One supplier for your tech platform- risky move or strategic magic?
The relationship between hospitality and technology is a balancing act: Technology can add value, convenience and personalisation to a guest’s stay but whether you are an independent hotelier or part of a larger hotel group, no hotelier wants to buy 10 different hotel technology systems.
You need to spend your money wisely and invest only in those technologies that will add worth to your business and, importantly, grow your profits. If one supplier could accommodate all your technology requirements, is putting your trust in them a risk or a strategic move that could revolutionise the future of your business?
Hotels are extremely complex businesses to run operationally with lots of moving parts to manage i.e. rates, channels, bookings, guest data, payments, events etc. To do this, hotels need software that has been designed for all areas of hotel operations in order to automate operational processes, centralise tasks and assist staff / management to gather business intelligence and analyse vital information in real time. To achieve this successfully, a hotel Property Management System (PMS) should effectively be the backbone of your property, controlling and automating any number of hotel operations from front of house, payments, housekeeping, conference and banqueting, Epos and revenue management etc., whilst seamlessly integrating with third party systems (from channel managers, OTAs and IBEs to check-in kiosks, table reservation and door locking interfaces).
Guestline, who are a global leader in hotel cloud property management systems, distribution and digital marketing technologies and have a reputation for offering award-winning solutions to hotels, are making waves across Benelux since market entry, providing its award-winning platform, Guestline PMS, to a number of well-known properties including numerous Best Western hotels, Kasteel Engelenburg, IHMG hotel group, Hotel Beaumont, The Dutch and many more.
Robert Vogt, Director of Business Development with Guestline, Benelux region, talks about the changing technology trends across Benelux that are creating strategic magic within hospitality:
“Hoteliers in The Netherlands are looking for a mature, future proof cloud-based PMS that is able to replace their legacy server PMS with the right set of modules and functionality. At Guestline, our open platform arms hoteliers with the flexibility they need to find the best solutions to optimise every aspect of their business, giving them the freedom to tailor a best-in-breed, technology solution, that allows them to stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace.”
Guestline PMS is a multi-functional system and is built on an open structure so that it can easily integrate with other best-of-breed 3rd party solutions via Application Programming Interfaces (API’s), helping hoteliers to enhance their functionality. With an API integration, this enables Guestline to add value to the system’s primary offerings, which is a huge win for hoteliers. By working with Guestline’s API, which other developers can readily connect to, hotels can incorporate other systems without limitations to the expansion of their platform. And, this implication for hotels is enormous. Instead of purchasing a huge stack of disparate systems, that all work independently, hotels can now select the perfect combination of software functionality that complements the property’s specific needs, is fully integrated and provides more value for money.
Robert continues; “From a hotelier perspective, a cloud-based PMS such as Guestline PMS, offers a more agile, flexible and cost-effective solution that is also adaptable to existing services and tools that are perhaps already in place at the property. Its benefits vary in significance depending on the hotel characteristics: the simplicity, remote access and affordability are key advantages for the small hotelier, whereas the ease of multi-site management, rapidity of deployment and scalability are a major advantage for larger hotel chains. Plus, as one supplier with a fully integrated platform we provide one account manager, one project manager and implementation team and one support number needed to ensure our continued support system approach is second to none.”
For further information on working with us across the Benelux region, please contact Robert Vogt here.