The traveller’s increasing reliance on online reviews to help them make their booking decision has seen a growth in products to help operators use the available data to best effect.
GuestRevu helps serviced apartments optimise their guest experience through key critical insights – gained from guest feedback and online reviews – that fuel better decisions, build stronger relationships with with both guests as well as corporate clients, and drive direct bookings.
Using GuestRevu’s guest feedback and reputation management solutions enables serviced apartments to gain a deeper, guest-focused understanding of their operational strengths and weaknesses, monitor and manage their online reputation and reviews and improve guest satisfaction to attract corporate clients, drive more bookings and, ultimately, increase revenue. Specialised group accounts make management across multiple apartment blocks a unified experience.
GuestRevu is cloud based and has key partnerships with property PMS systems around the world. It is also one of only three TripAdvisor Platinum Review Collection Partners in the world and says its clients consistently experience an improved TripAdvisor ranking.
GuestRevu’s Francine Heywood says: “The serviced apartment sector continues to gather momentum and online review sites and travel agents (OTAs) are playing an increasingly important role in the decision making process of both corporate clients and independent travellers. With new players, such as AirBnB, coming into the market and hotels looking to expand their offerings, its becoming increasingly more important for serviced apartments to ensure they not only meet, but exceed, the expectations of their guests. GuestRevu believes that this can only be done by collecting both direct and indirect feedback from guests as this feedback plays an important role in determining ROI as well as providing business-critical insights that will define you above your competitors in the sea of accommodation choices.”
The use of smart phones and tablets in the hospitality sector has created a new platform for operators to interact with their clients in a variety of ways. Julie Grieve of Information Apps says her company is launching a new system to allow property owners and operators to change the way they communicate with their guests.
“Our clever CMS, CRITON allows you to input all the information your guest will need pre arrival and during their stay. It then condenses the information into a branded app (IOS and Android). Along with standard concierge functions, it has some nifty widgets to improve the arrival process for your guest, whilst reducing the time your staff need to spend on guest queries. Our beta test is now live and we are confident that our product will improve the way serviced apartment and short term accommodation users consume the information they need to enjoy their stay.,” says Grieve.
She adds: “The hospitality industry is renowned for systems that don’t speak to each other. A classic example being if you book via an OTA, they send you a confirmation email and then the property owner also sends you a confirmation which will look different and include different information from the original booking. A recent statistic from Google is that by 2020 75 per cent of all data will be in video. The majority of operators want to ensure that their guests have all the information that they need at their fingertips and we know that the way Millennials consume information and interact is entirely different to the current demographic. With a background of trust reviews driving consumer booking behaviour, introducing technology which improves the guest experience at all touchpoints will become crucial to continued success. It could argued that this is perhaps even more so within the short term accommodation market because our guests require more operational information than a standard hotel room guest to enjoy their stay. Technology can help provide the information in a format which suits the consumer and by improving the user information protect the asset as well as improving the user experience.”
Revenue management is another facet of operations which has been transformed by technology. IDeaS Revenue Solutions offers pricing and revenue software, services and consulting for business of all types and sizes in the global hospitality and travel industries. Founded in 1989, IDeaS has been called on by industries as far-ranging as parking, airlines, transportation and event ticketing.
“We transform the right data into clear and actionable insight, so that our clients can price, forecast and report with speed and confidence, improving business performance. Our solutions drive thousands of pricing decisions every second for hospitality businesses across the world,” says the company.
Ksenia Ruffell of IdeaS says: “Recent discussions have been swirling around the revenue management industry and its swift evolution over the past few years, moving steadily past merely filling as many rooms as possible to holistically approaching the quest for achieving total revenue performance. However, approaches and technologies have not been the only revenue management components swept up in these influential winds of change. The lives of hotel revenue managers have also experienced drastic changes in not only their job responsibilities, but in their overall work efficiencies, insights and performance.”
