What is the hotel reservation system and why is it important?
When travelers make a hotel reservation, they expect a seamless experience, or they may choose to stay elsewhere. For hotels, meeting this expectation means moving away from manual processes and investing in booking software that allows travelers to book rooms when they want on the channel of their choice.
Whether online or offline, behind every effortless booking experience is a fast, reliable and fully integrated hospitality management system.Here we explain how hotel reservation systems work, the key benefits of an integrated platform, and what to look for when choosing a reservation software.
We’ll also show you how to use this powerful technology to get more bookings, streamline booking processes, save time and money, and increase customer retention—whether you’re a hotel, hostel, motel, B&B, or vacation rental company. .
What is the hotel reservation system?
A hotel reservation system is a software used in the hotel industry to manage room inventory, rates and reservations.It may be included in the PMS hotel property management system or it may be independent software connected to the PMS.
The booking system acts as the central hub of the booking ecosystem, which may also include the website booking engine, channel manager and revenue management system. When integrated, these modules work together to help hotels manage room availability, distribution, reservations and revenue.
A platform designed to help hoteliers generate revenue, save time and increase guest satisfaction.
How does the hotel reservation system work?
First, the hotel’s revenue manager loads the hotel’s rate codes, inventory, and limits into the system. Then the information is filled in the PMS and distributed in the hotel reservation channels with the help of the channel management software. These channels may include hotel website booking engine, global distribution system (GDS), wholesalers and metasearch sites.
When a traveler books a hotel room through one of these channels, the information is sent back to the reservation system and PMS, where it is stored for retrieval upon arrival. At the same time, availability in all distribution channels is updated.
Of course, this process depends on the two-way connection between the reservation system and other components. If the components are not integrated, the revenue manager must perform these tasks manually, a time-consuming and error-prone process.