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8 Benefits of Native Cloud & Integration Friendly PMS

8 Benefits of Native Cloud & Integration Friendly PMS

StayNTouch believes that technological partnerships should be viewed as long-term strategic relationships where the technology vendor takes its customers’ unique business goals to heart.

– Justin DeRise

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Not All Clouds Are the Same.

Enjoy high performance and reliability with a Native Cloud PMS.  Some legacy PMS providers are now offering “cloud-based” versions of their on-premise systems but not all clouds are the same. Often, these “cloud-based” systems are hosted on independent servers and

suffer from issues in performance and reliability. Ironically, as legacy companies move to the “cloud,” their already shaky customer service only gets worse, as many support functions are outsourced to server providers.

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StayNTouch Cloud PMS is different.

Based on a native cloud architecture, and hosted on Amazon’s AWS, StayNTouch Cloud PMS benefits from unparallelled speed and performance, reduced load times, unlimited  scalability, and 

multi-tenant capability. Hosting on AWS also gives the platform greater reliability, and no scheduled downtime during upgrades.

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Seamlessly Connect Your Hotel's Tech Ecosystem

Many legacy PMS providers take a “walled garden” approach to integrations. Because their APIs aren’t available on the open market, their customers are forced to pay costly proprietary integration fees to add new platforms to their tech stack. The result is a tech ecosystem that is plagued by inefficiencies, data silos, and a lack of flexibility. StayNTouch Connect-APIs, on the other hand, are based on a native cloud open-API architecture which promotes seamless data-exchange between multiple systems. StayNTouch Cloud PMS connects to a constantly

growing library of over 1100+ direct and indirect integrations, as well as connections to over 40+ OTA interfaces. And unlike many legacy providers, StayNTouch makes its APIs available on its website so developers can freely access their coding. Additionally, the StayNTouch Integration Hub provides users with a centralized, searchable, and user-friendly database to explore all live connections and integration partners. This makes it easier for hotels to build a technological ecosystem that is best suited for their unique business needs.

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Exchange the Exact Data You Need, When You Need It, In Real-Time

StayNTouch Connect-APIs are enhanced by simplified but powerful webhooks, which facilitate precise and near real-time data exchange between StayNTouch Cloud PMS and its outside platforms. Traditional APIs are request-based, meaning they only operate when requests come from outside applications. They often waste time and bandwidth by continually polling systems to search for the requested data, and the resulting output is usually cluttered and extraneous. Webhooks, however,  are 

event-based, automatically sending data when initiated by a triggering event. To use an old analogy: While APIs spend time raking through an entire haystack, webhooks give you the thread that leads directly to the needle. Whether it’s booking information, rate changes, guest data, or more, webhooks provide the specific information hotels need, exactly when they need it, all in real-time. This allows hotels to better leverage their data to create a more seamless and personalized guest experience

Mobility has become the #1 priority for hoteliers in 2018.

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Stay Ahead with a Future-Proof and Agile PMS

StayNTouch Cloud PMS naturally scales with your growing business. Unlike traditional PMS systems, which charge users for “proprietary” upgrades, StayNTouch’s agile product development roadmap delivers automatic system upgrades and feature releases every 3 weeks, at no cost to customers consumer. StayNTouch Cloud PMS can also expand

with your portfolio, giving you complete and easily accessible multi-property management. And as your system usage continues to increase, the Amazon AWS infrastructure will automatically increase performance, ensuring that your PMS’ speed and reliability will never fall victim to the growth of our business or operations.

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Access Your PMS And Manage Your Property From Anywhere, On Any Device

StayNTouch Cloud PMS can run on any mobile device, anywhere there is an internet connection. This means that your front-of-the-house staff can break out from the front desk, and serve guests wherever they happen to be in the hotel. Meanwhile, back-of-the-house operations will run more smoothly with robust

 features like automated task management and instant room  status updates. Even management can benefit from mobility, as revenue managers can adjust rates and manage inventory on the fly, and GM’s can access key hotel metrics and analytics from anywhere in the world.

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Reduce Your Hotel’s Total Cost of Ownership

On-premise PMS systems might not come with a monthly fee, but they often require substantial maintenance, upgrade, and integration costs. In fact, many companies spend over 75% of their IT budgets just to maintain existing software and infrastructure. None of these issues exist with a native cloud PMS. StayNTouch

Cloud PMS is hosted on Amazon AWS, meaning you will never have to worry about scheduled system downtime or server maintenance costs. Similarly, you can enjoy free automatic software upgrades, and not have to worry about additional costs when integrating third-party platforms.

How hotels are preparing for GDPR by becoming data compliant

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Gain Peace of Mind With Best-in-Class Data Security

Your hotel’s data is the lifeblood of your business, and your PMS should provide you with the peace of mind that your data will always be secure. StayNTouch Cloud PMS offers best-in-class data security, including yearly 3rd party penetration testing, data at rest encryption, HTTPS encryption in transit, field-level encryption for sensitive data, VPN and

 firewall protection, and active security monitoring and alerting. Your PMS should also be PCI DSS and GDPR compliant, and have ISO 27001 and SOC2 Type 2 Certifications. StayNTouch also protects hotel data from physical disasters with daily database snapshots, and automatic environment failovers.

