These days there’s no shortage of valuable tools and technology systems for hospitality providers to choose from as they look to enhance their properties’ efficiency, profitability, and ability to meet and exceed guest expectations.
That’s clearly great news! But for a property to reach its full potential, it’s important for this ecosystem of supporting technologies to work well together. As accommodations providers look to assemble a winning technology stack, it’s critical they understand both how these systems interact and to ensure they’re building a solid foundation for the future.
In this blog we’ll take a closer look at some of the most common tools and systems you’ll find “under the hood” of a high-performing property.
A must-have for any highly-successful property, a quality revenue management system uses the power of advanced analytics, automation and demand forecasting capabilities to set effective pricing strategies and implement inventory controls to ensure properties are well-positioned to efficiently and effectively capitalize on market conditions.
Key features:
- Advanced Demand Forecasting: Uses scientific demand forecasting methods to understand true, unconstrained demand for room inventory.
- Dynamic Revenue Management & Inventory Decisions: Uses a holistic view of relevant market and property data to recommend revenue-maximizing dynamic pricing and inventory decisions.
- Real-Time Data Insights & Reporting: Connects with key systems to consolidate performance data and market information for strategic decision making.
- Automated Efficiency: Eliminates tedious, error-prone, and time-consuming manual processes like forecasting, rate adjustments, and distribution efforts.
Why it matters: An advanced revenue management solution integrates with other hospitality systems to rapidly analyze internal and external market data, driving optimized pricing and inventory control decisions. This powerful tool enhances efficiency, boosts revenue performance, and ultimately increases property value.
A property management system is a core component of an effective tech stack, serving as the central platform hospitality providers use to manage their daily operations. These tools streamline essential tasks such as managing reservations, guest check-in and check-out, room assignments, billing, and housekeeping.
Key features:
- Reservation & Guest Management: Seamlessly handles bookings, check-ins/outs, room assignments, and guest profiles to ensure a smooth guest experience.
- Integration & Connectivity: This system’s critical operational data must sync well with a varied ecosystem of technology tools.
- Automation & Reporting: A strong PMS can automate workflows for housekeeping, billing, and guest communication while also providing a holistic view of property metrics.
Why it matters: If an RMS is the “brain” of a hospitality tech stack, a PMS is the heart as a huge portion of critical data circulates through it. These systems are an essential component of a property’s technology infrastructure as they play a key role in managing operations, enhancing guest experiences, and improving efficiency. A PMS centralizes reservations, check-ins, billing, and housekeeping while integrating with a variety of important systems. For hoteliers looking to scale and optimize performance, a modern PMS is essential for maximizing revenue and operational agility.
When considering the big picture of your technology infrastructure, this system is a key cog that must mesh well with other systems—you cannot effectively price, sell, and manage room inventory across a complex hospitality booking ecosystem without it.
Key features:
- Competitive Benchmarking: Provides insight into key performance metrics (e.g. occupancy, ADR, RevPAR) compared to competitors and overall market.
- Forward-looking Demand Data: Offers real-time and future booking trend data, lending insight into market demand fluctuations.
- Historical Performance Analysis: Tracks market trends and property performance to inform long term strategy and forecasting.
Why it matters: Integrated market intelligence tools provide forward-looking insights into occupancy, booking pace, and demand trends based on real-time data. This empowers hoteliers to develop proactive and effective pricing and revenue strategies.
Central Reservation Systems (CRS) serve as an effective hub for managing and distributing room inventory and rate information across multiple booking channels, including direct websites, OTAs, GDS, and call centers.
Key features:
- Multi-channel Distribution: Facilitates flow of rate and inventory information across various booking channels.
- Rate & Inventory Management: Centralizes pricing and inventory controls, enabling dynamic rate adjustments while preventing overbookings or discrepancies across platforms.
- Seamless Integration: Works effectively with both PMS and RMS to facilitate flow of rate and inventory information.
Why it matters: A CRS guarantees real-time availability and rate consistency, simplifying reservations, reducing overbookings, and optimizing revenue. By integrating with a Property Management System (PMS) and Revenue Management System (RMS), a CRS empowers hoteliers to maximize efficiency and reach the right guests at the right price.
