BRINGING EVERYTHING TOGETHER IN ONE PLACE According to McIndoe, the rate at which new companies are producing new pro- grammes and apps for PMS is staggering. Because of this, Infor is currently develop- ing around 12 new integrations per month, a high proportion of these for guest interaction – for example apps that allow check-in and check-out, messaging and collaboration with guests, or both.


Integration is a similarly important focus at Oracle Hospitality Opera, which already has a rich ecosystem of around 5,000 industry vendors. One big trend coming down the track, says Pratt, is chatbots powered by AI to provide guests with enhanced service. Meanwhile, looking at the bigger picture,


she predicts more personalisation and inte- gration across the industry, as well as more flexibility in deployment and faster user training. “The PMS of the future will continue to evolve and we will see more integrations of hotel functions and the merging of tradi- tional isolated system components, such as central reservations systems (CRS) and sales and catering,” she says. McIndoe agrees. “What we are seeing more of now is the disassociation of component parts in the PMS. Traditionally the PMS has multi- ple parts – rates, profiles, reservations, and so on – but what if you wanted to use the profile in your customer relationship management (CRM) solution as the master profile?


www.thecaterer.com


“Automated revenue management can improve the business anywhere between


10% and 30%” Aditya Sanghi, Hotelogix


“Every time you make a reservation, the PMS then calls out to that solution to get that master profile. PMS profiles are limited. CRM profiles contain much more rich and useful data. Managing rates in multiple places is also time consuming and error prone. So, what if you could manage your rates in one place?” The ideal scenario is that when taking a res- ervation, the PMS would make a call to the CRS to get the correct rate at that time. “In this, integrations enable a central hub for every operation that’s needed,” McIndoe explains. “You have to have a PMS as you need to capture data and provide functionality like check-in, check-out and housekeeping. How- ever, utilising real-time connectivity to other integrated solutions that provide more detail and specialised functionality beyond the tra- ditional core capabilities of PMS, hotels can maximise revenues by really knowing the guest and drive efficiencies by managing data in one place and not many.”


The rates part of the equation is getting


more sophisticated too, adds Sanghi. “PMS have begun to offer dynamic rates, with auto- mated revenue management fuelling rate changes at least eight to 10 times a day, com- pared to the traditional way of two to three times a day,” he explains. “Automated revenue management can improve the business anywhere between 10% and 30%. Meanwhile, marketing auto- mation can increase direct bookings by over 10%, provided the hotel is delivering on its service-level commitments. All of these solutions are powered by real-time relevant data from the PMS.”


MOBILITY, MOBILITY, MOBILITY When asked what PMS will look like in 2020, McIndoe’s answer is simple: mobility, mobility, mobility. “That’s on both the guest side and the hotel side,” he clarifies. “Hotels still need to have a PMS, but the way both guests and staff interact with the software has changed and that software is utilised more and more outside the hotel. This includes anything from both pre- and post-stay guest communications to the man- agement team accessing reports and figures from wherever they are. “We will also see more of what are now third-


party apps being made available as standard functionality in the PMS instead. Housekeep- ing apps, guest communication and upselling will all be possible from the PMS directly.”


Technology Prospectus 2020 | 51


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