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Your PMS Provider Should Be a Strategic Partner, Not Just Another Tech Vendor

StayNTouch believes that technological partnerships should be viewed as long-term strategic relationships where the technology vendor takes its customers’ unique business goals to heart. That’s why StayNTouch offers global, 24/7 “follow the sun” customer support, delivered by seasoned product and industry professionals. StayNTouch also provides its customers with either an on-site or

virtual implementation team, a dedicated client success manager (CSM), extensive training, and a comprehensive product knowledge base. StayNTouch extends this same sense of strategic partnership to its integration providers, so if a customer has an issue with one of their integrations, StayNTouch can work quickly with the provider to find a solution.

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Article

Unburdening Hospitality: How a Guest-Centric PMS Can Help Hotels Win in the Face of a Labor Crunch

Unburdening Hospitality: How a Guest-Centric PMS Can Help Hotels Win in the Face of a Labor Crunch

In order to succeed in the post-pandemic hospitality market, hotels have to deliver exceptional and personalized service on a limited staff.

– Justin DeRise

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Guest-Centric PMS in the Face of a Labor Crunch

But great hotel technology should not only be guest-focused, it must also be management-focused, by helping hotels scale their business, and staff focused by facilitating operations, streamlining communications, and promoting

employee productivity. In the face of a post-pandemic labor crunch, hotels need a mobile and guest-centric PMS to support a lean staff as they look to meet an uptick in travel demand.

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2021 Will See the Hospitality Industry Roaring Back… But Hiring Still Lags Behind

The COVID-19 pandemic was devastating for hospitality, setting the industry back over 10 years in terms of occupancy and job losses. According to the ALHA, the pandemic cost the U.S. hospitality industry over 50% occupancy, and over 3.1 million jobs. The good news, however, is that the industry is on the verge of a major recovery. Rising vaccination rates, coupled with rapidly falling case numbers have led to an increase in confidence with the traveling public. According to Destination Analysts,confidence in travel safety is increasing, with over 61.8% of American respondents confident that the pandemic situation will continue to improve, and over 72% of the respondents making travel plans in the previous week. 

This rising optimism is being seen in job reports indicating that the hospitality sector gained over 331,000 jobs in April 2021 the sixth largest gain in the past 50 years. Unfortunately, these gains may not be enough. U.S. hotels are still 600,000 workers short of pre-pandemic levels, but workers don’t seem to be filling the vacancies. This can be attributed to a number of factors, including widespread health concerns, difficulty obtaining childcare, and the recent rise in federal unemployment benefits. The question for hotels is how can they leverage technology to support a lean staff, get new staff up to speed quickly, and help their current employees better engage with and serve their guests, without the burden of physical or technological constraints.

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PMS Technology Should be Intuitive, Mobile, and Unburden Staff

Hoteliers joined the hospitality industry because they delight in serving their guests not because they wanted to fight with outdated technology. If hotels want to retain high-performing employees, they should invest in technology that actively empowers them to deliver an exceptional guest experience. What does it mean to have a staff-focused PMS? On the most basic level, PMS platforms should be intuitive and easy to use, and never burden employees when serving their guests. When technology is delivered through an intuitive user interface, hoteliers can spend less time buried in their screens, 

and more time actively engaging with their guests.  Additionally, mobile & guest-centric PMS technology should promote maximum ease of access. Hoteliers should be able to manage their property from any location and device, giving them the freedom to move about the hotel and meet guests wherever they are. This allows staff to have more natural and personalized interactions with their guests, while also freeing any staff member, no matter their specific job title, to help any guest in any section of the hotel.

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Easy-to-Train On Systems Enable Hotels to
Expand their Talent Pool

PMS platforms should be easy to train on and easy to master. When technology is easier to understand, hotels can hire staff based on how they actually interact with guests 一 not how well they “get” outdated technology. When a new staff member is hired, it should be easier to train and onboard them to the new technology, thereby increasing adoption throughout your team. When investing in new PMS technology, hoteliers should also explore what resources the vendor offers in terms of staff training and support. The right PMS technology vendor will view its relationship with its clients as a long-term strategic partnership, 

and will make sure its clients’ staff have the resources they need to get the most out of their product.  Look for a dedicated implementation team, with the option for either in-person or remote implementation, as well as a dedicated client success manager (CSM), who can act as the customer’s voice within the organization. The right PMS vendor will provide robust self-training resources, including a comprehensive product knowledge base, on-demand e-learning courses, and best practice materials which demonstrate how to use the product to enhance the guest journey and operational efficiencies.

