Category Archives: Useful Tips

Five Ways to Improve the Resident Experience

When you, as an apartment owner or administrator, set up a resident experience platform wherein there are the highly desired features, then that will be handy for the residents. In our time, many apartment managers will be keen and willing to take all possible steps that will make their customers pleased. This age is the age of competition, and one can see the fierceness of the same in all matters of human interest and actions. It is here the pragmatic utility of a resident experience platform pops up. However, one must take care while installing such a platform within their organizational setup. For this, they can seek the professional guidance of a specialized IT company that has hands-on experience in the creation of bespoke software. Some of these inbuilt features make the resident experience platform highly popular. The list of such handy features includes easy event and experience booking, a neighborhood perks program, customized check-in checklists that will facilitate easy onboarding, on-demand personal concierge services, white-labeled services, and a building-branded resident app. Apart from these, there will be monitored social feed and resident marketplace.

• The lease agreement must be in sync with the prevailing laws of the country. You must remember that rules and regulations about rental or lease agreements vary from state to state. Hence, you must use the right one. This point is vital, and you must make sure that you are using the correct format. Your potential resident will appreciate this preciseness and professionalism.

• You must make sure that the residents get a cordial welcome on arrival. They must have all the needed support from your side for leading a peaceful life within the apartment. That said, practically, the support all residents will need includes both physical and moral. In brief, the residents must get an appreciable and perfect move-in experience.

• The residents must have all the facilities that will make their life pleasant. Here comes the practical necessity of an official orientation program. Such a program will make the residents aware of the overall facilities and amenities that they can expect from the apartment management. Forming a residents group is a must, and this will take away the isolated feelings of the residents. Most of the residents will be staying away from their near and dears, and when there is such a resident group, they will feel united. Remember, nobody will love to have an isolated life far away from their social settings. It will be wise for the management to conduct monthly get-togethers or outings. This arrangement will foster a typical unity among the different members of the apartment community. For sure, all residents will love such a move.

• There must be a provision to update the residents regarding the varied details related to the community. Such an initiative from the management’s side will make the residents feel safe. They will get a feeling that they are within a safe community.

• The move-in and move-out processes must be customer-friendly, and the residents must feel at home. There must not be any undue delay in solving their problems. There can be so many problems, and it’s natural. However, the management must make sure to solve them on the dot. There must be minimum paperwork. Besides, there must not be any delay in solving the problems. The management must make it a point to solve them promptly. Taking feedback from the customer is a good gesture. You will be able to comprehend the errors or the slip-ups and can rectify them. So, you will be able to serve the next customer in a much better way.

Above all, it’s the procedure that you follow that will decide the residence experience. In our time, the best bet to provide a top residence experience is to use a properly coded and tailored resident experience platform. This arrangement will make the process simple and highly effective. When you use a bespoke resident experience platform, there will be provisions that will take away the burden of the various tasks, which otherwise, the residents will have to do.

Effective Ways to Save Money on Hotel Booking

A hotel booking system has become a crucial, indispensable business tool for most hotels in present times. Since it is accessible at all hours, it offers more convenience for hotels to receive bookings and guests to make reservations. Aside from that, the system can enable the hotels to save money on their bookings, which is a crucial factor in increasing their profit margins.

Effective ways to save money on hotel booking

The first step in saving money on hotel booking is to install the hotel booking system. There will be an initial setup cost, and if the hotel decides to upgrade the system at a later date or add more features, there may be an additional charge. Apart from that, the hotel does not incur any regular expenses in running and using the system. It can save money on reservations in the following ways:

The system serves as a marketing brochure

Hotels have to set aside a specific budget for marketing purposes, but they can reduce this to an extent by using their hotel booking system as a marketing brochure. Prospective guests can use the booking system to preview the interior and exterior areas of the hotel. They can view photographs and videos of the hotel lobby, guest rooms, dining area, restaurant, conference rooms, recreation areas, and gardens. They can find out about the cuisine the hotel serves and the amenities it may offer, such as spa and beauty care, and the luxury item shops it has on its premises. The imagery and the available amenities can affect the guests’ decision to book their rooms at the hotel.

By using the system as a marketing brochure, the hotel can build its brand without expending additional expenses on the marketing front. Additionally, it can build brand loyalty with it by increasing customer satisfaction. Guests, who could book their rooms quickly and easily through the system and enjoyed their stay at the hotel, are likely to leave favorable hotel reviews and recommend the hotel to their families, friends, and acquaintances. The hotel can benefit from such word-of-mouth marketing without paying for it.

The system allows for direct booking

With a hotel booking system, prospective guests can book their hotel rooms directly. They can make their room selection, provide personal details, input how long they intend to stay at the hotel, and make their payment for reserving the room. The whole process is quick and easy. And if the guests decide to make changes, such as upgrading to a more luxurious room or extending the duration of their stay, they can do that without any issue.

By enabling guests to make direct bookings through its hotel booking system, the hotel does not need to depend on online travel agencies to get reservations for it. Of course, it may decide to also partner with the online travel agencies and give them access to its system, but it is no longer essential. Some hotels may forgo working with online travel agencies altogether.

