify that card, it's literally a few clicks from within the booking record, and seconds later you'll get an authorisation code or a declined response.
Unlike a manual, terminal transaction, it's immediately obvious that a payment has been taken, because the outstanding balance of the booking is reduced by the value of the payment.
If you are charging a deposit or verifying that card in advance of arrival, for Booking.com reservations we also have the ability to mark a card as invalid as part of the payment process, and report that straight back to Booking.com without having to manually do this in the extranet. The guest then has up to 24 hours to provide a new card.
Some of the OTA's will take payment from the guest at the point of booking, and provide the hotel with a pre-paid, "Virtual Card" for the booking balance, sometimes minus their own commission. These are usually active from the day of arrival, but sometimes a non-refundable OTA booking might be able to be charged on the day of booking.
Caterpay is able to process these Virtual Cards, in exactly the same way as a guest's own card although there is no need to verify these, the OTA's are good for the money.
Caterbook has recently introduced some optional automation routines for cards from OTA's that small hotels can use to even further reduce manual workloads;
All bookings with guest cards will be immediately verified on booking, with an option to automatically report a declined card as invalid if the reservation came from Booking.com...
Unless a rateplan for that booking has a deposit rule (first night's stay, full booking value etc), in which case it will not be verified, but charged the relevant deposit amount.
All Virtual Cards can be automatically charged on the day they become active.
Linking Caterbook with other software solutions like your EPOS system, and posting F&B items automatically from the restaurant or bar to the room for settlement on check out is a great time saver for staff and is convenient for your guests. Importantly, it also means that items don't get missed off a guest's bill, which could be a costly mistake (especially if you don't have a stored card in the software you are using to manage reservations.)
If you are looking for small hotel management software, Caterbook is a true, all in one solution, packed full of features that can make a big difference to your operational efficiency. It's not just about our software though. The Caterbook brand has been well known in the hotel industry for over 20 years, our reputation for product support and advice on best practice is reflected in our excellent review ratings on the software comparison website Capterra.
So why not find out for yourself, and book a demo with one of our knowledgeable and friendly staff. We are happy to be compared against any other software solutions for our features, ease of use and support.