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Mobile Communication Can Streamline Operations and Improve Staff Morale

Breakdowns in team communication can easily lead to breakdowns in team morale. When hoteliers communicate with walkie-talkies and landline telephones, critical information can get lost in the shuffle, resulting in dissatisfied guests and frayed team dynamics. A mobile, guest-centric PMS can streamline staff and guest communications in a number of ways: Instant room updates automatically notify front desk staff when a room is ready or out of order, while analytic dashboards can keep your entire staff updated on key performance metrics.  For more sophisticated forms of

communication, native-cloud PMS systems can integrate with third-party guest messenger platforms. Guest messaging delivers seamless communication throughout the guest journey using common messaging platforms such as SMS, Facebook Messenger or WeChat. This allows guests to communicate instantly with staff through their mobile device, while also allowing staff members to serve multiple guests through multiple chat windows.

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Use Advanced Automation to Get the Most Out of a Limited Staff

The hospitality industry is facing increased travel demand and heightened expectations for cleanliness and service, as it moves into the peak 2021 summer travel season. Unfortunately, they are still hampered by limitations in resources and staff size. By incorporating robust automation, a mobile PMS can help hotels get the most out of limited staff, while also freeing hoteliers from many of the mundane, repetitive tasks that take them away from their guests. A native-cloud PMS can automate simple but repetitive tasks such as room assignment, bulk check-in, and housekeeping task management. But it can also automate more advanced processes  like the entire check-in experience.  Guests can have the option 

of checking in through their mobile device or a guest-facing smart kiosk.  Mobile self check-in can not only streamline and personalize the check-in experience for guests, it can free hotel staff from engaging in repetitive and scripted dialogues during the check-in process. This self check-in option can also include automated targeted offers for amenities and room upgrades, giving the hotel an additional stream of ancillary revenue. Instead, they can focus on more natural and personalized interactions, like answering questions about dining options, or greeting guests with tea or champagne in the lobby.

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Great Technology Should Empower Great Hoteliers

In order to succeed in the post-pandemic hospitality market, hotels have to deliver exceptional and personalized service on a limited staff. Therefore, it’s crucial that they invest in technology which is not only guest-centric but staff-centric as well. A mobile, guest-centric PMS delivers on both of these goals, 

by leveraging a system that is easy to use and easy to learn, while facilitating both staff communication and streamlined operations. Great technology should empower both hoteliers and their employees to deliver the best guest experience possible. And a guest-centric PMS can help them do just that.

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The Ultimate Hotel PMS Buyer’s Guide | 2021

The Ultimate Hotel PMS Buyer’s Guide | 2021

As the core of your technology stack, a PMS should help your hotel achieve the unique goals of your business.

– Justin DeRise

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Challenges for Hoteliers in 2021

2021 will be a year of both promise and challenge for the hotel and travel industries. After months of lockdowns and with multiple COVID vaccines now approved for distribution many customers are becoming more optimistic about travel, with 43% of Americans saying leisure travel will be a high priority in 2021. But although the post-pandemic recovery will continue to gather steam well into 2021, COVID-19’s cost to the hospitality and travel industries has been lasting and significant. When StayNTouch surveyed almost 

500 hoteliers in the spring,  we found that almost 60% believed it would take over a year to reach their pre-COVID levels of occupancy and RevPar, causing over 60% of hotels to reopen with fever than three-quarters of their staff. Fast forward to late fall, and hotel occupancy still continues to hover around 40-50% of its pre-COVID levels, further depressing hotel revenue and resources. In fact, the AHLA estimates that if American hotels do not receive additional debt relief, 77% will be forced to lay off additional workers within the next six months.

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A hotel’s success in 2021 will be determined by their ability to streamline operations,

align their core technologies, personalize and enhance the guest journey, and most importantly, respond to new guest demands and market changes accelerated by COVID-19. In order to do this, hoteliers will have to invest in multiple technology platforms to form a flexible and seamlessly integrated technological ecosystem. 

At its heart lies the property management system, which manages a hotel’s operations and strategic activities, and provides the foundation of guest and stay data that informs third party platforms. In this PMS buyer’s guide, we cover several essential components hoteliers should prioritize when evaluating a new PMS platform:

  • Laying the Foundation: Open-APIs, High-Performance Cloud Technology, Data Security
  • Driving Efficiency with Easy to Use PMS Technology
  • Supporting a Lean Staff with Powerful Automation
  • Unlocking Your Hotel’s Revenue Potential
  • Mobile and Contactless: Providing a Safe and Seamless Guest Experience
  • Harnessing Data and Analytics to Gain a 360° View of Your Hotel
  • Reducing Your PMS Total Cost of Ownership
  • Service, Support and Strategic Partnerships
Ultimately, it’s essential for hotels to invest in a PMS technology partner who places innovation at the forefront of their guiding principles. The hospitality industry is rapidly changing, and hoteliers need technology partners who are agile in their development mentality to meet the demands of the future.