If they do that, they can save on the commission that these agencies charge. Since some agencies charge up to 30% commission for every reservation that comes through them, it can add up to a substantial amount. Saving on these commission payments can increase the hotel’s profits.

The system gathers essential guest data

The prospective guests input their details into the hotel booking system, and this information then gets integrated into the hotel’s property management system. Since they have this guest data at hand, the hotel does not need to assign a team to undertake the independent market search, and that will save their money. The hotel management staff can review the available guest data and use it to create effective marketing strategies and marketing campaigns.

They can send guests regular newsletters and provide them with information about credit card points, perks, and rewards, hotel coupons, hotel loyalty programs, off-season deals, package deals, and more. They can also use the hotel guest data to stay informed about the preferences of returning guests and improve their hospitality experience by providing them with what they like. With these simple steps, the hotel can increase its room bookings and thereby earn greater profits in the long term.

How Hotel Booking System Makes Things Run Smoother for Hotels?

Online bookings comprise almost 63% of the travel and tourism segment’s revenue every year. A good Hotel Payment System will let you efficiently manage online reservations. Automating reservation processes with a reliable hotel booking system reduces the risk of manual errors and losses in business.

Furthermore, having a streamlined booking system in place helps hoteliers provide a more intuitive booking experience to guests.

As technology continues its rapid advance across all industries around the world, hospitality is really beginning to see the benefits. Hotel management software has come a long way in helping hoteliers improve the way their business operates, and there is little doubt as to its transformative impact. Here are a few advantages of implementing a modern hotel management system.

Saves Big Time on Administrative Tasks

The right Hotel Payment System will significantly reduce the time you spend on manual administrative tasks. The software does the majority of the work and lets you divert your time to more crucial tasks, such as serving your guests. The software will take care of every department at your property including front of the house, revenue management, housekeeping, and others. If you pick the right solution, you can make significant time savings across almost every area of your business, thereby boosting your staff’s productivity and satisfaction.

Develop Strong Relationships with Your Guests and Increasing Online Visibility

A more streamlined check-in and check-out experience will enhance your guest happiness. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg anything from improved communication and other services will also boost guest loyalty. Choosing the best software will likely mean an increased retention level in both guests and staff.

The right software is a crucial factor to develop your online presence. You can integrate guest-facing software like hotel booking engines, chatbots, and a guest portal with your website design, enabling you to instantly accept online reservations and make guests feel confident in their choice to book directly with you. Google values and assesses the user experience on websites, and those that offer a better user journey and interface will rank higher on Google searches and other search engines.

Implementing an Effective Revenue Management System

Most Hotel Payment System includes pricing tools and other features to optimize revenue. Gone are the days of having just a peak season price and a low season price if you’re not setting prices in a more strategic manner, you’re losing out on bookings and not making the most of the guests that do a book. You should be able to create and customize product rates, rate dependencies, and special offers and rules such as package rates.

Managing Distribution Functions and Increase in Bookings

A modern hospitality booking system should be able to easily connect to a channel manager so you can advertise across many channels and easily promote your business across the industry’s OTAs and third-party booking services. It provides real-time information that will help you grow your number of reservations and spread awareness of your property.

Every feature in your hotel management system should work to improve your overall number of bookings. Whether you intend to explore new markets or boost bookings in the low season, the right software system is all about optimizing and maximizing what you can achieve. Revenue management and a direct booking engine are two obvious features that will help you in this regard, but everything from integrations to smart reporting and automation will ultimately contribute.

Accurate Regular Reports

Hotel management, finance, and revenue teams will have access to accurate daily earnings reports thanks to data-savvy Hotel Payment System. Meanwhile, operations and marketing reports will help you and your team to make reliable, data-driven decisions across your business. If everything is in the cloud, these invaluable metrics are at your fingertips whenever you need them, without the need for time-consuming manual exporting and compiling.

Analyze Your Customer Base

Market and guest segmentation is another important benefit of the right guest management software system. The GM and Marketing Managers can keep track of the different types of visitors, with key demographic breakdowns such as age, gender, and nationality. This data allows you to make informed decisions on your marketing strategy and increase the long-term revenue trends of your business.

What are the Benefits of Direct Booking?

Direct bookings are referred to hotel reservations that guest books by connecting directly with a hotel and not involving a third party. Direct bookings are usually booked using the hotel’s website, by dealing with the sales team either by phone, email, or walk-in.

Direct booking is profitable for you and deals with the hotel directly. From the hotel’s point of view, direct booking is advantageous as they will have the opportunity to gift the guest and build up loyalty with the guest from the time guest enters the hotel website. Also, hotels will have all the customer data, so that they can contact them for campaigns.

The various benefits of direct booking are:

1) Room Selection Categories – Having a direct link with the hotel, allows you to select the room type from various available room categories. It also becomes easy for you to analyze the room price and see the various amenities that each room type provides. You will also get a glimpse of room structure and be able to decide which room type is feasible for your stay.

