Everything to Everyone: How a Modern Cloud PMS Can Elevate Multi-Property Management
Today’s independent hotel brands increasingly operate as part of multi-property portfolios, allowing them to combine the benefits of bespoke branding with enhanced chain-wide resources and support. To fully capitalize on the benefits of an expansive portfolio, however, hotel operators must carefully configure their tech stack beginning with the property management system (PMS). Modern, full-featured, cloud PMS platforms have zero upgrade or maintenance costs and come with open APIs that allow operators to fully customize their tech stack at no additional cost. They also have the advantage of being accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, allowing for real-time communication between properties. Additionally, hoteliers must be sure that their PMS platform comes with intuitive and fully-featured multi-property management capabilities, including a multi-property dashboard, chain-wide statistics and reporting, and shared guest/company profiles and statistics.
Invest in a Flexible Cloud PMS to Quickly Adapt to Market Changes
The first thing every hotelier managing multiple properties should investigate is a cloud PMS with a dynamic multi-property interface that allows them to quickly visualize key performance indicators of all properties within their portfolio and then instantly drill down to individual properties that need attention. The utility of this feature cannot be understated. Operators have been contending with shorter-than-average lead times on new bookings over the past three years, leaving hoteliers with little room to adapt to unexpected bookings. A cloud PMS that can track and manage occupancy at each property in your portfolio allows you to send unexpected walks to neighboring properties, giving you (and your guests!) some peace of mind while also saving potentially lost revenue.
Don’t Forget Your Most Loyal Guests Just Because They Visit a Different Property!
Independent hotel chains that use a traditional, on-site PMS platform often face significant problems with accessing customer data when a guest stays at multiple properties in their portfolio. Unless the hotel purchases an expensive third-party platform like a central reservation system (CRS) or a customer relationship manager (CRM), they risk siloing guest data within the separate PMS servers at each hotel property. Without access to chain-wide guest profiles, hotel staff may miss when a long-time guest visits a different property, leading to a potential oversight of the guest’s special requests or preferences. Such oversight can result in a poor guest experience, impacting customer loyalty and brand reputation. After all, having to ask a loyal guest if they've stayed before resets that customer relationship to nothing.
To avoid this, hoteliers should invest in a PMS platform with strong multi-property management capabilities that can maintain comprehensive guest, occupancy, and performance data across the entire chain. This allows the PMS to recognize guests and their preferences as they move between touchpoints in their guest journey and properties in your chain. It also allows staff to instantly determine a guest’s individual preferences, requests, and stay history from every property in your portfolio, facilitating enhanced service and guest engagement. Data from these unified profiles can then be leveraged with advanced analytics to enhance marketing efforts and promote brand loyalty. This can provide a complete view of your portfolio’s performance without having to manually run dozens of reports in several different PMS instances.
The Hospitality Market Can be Challenging 一 But Scaling Your Business Should be Easy
Asset-light scalability is critical to continued success in today’s hospitality market. A cloud PMS system allows hoteliers to forego installing and maintaining new on-site servers at each property. The process can be streamlined even further by combining a cloud PMS with robust multi-property configuration capabilities. Multi-property configuration allows hoteliers to easily scale their business by creating templates that copy room type, rate, and financial configuration data from existing properties to new properties in the chain, thereby greatly streamlining the configuration process.
Leverage Cloud Technology to Enhance Your Brand, Scale Your Business, and Delight Your Guests
To maximize the benefits of managing multiple properties within a portfolio, hotel operators must prioritize configuring their tech stack, starting with the property management system (PMS). A modern PMS with open APIs, cloud-based infrastructure, and full-featured multi-property management capabilities allows operators to seamlessly interact with guests across properties, adapt to market changes swiftly, and provide a unified experience. This flexibility not only enhances operational efficiency but also boosts guest loyalty by maintaining consistent brand experiences and access to unified guest profiles. By investing in a flexible multi-property PMS design, hoteliers can scale their business effortlessly and stay competitive in today's dynamic hospitality market.