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A Rate Distribution System (RDS) ensures that a property’s room rates and availability are accurately and consistently updated across booking channels, including OTAs, GDS, metasearch engines, and direct booking platforms.
Key features:
- Multi-channel Distribution: Facilitates flow of rate and inventory information across various booking channels.
- Rate & Inventory Management: Centralizes pricing and inventory controls, enabling dynamic rate adjustments while preventing overbookings or discrepancies across platforms.
- Seamless Integration: Works effectively with either PMS or RMS to facilitate flow of rate and inventory information.
Why it matters: An RDS is an effective tool for maintaining rate parity and real-time availability across all booking platforms. It streamlines distribution, minimizes errors, and enables accommodations providers to implement dynamic pricing strategies effectively. Unlike a CRS that handles reservations as well, an RDS focuses solely on the accurate and timely distribution of rates and availability.
Rate shopping tools scour publicly available competitor data to provide real-time competitive pricing intelligence, helping hospitality providers optimize their pricing strategies and maintain rate parity across booking channels.
Key features:
- Multi-channel Rate Monitoring: Gathers real time competitive pricing data across OTAs, metasearch engines, direct booking channels, and more.
- Rate Parity Management: Identifies pricing discrepancies between direct and third-party channels to ensure consistency.
- Market Trends and Pricing Insights: Provides pricing trends, helping revenue managers forecast demand, optimize pricing strategies, and maximize revenue potential.
Why it matters: These tools enable properties to adjust pricing dynamically based on real-time competitor rate comparisons and maintain rate parity. Selecting a provider with access to high-quality, accurate data is crucial for maximizing the effectiveness of these tools.
Reputation management tools help hospitality providers monitor and analyze their online reputation by collecting and managing guest reviews, social media mentions, and survey feedback across multiple platforms.
Key features:
- Review Aggregation and Monitoring: Collects and centralizes guest reviews from varied online sources, giving properties a real-time overview of their reputation.
- Sentiment Analysis: Detects trends in guest feedback, helping properties identify strengths and areas for improvement.
- Automated Responses: Streamlines responses to guest reviews and feedback to improve guest satisfaction and brand perception.
Why it matters: By alerting hoteliers to potential issues and streamlining responses, these tools can help accommodations providers boost guest satisfaction, improve rankings on review platforms, and drive more bookings through a strong online reputation. Additionally, guest sentiment data can be used to inform pricing strategies and competitive positioning, as reputation directly impacts demand and market positioning.
Upselling systems help properties maximize revenue and enhance guest experiences by offering personalized upgrades and add-ons before, during, and after check-in.
Key features:
- Personalized Upsell Offers: Uses guest data and booking history to recommend tailored upgrade offers, increasing conversion rates.
- Seamless Integration: Connects with key systems to ensure real-time availability and automated fulfilment of upsell requests.
- Automated & Targeted Upselling: Sends timely, customized offers before and during the guest’s stay, maximizing revenue without extra manual effort.
Why it matters: By automating the upselling process and integrating with overall tech stack systems, hoteliers increase profitability, improve ancillary spending, reduce manual work, and boost guest satisfaction through tailored offerings.
Sales and catering tools help streamline group sales, event planning, and banquet operations, making it easier to manage meetings, conferences, and social events.
Key features:
- Lead & Proposal Management: Assists with RFP responses, tracks leads, and helps sales teams secure group bookings faster.
- Event & Banquet Planning: Centralizes event details, including room setups, menus, and AV requirements, ensuring smooth execution.
- Real-Time Availability & Reporting: Integrates with key systems to provide live inventory updates, forecasting, and performance analytics.
Why it matters: These tools help properties facilitate group bookings, optimize event planning, and maximize banquet revenue by automating sales and operations. By integrating with revenue management systems (RMS) and providing real-time availability, they enable properties to balance transient and group business strategically, ensuring optimal occupancy and profitability.
Start your search
Investing in your technology solutions and finding the right cohesive fit is an important undertaking that will surely have a significant impact on your organization’s ability to thrive in a fiercely competitive hospitality environment. There’s no better time to begin your search and start laying a foundation for success. To take that next step, check out our ultimate buyer’s guide for revenue management solutions.
