A PMS (Property Management System) is a software platform designed to manage all activities within hotels and restaurants. It offers a wide range of operational services that automate tasks such as reservations, check-in and check-out processes, and room allocation.
The PMS significantly boosts hotel productivity, especially when connected to other software tools used daily by the establishment.
How does a hospitality PMS work?
By centralizing key information, a PMS offers two major advantages: improving operational efficiency and providing a personalized guest experience.
The PMS covers all activities to ensure nothing is overlooked:
- Check-in and Check-out Management: Guests can perform these actions with a simple click, enhancing the guest experience and significantly boosting staff autonomy and productivity.
- Real-Time Room Occupancy Tracking: Housekeeping staff receive immediate notifications when rooms become available, maintaining real-time visibility of room status. This ensures quicker response times for cleaning coordination and guest request handling.
- Accounting Management: Centralized accounting allows real-time management of supplier and customer accounts, streamlining invoicing.
- Service Optimization: Availability and pricing for hotel rooms and restaurant tables are automatically updated across online reservation platforms.
- Guest Data Analysis: Securely stored in the cloud, guest data can be analyzed to generate insights into guest preferences. This helps hoteliers fine-tune their marketing strategies.
Constraints of hotels and restaurants using a PMS
A Property Management System (PMS) has become essential for hospitality establishments. However, hotels and restaurants using such systems may face efficiency issues if their PMS isn’t integrated with other business tools:
- Data Consistency Issues: Without compatibility between multiple tools, data synchronization won't happen automatically.
- Time Wasted: Poorly integrated tools mean hotel or restaurent staff must manually input data from each system, resulting in time-consuming tasks that reduce efficiency.
- High Integration Costs: Without total compatibility, integrating a hotel PMS with other systems (billing, accounting software, etc.) can lead to high development costs to resolve inter-software conflicts.
- Data Security: Hotels must ensure customer data security. Manual entry can create security vulnerabilities, potentially leading to data breaches.
Use cases and examples
When all hotel software is interconnected, the establishment benefits from:
- Perfect Order Synchronization: Room service or restaurant orders are automatically linked to guest room numbers, eliminating billing errors and improving guest experience.
- Automated Accounting: Integrating PMS and accounting software automatically generates accounting entries. Chift integrates popular accounting solutions like Sage 100, Pennylane, ACD, and Cegid Loop.
- Improved Data Centralization: Data from the PMS, CRM, or billing software is aggregated and consolidated, providing comprehensive guest insights.
Chift’s role in PMS integrations
Chift offers unified APIs that easily connect different software solutions.
For example, these APIs enable software providers to link hotel property management systems with other business tools such as accounting software. Chift already offers a connector for MEWS, with Booking Experts, Noovy and RoomRaccoon on the way.
Chift’s ready-to-use connectors offer:
- Time Savings: Automation of synchronization between business software, especially accounting. Sales and payments from hotel management software (PMS) integrate automatically into accounting systems on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Manual exports and re-entry are eliminated.
- Simplicity: An intuitive and optimized interface with straightforward documentation enables effortless integration between software tools.
- Real-time Synchronization: Certain data, like payments and sales, can synchronize automatically each night (e.g., at 6 am), with control over closed accounting periods. Data alignment reduces errors, keeping accounting up-to-date.
- Security and Compliance: Chift is a fully GDPR-compliant European platform. Data is encrypted and only request IDs is stored on servers within Europe. Connections between PMS and accounting tools use secure protocols (API keys, OAuth2), ensuring reliable access management.
Key takeaways
By centralizing data, a PMS is essential for operational management in hotels and restaurants. However, this centralization is limited if the PMS isn't connected to other business tools. Chift bridges this gap by facilitating seamless data connections and exchanges.
Ready to take the integration fast lane? Reach out to our team for a demo.