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StayNTouch Cloud PMS Key Inclusions:

  • Reservations Management
  • Front Desk Management
  • Revenue Management
  • Group Management
  • Profile Management
  • Contactless Check-in-/ Check-out
  • Housekeeping
  • Single & Multi-Property
  • Reporting & Analytics
  • Financials / Accounts Receivables
  • Open APIs & Unlimited Integrations

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Lay the Foundation With Open-APIs, High-Performance Cloud Technology, Data Security

A PMS is only as good as it’s architecture一and all clouds aren’t created equal. If your servers are slow or unreliable, the advantages of cloud technology will never materialize. For hotels looking to scale their business, a cloud native PMS that bolsters speedy performance, unparalleled reliability, and no downtime for server maintenance, is the most optimal solution. A native cloud PMS built on an open-API architecture gives hoteliers the flexibility to transform their operational processes and refine their guest experience to meet the  

needs of post-COVID travel demand. Open-APIs allow for easy and seamless data exchange across multiple platforms, removing data silos that can hinder your hotel’s efficiency, or disrupt the continuity of the guest journey. Many legacy PMS systems still don’t make their APIs available to the market or easily accessible through their website. Instead, they’ve taken a closed garden approach, with excessive verification processes and hefty costs to facilitate integrations with outside systems, which only burdens their hotel customers.

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But it’s not enough to just provide ‘open APIs’.

The data being exchanged between your PMS and other core systems needs to be triggered through automation and easily digestible in real-time. StayNTouch’s Open APIs are enhanced by a powerful and simplified set of web-hooks that facilitate targeted real-time data exchange triggers. Rather than receiving massive messages in bulk, the StayNTouch webhooks allow vendor partners to automatically receive the exact messages they need, and without extraneous clutter, so the data can be actioned in real-time. For example: with a simple targeted and automated webhook message from StayNTouch, a hotel’s guest communication system can receive the information it needs at the right time, to send a guest an email to complete a post-stay survey as soon as the guest checks-out, rather than hours or days later.

Every problem (or opportunity) facing hotels in 2021 and in the foreseeable future, will have to be solved by the integration of multiple tech platforms. Take guest-facing contactless check-in: When working properly, mobile contactless check-in will appear to your guests as one unitary touchpoint. But it’s actually created through the integration of several different platforms: a guest-facing mobile check-in solution, a contactless payment solution, a keyless entry solution, and often a mobile guest messaging solution. To create this completely unified guest experience, you need to have systems that connect so effectively that there’s no disruption to the guest journey.
Data security is also paramount in an age where fraud and data leaks are becoming increasingly common. Hotels need to be able to rely on secure systems that protect pertinent guest data. StayNTouch Cloud PMS is entirely PCI compliant. With the use of tokenization, hotels are assured that guest’s payment information is protected and not stored inside the PMS. In addition to owning all of the data in the PMS, hotels can use permission based access to dictate which roles have access to data stored in the PMS.

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Drive Efficiency With Flexible & Easy to Use PMS Technology

The new age of hotel operations requires a heightened level of efficiency. Hotels need PMS software that bolsters staff productivity, rather than complicating administrative tasks. How quickly can your staff perform day-to-day tasks within the PMS 一especially now that they are burdened with more responsibilities and fewer financial resources? Is your PMS designed with an intuitive user interface to increase staff efficiency and decrease the time needed to train new staff members? Is the system color-coded and designed in a way that allows your staff to easily identify action items? The ability of your team to understand and utilize the PMS efficiently is 

fundamental to your hotel’s operational continuity, and dictates the level of service you’re able to provide your guests. You should be able to hire new staff based on their ability to provide great service to your guests, not whether they can “get up to speed” on a clunky, cumbersome PMS. Moreover, your PMS needs to be flexible and mobile so that it can untether your staff from the front desk, and allow them to freely move around the hotel to service guests wherever they are, with complete access to guest and hotel data.

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StayNTouch Cloud PMS was built from the ground up as an easy-to-use mobile platform

with intuitive navigation across the system, simple slide and click features, and a color-coded user interface. The result is that it takes fewer clicks and less time to perform common tasks, and staff can perform all of their day-to-day administrative tasks quickly and easily. Front desk agents can access and adjust reservations on the fly, housekeeping managers can auto-assign tasks with a click of a button, 

revenue managers can adjust rates and manage inventory from anywhere, and hoteliers can adjust tax codes with a few simple clicks, rather than devoting excessive manhours to manually update taxes on each charge-code. Now more than ever, hoteliers need to be able to rely on feature rich PMS technology that’s supported by intuitive functionality, so that staff can be more productive with fewer resources.

