Hotel Revenue Managers Say They Want a Revolution

From Skift

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Why are hotels often slow to innovate?

Because we don't have to if we don't want, so why the heck should we? 

Investment is risky. Leave things be, and we can still have enough people come in the door at a rate we kvetch and whine isn't high enough, to keep the property running in the black and get a low return that we kvetch and wine isn't high enough. And people have little to no patience with results that aren't immediately apparent. 

That's the way most people do it, anyway. Asking me why they don't innovate is like asking me, why would someone not eat, or why would someone not breathe? I can only speculate. But there are a lot of natural human flaws that get in the way, so some of this stuff even comes up for me more than I should let it.

So here goes with some speculation, based on my observations and experience over the years:

Which hotel management system is the most common in the U.S?

Micros-Opera (OPERA Property Management System ). InterContinental Hotels (which includes Holiday Inns) uses it. Carlson uses it. Wyndham Worldwide has it (and one other, cloud-based system) for you to pick from.

Is it 'the standard'? No, and it never will be. It's too exorbitantly priced, both in terms of initial cost and monthly support costs. I've never known an independent hotel to use it -- it's marketable at all because, in every case I've seen it used, it's some franchise organization's required purchase.

I won't touch it with a ten-foot pole unless I'm running a hotel under a franchise that has it forced on me. I can think of two or three that are just as capable, at much lower cost. The one we're currently looking at for our next hotel (http://openhotel.com/ ), while having some things missing that I'd like them to add, or modify their system to accommodate, actually has unique features that were on my wish list from a few years back (Michael Forrest Jones' answer to Is there a demand for a well-designed hotel website service? ).

What are the best property management systems for small hotels?

Originally appeared on Quora

How can I distribute an app-widget for a hotel website? (I have created an app which allows hoteliers to create promotions. These promotions are auctions for hotel rooms day-by-day. The widget functions in the hotel website as a popup window.)

I'd love to have the need for something like that, but usually we have the opposite problem: empty rooms (meaning, for your system, no bidders at all; and the rooms we do rent go for fixed prices higher than a bidder might want to bid), and margins not all that good on the rooms we do rent, once all of our costs are taken into account.

Some hotels might want something like that for, perhaps, six days a year for special events, where the hotel will be fully booked weeks ahead of time. For example, on the local university's homecoming weekend, we know we're going to be full: the only question being, how much can, and should, we charge? (We want to be as profitable as possible, but if I can't get $220 for the $100 room on the big night, I'm willing to at least think about giving it to the guy willing to pay $190. On the other hand, if someone is willing to pay me $275 for it, that person will get it, no matter how many people are willing to pay $220. And there has to be a reserve of at least what we could get for the room at a fixed, what-we-guess-to-be-the-market-rate rate.) I myself have contemplated auctioning special event reservations on eBay to see how it would work out, but have yet to actually try it.

So -- with a little tweaking of what you apparently have in mind -- you might be on to something. Perhaps if you went about it that way . . .

Hotel channel management software API: what solutions exist out there for a PMS?

One of the reasons that Open Hotel (http://openhotel.com/ ) is my PMS of choice is that I’ve found them to be pretty decent about working with third-party developers about exchanging APIs when there’s a reason to.

I got them talking with one third-party hotel CRM site.

And I even found one franchise organization that will let us use Open Hotel if they will accommodate a two-way API. Terrific - I’m not a big believer in hotel franchising anymore, and I’m developing my own brands, but occasionally I encounter an investor whose financing will restrict him to a national franchise. With that franchise, I can use the same property management system that I’d use in an independent hotel, or one operating under one of my own brands, and have a little more uniformity in the bookkeeping department.

There are a lot -- two or three dozen, anyway -- of new cloud-based PMX out there, competing for a very limited market of hotel business. And most of them drive me a little nuts, because there is so much that so many of them won't do.

And for a tech company that markets a hotel PMS, that's suicidal.