“The average hotel revenue manager touches a diverse range of systems within their role: reputation management, channel management, rate shopping, revenue management, property management and central reservations systems. And as advancements in these system technologies have improved how hotels are driving better revenue, they have also freed revenue managers from the tactical handcuffs once restraining their productivity. It is clear to see that revenue managers working without the benefit of an automated systems commonly find themselves handcuffed to manual data entry processes with higher risks of human error, meetings spent focused less on strategy and more on basic logistics, and relying on limited data insights to make pricing and strategy decisions. The benefits that today’s revenue management technology brings to the life of the modern day revenue manager reaches well beyond a scope limited to the hotel work day. Recent evolutions in technology have positively improved on-the-job system learning frustrations and job demands that previously made a healthy work-life balance seem downright impossible at times. And as the industry continues its discussion on evolving revenue management approaches and technologies, let’s not forget to mention the monumental evolution of revenue management’s biggest champion: the life of the revenue manager.”
Avvio is a company on a mission to enable operators to reduce their cost per sale by increasing direct bookings. The company’s Frans Diels says: “Avvio is Europe’s most advanced booking platform. Our products and services are designed to cater to the ever-evolving needs of leading serviced apartments across Ireland, the UK and North America. Our booking platform is supported by a suite of services – including digital marketing for serviced apartments, responsive website design, analytic insights and revenue management consultancy – to offer an all-in-one, fully-supported solution.”
“Software and technology are becoming more and more important for serviced apartments on many levels – from getting your customer to book to getting them to come back. Technology isn’t always about big, scary changes. For example at Avvio we recently changed the maximum length of stay in our booking platform from 90 days to 180 days, a small change but one that will see your customers book longer stays without having to pick up the phone or worse, without having to look elsewhere. Today’s technology will help you save time and money so that you can focus on running a successful business instead,” adds Diels.
Guestline is a leading UK supplier of cloud based software solutions to the hotel and serviced apartment markets. The platform it provides is an integrated solution made up of three core modules; reservations, distribution and a WebSuite all brought together in one PCI compliant “wrapper”.
This offering is “focused and capturing all customer data, whilst managing the operational needs of the business; invoicing, marketing,maximising revenue, and reducing the operational costs”.
Guestline’s Rupert Gutteridge says: “The challenge that the industry faces today is the constantly changing face of the serviced apartment and long stay sector. The market is forever evolving and changing from corporate housing to “community living” to short stay lets, to private residential. The challenge to meet the changing market is compounded by the need to grow internationally and domestically in an effort to drive up revenue and reduce costs relative to scale.
“Guestline has helped its clients meet these challenges with the implementation of a cloud based solution. The solution meets the varying needs of the different areas of business, be that the complex invoicing and service delivery for the long stay guest or the need to sell inventory to short stay business at short notice through a variety of channels. Guestline client’s have stated that the ability to automate so many of these complex procedures and the systems intelligence to maximise the revenue opportunity has been a key benefit,” he adds.Avvio is a company on a mission to enable operators to reduce their cost per sale by increasing direct bookings. The company’s Frans Diels says: “Avvio is Europe’s most advanced booking platform. Our (Their) products and services are designed to cater to the ever-evolving needs of leading serviced apartments across Ireland, the UK and North America. Our (Their) booking platform is supported by a suite of services – including digital marketing for serviced apartments, responsive website design, analytic insights and revenue management consultancy – to offer an all-in-one, fully-supported solution.
Maxxton is a leading provider of ERP software for the accommodation rental industry: holiday rentals, serviced apartments, extended stay, aparthotels and holiday parks. It delivers tailored systems and web services to its clients across Europe and the US.
The company says its “unique one database approach enables multi-property organisations to efficiently improve processes and maximise revenue, thanks to implementation and tailored delivery of modules such as central reservations, administration and accounting, channel management, property management, business intelligence, customer relationship management and reporting.”
Maxxton’s Séverine Obertelli says: “Serviced apartments have been thriving, filling an important gap in the corporate and relocation market. However even greater growth and revenue opportunities are available in the leisure sector. Technology plays the most important part into enabling or hindering these opportunities. Most legacy systems now deliver decent property management features – however to fully capitalise on the new market opportunities, at Maxxton we believe that the key aspects for choosing a successful software are the following: using a system able to handle different length of stays and pricing structures, hence a system for serviced apartments, not hotels; control of your data and integrated CRM for a killer marketing strategy; high connectivity with API technology and flexibility of software configuration; and seamless administration and dynamic pricing for maximizing your revenue. When some companies stop innovating, it can literally kill them, just make sure that yor technology is ready for tomorrow’s market. Being ready for today is not enough anymore.”
Contacts:
Avvio
Guestline
GuestRevu
IdeaS
Information Apps
Maxxton