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Key Features and Benefits: Flexibility & Ease of Use

Fully mobile-enabled system

  • Fully mobile-enabled system
  • Untethered front desk staff and mobile housekeeping
  • Access the full PMS from anywhere, with any device
  • Easy to navigate, requires minimal staff training
  • Color-coded UI and clean design
  • Faster and fewer clicks to perform common tasks
  • Dynamic search for reservations and guest profiles

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Support a Lean Staff With Powerful Automation

2021 will see the hospitality industry caught in the horns of a dilemma: Hotels will be expected to deliver enhanced service and heightened cleanliness on tightened budgets and reduced staff counts. Fortunately, investing in a cloud-native PMS with robust built-in automation can offer a solution: By automating many common administrative tasks, streamlining communications between staff members, and utilizing a colorful and intuitive UI, the right cloud PMS can help you get the most out of a lean staff, while also enhancing the guest experience. A mobile cloud-based PMS already automates many front-desk functions by offering mobile or kiosk-based self check-in, and it can aid front

 desk agents even further by automating tasks such as bulk check-in and check-out. Front desk agents can then focus more completely on engaging with guests and handling requests, instead of burying themselves in repetitive administrative tasks. And because a mobile PMS can run entirely from a tablet, it allows any staff member to easily assist guests anywhere on property. The result is a more streamlined and convenient guest journey. At StayNTouch, we found that an average of 53% of our clients’ guests opt for self-check in and hotels benefit from up to a 75% reduction in check-in time when guests opt to check-in with a front desk agent.

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A mobile PMS with robust built-in Automation Can Also Transform how Hotels Manage Their Housekeeping Teams

In the post-COVID era, a hotel’s guest rooms, public areas, and common touch points will all have to be cleaned according to exacting standards set by government agencies and industry associations. To put it simply, the old method of managing housekeeping with walkie talkies and clipboards just won’t be able to deliver the level of service required. StayNTouch Cloud PMS allows hotels to automatically assign housekeeping tasks by hotel section and employee work time, so housekeeping staff can efficiently clean rooms in geographic proximity, and make room status updates on the go from their mobile device. Housekeeping managers can manage workflow

with customized task lists, to ensure that their teams are maintaining enhanced, post-COVID cleaning standards. Instant room status updates also allows for quicker room turnover一and therefore increased revenue from monetized early check-in/ late check-out. With streamlined housekeeping, guests who arrive early can receive a room as soon as one is ready, and guests who opt for late check-out will avoid awkward early morning knocks on their door. Mobile automation will allow hotels with limited staff to lessen operational hiccups, and keep up with the heightened cleanliness and social distancing standards that will be commonplace in 2021.

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Key Features and Benefits: Powerful Automation

Enhanced back-of-the house operations

  •  Enhanced back-of-the house operations
  • Automated room/task assignment for housekeeping
  • Streamlined communication with instant room status updates
  • Automatic room assignment & check-in
  • Bulk Check-in and Check-out
  • Automated up-sell and add-on offers
  • Automated report scheduler
  • Automated payment collection

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Scale Your Recovery With a Flexible & Agile Cloud PMS

Your PMS should give you the flexibility to adapt to shifting trends, challenges and opportunities, and should naturally scale with your business. Unlike legacy providers who often charge for system upgrades, StayNTouch offers a “future proof” Cloud PMS that gives customers the benefit of automatic upgrades and feature releases every 3-5 weeks, at no added cost. With multi-property functionality, hotelier’s can expand the PMS across their portfolio and manage all of the properties in their brand. This multi-property management includes guest profile management, central configuration, CRO, rate management, and multi-property reporting. And because StayNTouch Cloud PMS is a True Cloud system that runs on Amazon AWS 

servers, its performance automatically scales-up with increased usage, ensuring that hotels can always rely on optimal service and system performance across their portfolio. Additionally, StayNTouch’s Open-APIs allows hotels to capitalize on emerging technologies and access over 1100 existing integrations.

Key Features and Benefits: Scalability

  • “Future proof” product roadmap
  • Single and Multi-property
  • True Cloud performance that scales with your business
  • Open-API architecture with 1100+ integrations

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Unlock & Optimize Your Hotel’s Total Revenue Potential

A True Cloud PMS also stores the foundational data for a comprehensive guest profile, including reservations, stay and purchase history, room inventory and rates, and housekeeping/ maintenance information. Using an open-API, this information can be sent to a CRM to build an even more nuanced profile that includes guest loyalty status, travel intent, preferences and survey results. This can be used to develop targeted marketing campaigns and more meaningful interactions with staff and guest touchpoints. Guest data can also be sent to an RMS to optimize the hotels pricing, overbooking and inventory decisions.

 StayNTouch Cloud PMS integrates with many of the leading RMS and CRM systems on the market allowing hotels around the world to capitalize on highly nuanced guest analytics, to accurately forecast future revenue and business demand, and develop enhanced marketing and rate strategies. With an intuitive user interface, StayNTouch Cloud PMS enables revenue managers to adjust rates and restrictions and respond to sudden market changes on the fly一 on any device, from any location on the planet.

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Harness your Guests’ Total Revenue Potential with StayNTouch’s Guest Mobility Solution

Optimizing your revenue strategy should also include ways to harness your guests’ total revenue potential. With StayNTouch’s Guest Mobility solution, hotels are able to increase ancillary revenues with automated, targeted offers for room upgrades, amenities, loyalty benefits and monetized early check-in/late check-out, sent directly to their guest’s mobile device. In this way, you can empower your customers to personalize their entire guest journey, while also generating healthy streams of ancillary revenue for your hotel. This revenue can be substantial: According to Mashable.com, an average hotel with 150 rooms and 60% occupancy can reach a 20% conversion rate through targeted upsell ads, generating up to $65,000 of additional revenue each year.