2) Cancellation – The cancellation charges while you book directly with a hotel is better than the booking through a third-party vendor. Also, you can be sure of the cancellation charges at the time of booking as they will be listed on the website. So, you will get the actual picture of the cancellation condition.

3) Booking Changes – Once you decide on a specific room type and book your stay, at some time you might prefer to change the room type. In such a case you can easily make this without any complication. On request to the hotel customer support, you can easily specify your requirement and get the room type changed based on the availability.

4) Updated Room Availability Information – When you are booking directly with a hotel, you can see the actual update on the room availability. You can also see the room type that are available on a specific date. So, it is easy for you to involve indirect booking and book the room type based on availability.

5) Customer Support – If you have any specific queries at the time of booking, you will get 24 X 7 customer support to clear them. The customer support will help you with a feasible solution and they would also give personal tips if you are looking for recreational activities. So, you can do your booking at ease.

6) Booking Flexibility – If you have any specific interest or condition, the hotel will help you out with it. For example, you require a room near a swimming pool, or you are going with a couple of families and you require rooms next to each other. In such cases, you will get the flexibility to choose your room, and hotel staff will be happy to serve you on your special request.

7) Avail of any Special Offers – When the hotel announces any special offers on a specific season, you can avail of that only on direct booking. In this case, it is profitable for you, and can check out available offers on their website. Based on your availability you can go ahead to avail of that offer and can have a happy stay at the hotel.

8) Easy Payment – Nowadays, the hotel offers their customers all payment types like credit/debit card payments, Google Pay, Paytm, etc. so that you can pay at your ease.

9) Streamlined Flow – When users interact using the hotel website interface in a streamlined flow and a single platform by filling personal information, hotels reduce booking abandonment and it also boosts conversions. Usually, a faster checkout process is directly correlated with more sales.

10) Minimum Redirects – The hotel website usually optimizes visitors at the bottom of the funnel and takes away disorderly redirects to form booking templates. Guests will book when there is an easy interface and navigation.

11) Loyalty Programs – Many hotels provide loyalty points for booking with them. Users get points and when they sign-in for their next booking, they can use the guest’s loyalty IDs to unlock the rewards they have. This will enable a guest to keep connected to the hotel again and again.

What is a Secure Payment Gateway and Why Do I Need One?

In our time, almost all businesses that take their business activities seriously have their own online sales portals. Online business activities have increased these days due to the recent pandemic, the Covid-19. However, here business owners or company managements will have to take adequate and absolute care and attention. The precaution is to secure the personal data of the customers. Data theft has become endemic because of the widespread use of the internet and computers for various personal matters, including banking transactions. It’s the professional obligation of businesses to protect the personal data of their customers. Hence, a secure payment gateway is a vital factor as far as companies that do online transactions are concerned. That said, merchants must make sure that the payment system they install has perfect coding. The best bet for this is to buy it from a company that has technical perfection. You can find such technically perfect companies through an internet search.

When there is a secure payment platform, merchants will be able to monitor the transactions flawlessly. That said, almost all contemporary businesses are active as regards global transactions. Besides, because of the recent pandemic, online transactions have become more convincing and constant. Due to this situation, all businesses should go for the payment gateways, which will be beneficial as far as both the businesses and customers are concerned. However, merchants should pick a secure payment gateway, which has perfect encryption. Besides, the coders must be experts and must have flawless technical training background.

The payment gateway facilitates online merchants to process the payment cards such as debit cards, credit cards, etc. Thus the gateway augments the sales. When there is a perfectly coded payment gateway, the possibility of credit card cheating will be less. Businesses will be able to bring down the online cheating possibility. When customers enter the website and select a product, they will have to do the payment procedures. For this, they must give the payment card details. This data collection is the first step. Immediately, the encoding takes place through the web browser, and these details will reach the merchant. Here, the gateway takes over the action and will pass the transaction details to the payment workstation the merchant uses for contacting the bank. These details will reach the card affiliation. The related bank either approves or just denies the payment. The processor sends the details to the purchaser and merchant. When the transaction is over, the merchant and customer will get the transaction success message.

There are some significant factors that merchants must consider while installing the payment gateway. They must pick a suitable payment flow. Such a system will become essential for all companies in tune with the growth of the company. One can direct the customers to another secure platform or can use an embedded platform within the website. You can select in line with your practical need. For some merchants, the escrow system will be beneficial. For sure, customers will approve this provision. If your business demands this situation, you must go for it. However, the method must be customer-friendly and not time-consuming. In brief, your prospective buyers must feel secure so that they will come to you again for shopping. Practically, a secure payment gateway is a mediator platform that makes sure that the client data is encrypted and secure.

That said, you must buy the payment platform from a company that has all the relevant technical qualifications and experience. The software system must be flawless and customer-friendly. Customers must not get any difficulty while purchasing your products and during the payment process. They must be able to do the entire process of selection and paying within a few seconds. The entailed processes that start from the customer’s payment must be uncomplicated. Customers must be able to purchase your products at ease. Remember, this easiness is the main factor that will prompt them to visit your website again and again whenever they need similar products or services.