Moreover, COVID-19 has been the catalyst for a new emerging target market for hotels: the ‘remote worker’. With more and more professionals working from home, hotels have the opportunity to capitalize on a new customer segment by providing a quiet, remote working environment for use during the work day. StayNtouch Cloud PMS is unique in that it offers guests the option of booking rooms in hourly blocks, at hourly rates. This gives hotels the ability to capitalize on this new market while gaining an additional revenue stream and diversifying their revenue management strategy.

Key Features and Benefits: Revenue Optimization

  • Mobile accessible and-easy to use rate management tool
  • Comprehensive guest profile
  • Hierarchy restrictions
  • Hourly rates, day use
  • Automated mobile upsell offers to guests
  • Revenue driven reservation and check-in flow for staff
  • Seamless, direct 2-way integrations with leading RMS/CRM solutions

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Go Contactless For a Safe and Streamlined Guest Experience

Once seen as a luxury for forward-thinking and tech-savvy hotels, mobile and contactless check-in options have become a technological staple of the post-pandemic world. Mobile and contactless technologies eliminate the seeming dichotomy between high-touch and high-tech service: They allow you to personalize the guest journey and generate ancillary revenue, while also maintaining a safe and healthy guest experience. Although consumers are eager to resume traveling in 2021, they are still very concerned about their safety. A study by Hilton, for example, found that “71% of consumers globally are actively cleaning more themselves, 

whether in their home or as part of their daily routine.” Similarly, surveys by Destination Analysts found that that 88.1% of travelers “always” or “usually” wear a mask, and 87.9% are either “careful” or “very careful” with social distancing. Of course, consumers aren’t the only ones extolling the virtues of contactless technology: Numerous government agencies and industry associations, including the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA), and the U.S. Travel Association, recommend utilizing contactless solutions for a variety of guest touchpoints, including check-in and check-out.

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Conquer Outdated In-Person Check-in

Of course, the traditional method of in-person check-in at a  centralized front desk is neither personalized, convenient or hygienic. Forcing your guests to wait in long, crowded check-in lines is not only tedious, it is the literal anthesis of social distancing. StayNTouch Cloud PMS combined with fully integrated Guest Mobility and Guest Kiosk technology, allows hotels to give their guests a choice in how they check-in: Either through their mobile device to facilitate a completely contactless experience, a smart-kiosk strategically positioned to promote social distancing, or through a welcoming hotelier aided by a tablet that allows them to assist guests from anywhere on the hotel property.

Unsurprisingly, guests tend to enjoy the empowerment that comes from a mobile check-in option: A survey by Citron found that almost two-thirds of their respondents prefer checking-in through a mobile app rather than traditional methods, and when Hyatt O’Hare implemented a mobile check-in option, they saw their guest satisfaction ratings rise by 20%. In this sense, contactless technology can provide connected, personalized, “high-touch” service, while also maintaining hygiene and social distancing standards.

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Harness Data & Analytics: Gain a 360° View of Your Hotel Performance

At a time when many hotels are struggling with decreased occupancy and ADR, it’s essential that hoteliers can harness the right data to make more profitable decisions across their portfolio. StayNTouch Cloud PMS features intuitive analytics dashboards, customized reporting filters, historical performance data, automated scheduled reports, as well as exportable reports to give hoteliers a complete view of their hotel performance and operations. Hotels can access and harness any and all information on their hotel in an easily digestible format with the ability to quickly create customized reports that can process their hotel’s data in real-time.

The StayNTouch Reporting Module lets hotels automatically schedule reports based on frequency and time of day, and export reports in a variety of outputs and file formats, including tables, graphs and pivot tables. This level of flexibility and ease of use makes it seamless for hotels to make more informed decisions about their operations, revenue strategies, and business priorities as they navigate the challenges and opportunities in a post-COVID travel environment.

Key Features and Benefits: Reporting and Analytics

  • Intuitive analytics dashboard
  • Automatic report scheduling
  • Customizable reports with data filters
  • Simple exporting in multiple file formats
  • Leverage historical data to make more profitable decisions

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Minimize Costs: Reduce Your PMS Total Cost of Ownership

Given the immense challenges of 2020, and the continued uncertainty going into 2021, it’s understandable that many hoteliers are hesitant to invest in new technology. Why invest in a cloud-native PMS when you have limited resources? The answer is found in the concept of total cost of ownership: A platform’s costs include a lot more than its monthly fee or upfront installation costs. You also have to consider costs associated with maintenance and upgrades, as well as its ability to generate revenue, and it’s capacity to help your business scale and adapt to new challenges and opportunities. Compared with legacy,

on-premise platforms, cloud-based PMS systems enjoy far lower maintenance costs, while also benefiting from higher performance and reliability. These maintenance costs can be substantial: many companies wind up spending three-quarters of their IT budgets just to maintain existing infrastructure. Maintaining on-premise legacy systems can be even more costly since the provider has to install costly proprietary software directly onto your hotel’s servers. And even that doesn’t take into account the cost of lost business if your on-premise servers ever malfunction or go down.

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Automatic Software Upgrades for Free

Investing in a cloud-native PMS, on the other hand, means you receive automatic software upgrades for free  with no need to manually install programs on an on-premise server. The same is true for integrations: a cloud-native system that runs on an open-API architecture means there are no additional costs to integrating third-party platforms. Maximizing total cost of ownership includes not only minimizing costs, but enhancing potential revenue as well. As we discussed above, a mobile PMS can generate automated ancillary revenue by sending targeted offers for room upgrades and amenities directly to your guest’ smartphones. It’s important to emphasize that these additional revenues can quickly eclipse the monthly cost of your PMS 一 Yes, it’s entirely possible to turn a reliable profit from your PMS! One StayNTouch client, a large independent brand in New York City, gained up to 240% ROI in quarterly revenue, based on automated sales of room upgrades, amenities, and monetized early check-in/late check-out.

Key Features and Benefits: Total Cost of Ownership

  • Fully cloud PMS, No costly on-site servers
  • Simple SaaS pricing with no hidden costs
  • Automatic software upgrades at no additional cost
  • Unlimited integrations at no additional cost
  • Generate revenue with targeted amenity/upsell offers
Key Features and Benefits: Total Cost of Ownership
  • Fully cloud PMS, No costly on-site servers
  • Simple SaaS pricing with no hidden costs
  • Automatic software upgrades at no additional cost
  • Unlimited integrations at no additional cost
  • Generate revenue with targeted amenity/upsell offers

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Service & Support: Forge a Strategic Partnership With Your PMS Provider

2021 will see increasing demand for a unified, seamless and hygienic guest journey, and this can only be achieved by investing in a network of technological platforms, where the PMS sits at the heart of the ecosystem. But this level of technological sophistication requires significant human behind-the-scenes work to be maintained. That’s why it’s important to view technological partnerships, not as a myopic one-off transaction, but as a long-term strategic relationship where your technology vendor takes your unique business goals to heart. What does it mean to invest in a “strategic partnership” with a PMS provider? On the most basic level, it means partnering with a PMS platform that supports an open-API architecture, so there are no additional fees for “premium” integrations. 

A PMS provider should also prioritize quality and consistent customer service. Many legacy PMS providers have historically suffered from inadequate customer service. As these on-premise PMS platforms begin to move into the cloud, their customer service actually declines and becomes more inadequate. This puts hotels at serious risk: Since they no-longer have access to their servers on-premise, they have to rely on their provider to fix any malfunctions. If the PMS provider does not provide adequate service and resolve issues in a timely manner, the hotel could face serious disruptions to their operations.

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In contrast, StayNTouch offers 24/7/365 global customer support

bolstered by experienced cloud technology experts and industry professionals. When service is needed, clients can count on assistance from a product and industry expert at any time, day or night. StayNTouch clients also benefit from a dedicated client success manager (CSM) who is committed to fulfilling their goals and communicating their voice within our organization. We also offer extensive product training, a comprehensive knowledge base and best practice program, as well as a dedicated on-site implementation.  Additionally, implementation and training of the

StayNTouch solutions are largely remote and hotels can opt for a full remote deployment to avoid contact on property.

Key Features and Benefits: Total Cost of Ownership

  • 24/7/365 global customer support
  • Cloud technology , product and industry experts
  • Remote deployment, installation and training
  • Dedicated CSM
  • Extensive product learning and training resources

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Conclusion: Choosing the Right PMS for 2021

2021 will be a year filled with many opportunities, but also many challenges and uncertainties. When considering a new property management system, you should choose a platform that enables increased operational efficiency, enhances revenue potential, and elevates the guest experience. Your PMS needs to be fully cloud, mobile, and reliable: Its servers need to be fast and should never go down, and it should be backed up by a global 24/7/365 customer support and service infrastructure. Your PMS should also be flexible enough to seamlessly integrate with a myriad of third-party platforms to capitalize on emerging solutions.

As the core of your technology stack, a PMS should help your hotel achieve the unique goals of your business. It should also harness powerful data and analytics to provide you with a real-time 360° view of your hotel performance and guest profiles. Your PMS should provide your business with a positive return on investment, and act more as a revenue generator vs. a cost center. Ultimately, however, your PMS should work to enhance your guests’ experience, facilitating a more personalized guest journey, from booking, to stay, to post-stay.

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Why are 55.2% of hotels not satisfied with their current PMS provider?
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How PMS Vendors & Hoteliers Can Work Together

When it comes to hotel technology, are hotels and their system providers on the same page? The answer to the question can be found in the 2018 Hospitality Technology Study (available for download here) conducted by the leading hospitality technology brands Fuel Travel, Flip.to, and StayNTouch. Over 358 respondents, responsible for buying or selling hospitality technology were asked to identify common priorities along with potential divides among hoteliers and suppliers.  

Read this Article
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3 Ways a Mobile PMS Can Future-Proof Your Property

In this webinar learn how a Mobile PMS allows hoteliers the flexibility to efficiently run services and operations of their hotel remotely, the freedom to move around the hotel servicing guests directly resulting in more face-time and enhancing their overall guest experience, to access data easily using any device at any time, anywhere, allowing staff to respond more quickly and efficiently to serve guests.
Watch this Webinar

If you are trying to understand how your hotel can use new technologies to get ahead, then you need the right resources to spell out how these new platforms, devices, and software packages work together, and why each is necessary for you to create a great overall experience for your guests. That means having a combination of articles, podcasts, and other reports that help you see how each new innovation helps to make hospitality management easier, less expensive, and more efficient.

Understanding Security

At StayNTouch, we understand that one of the main concerns you have when adopting new technologies is your security. This is especially important in an industry whose entire focus is on providing guests with a safe, comfortable place to stay while they are away from home. From your building security to your payment information and accounts, you need to know that your new technological tools will not expose you to liability, and some of the resources here are built to help you understand how different tools deal with those security questions.

Efficiency and Cost Savings

There’s more to new hospitality management tools than just security and the guest experience. Cloud-based apps that are accessible from standard mobile devices also provide you with a variety of benefits that directly affect your behind-the-scenes management of your business, including:

  • Infrastructure savings that stem from “software as a service” agreements that decrease up-front costs while taking care of upgrades as they roll out
  • Increased efficiency in both processing and record-keeping, making your bookings easier to confirm, track, and modify
  • Lowered operating costs as a side-effect of increased efficiency, lower labor, and more staff flexibility

Learn More About StayNTouch

Once you have learned everything you need to know about how technology is changing hospitality management, you can also learn more about our PMS systems by contacting us for more information or by checking out the information on our product pages.

Hospitality Resources and Hotel Management Information

Visit StayNTouch to find out more about our library of hospitality resources and hotel management information

Our goal at StayNTouch is to give you the tools to run your hotel efficiently and profitably. While we provide an entire slate of products that are geared toward quick and cost-effective solutions to property management issues, we know that running a hotel goes beyond the systems that aid check-in or handle housekeeping schedules.

With that in mind, we keep an entire library of hospitality resources and other hotel management information, so you can be abreast of the latest trends and innovations in property management.

Hospitality Resources & Articles

Whether you are looking for a case study on the implementation of a new product or an explainer full of helpful tips on how to improve your occupancy rates, chances are we have something for you in our hospitality resources archive. Learn what you should know about hospitality software providers or the quickest way to improve your online ratings with just a few clicks around our collection of articles.

Hotel Management Information

We built StayNTouch because we know hotels and understand the unique pain points antiquated property management systems force hoteliers to experience. Our mobile-enabled property management system is meant to allow forward-thinking managers to operate their properties quickly and effectively, with an eye toward the future.

We know better than most that the hotel industry is ever evolving. A hotelier who isn’t constantly looking for what’s coming is already moving toward irrelevance. That’s why we collect hotel management information to keep current and prospective customers up-to-date on all the hotel management information they need to know to continue to operate in the hotel space.

What Our Customers Are Saying
“We bring an unprecedented level of personalized service to our guests, letting them design their hotel experience. Our mobile PMS lets us serve guests wherever they would like to interact with us, in ways that give them complete freedom of choice.”
Marco lemmers
CEO AT CONSCIOUS HOTELS
What Our Customers Are Saying
“Design Hotels caters to a savvy, creative set of travelers—and each of our hotels are a reflection of that. The reason we love this collaboration with stayntouch is that we can offer our hotels innovative contactless technology and a cloud PMS that supports maximum operational flexibility, scalability, cost-efficiency, and a smoother guest experience. ”
Christian Malcher,
Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations
What Our Customers Are Saying
“Our former PMS was very challenging to use. When checking guests in, the staff could never raise their heads to look the guest in the eye because of all the screens that they had to click through. With [StayNTouch] our new mobile PMS, the process takes far fewer steps, and has enhanced our entire welcome and check-in experience. ”
DANIEL TENNANT,
FORMER GM AT HOTEL ON RIVINGTON

The Modern Cloud PMS Fueling Growth & Unforgettable Guest Experiences

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See how StayNtouch’s Cloud PMS, Guest Mobility, and Guest Kiosk solutions deliver better results for hotels through better front & back of house communication, increased mobile touch-points, more revenue and operational efficiency, and unlimited interfaces.

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Manage and Set Tasks Across Your Departments

Ensure Guest Satisfaction & Safety With Contactless Check-in Options

Automate Easy Upsells & Monetized Early/Late Checkouts

Set & Manage Rates/Availability

Integrate With Tools and Platforms Essential to Your Hotel

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