Some Benefits of SmartRooms for Hotels are listed below.
Normally, a hotel’s website has an online form where guests enter the dates they will be staying at the hotel and optionally enter their credit card details. The credit card is then manually swiped by the hotel.
The major disadvantage of using a form based reservation system is that guests do not know if a room is available or unavailable when they are requesting the booking.
Other disadvantages are:
1. Time delay before rooms can be confirmed.
2. Multiple emails have to be exchanged between guests and the reservations team.
3. Advance booking amount is not taken by the hotel and this leads to a total loss incase of a no-show by the guest.
4. Credit card details are requested from the guest either through email or fax and many guests are hesitant to send these details fearing misuse.
ADVANTAGES
• ONLINE ROOM RESERVATION. More people are using the Internet to confirm travel bookings and prefer to deal directly with hotels by using online reservation systems such as SmartRooms. You can take advantage of the Internet Boom and ensure more room sales for your hotel.
• ZERO COMMISSIONS ON ROOM BOOKINGS – SmartRooms is sold on a per-room/year license basis. i.e a fixed fee. This includes all support, future upgrades, hosting support and emails. You do not have to pay commissions on room sales. Whether your website generates INR 10,00,000 or INR 200,00,000 sales per year, you benefit from our solution for a fixed annual license fee.
• PROVIDE ROOM AVAILABILITY AT A GLANCE. Your guests can view the unavailable/available status of rooms at a glance and proceed ahead for booking.
• INSTANT BOOKING CONFIRMATION FOR GUESTS. Successful Bookings made through SmartRooms are confirmed immediately. You get a email as well as all the reservation details as well as payment transaction details are entered into the database.
• COLLECT PAYMENTS THROUGH YOUR WEBSITE. There is NO third party travel website/agency involvement. You collect all guest payments directly from the payment gateway provider.
• SAVE COMMISSIONS. Guests book directly with you. You save on commissions paid to Travel agents/ portals as well as get paid directly by the payment gateway.
• SAVE CREDIT CARD TRANSACTION FEES. OFFLINE CREDIT CARD TRANSACTION FEES ARE MORE CHEAPER THATN ONLINE CREDIT CARD TRANSACTION FEES DUE TO THE HIGH RISK ONVOIVED IN ONLINE CREDIT CARD TRANSACTIONS. Offline credit card transaction fees are lower than online credit card transaction fees and the difference can be as high as 2%. Your guests can book rooms for multiple nights. Your SmartRooms enabled reservation process will charge for 1 nights stay only during the booking process. The balance is collected by you at the Hotel. This results in a huge saving in bank transaction fees.
• MANAGE ROOM RATES AND AVAILABILITY You control your room rates and availability on a day to day basis. Block/Unblock Room Inventory using the SmartRooms admin interface. You do not have to ask your web-designer to update your room rates. You can update them yourself by using the SmartRooms Admin Control Panel.
• NO-SHOW PROTECTION. Guests booking through corporate houses normally do not pay a booking amount and in case of a No-Show the hotel has to suffer a loss. You can redirect all bookings that carry a risk of loss through SmartRooms to ensure that 1 nights payment is received by the hotel in advance.
• INCREASES DIRECT SALES. Increase direct sales by providing your guests the convenience of selecting available rooms, make payment and receive instant email confirmation.
• SAVE TIME Your reservation staff does not have to exchange time-consuming emails and faxes with your guests as the booking process is completed automatically.
• ROOM INVENTORY You can easily set a maximum allotment of available room type. For E.g. 10 Standard Rooms and 20 Superior Rooms can be entered into the inventory.
• AVAILABILITY STATUS. The guest is NEVER shown the number of rooms available as this may influence/delay his booking decision. Only available/unavailable status per room is shown.
• SELL ADDITIONAL ITEMS. Additional Items such as Airport Pickup services can be easily entered through the admin interface. The guest can request and pay for these items during the booking process.
• ADDITIONAL GUEST CHARGE. Additional Adult or Child guests within the same room can be charged extra as per the Room Type.
• ADMIN INTERFACE. You can easily manage your online reservation system through the SmartRooms admin control panel which is very simple and convenient to operate and requires only basic computer skills. You can manage room types and inventory, manage prices, manage guests, view orders, view transaction details, manage additional items, view cancellations, block rooms, unblock rooms and generate reports etc.
• BRANDING. SmartRooms can easily be blended into your Web site to maintain the look and feel and reinforce your brand.
• HIGH SPEED WEB SERVERS. Your reservation system is hosted on high speed Dual Xeon Servers hosted at ‘The Planet’ Datacenter – World’s no. 1 privately held Data Center.
• FREE HOSTING*. Your website is hosted free of cost on our servers. You do not have to pay additional fees for hosting your website. You get 500 MB of disk space with the world’s most advanced hosting control panel – cPanel.
• FREE EMAILS WITH SPAM/ANTI-VIRUS PROTECTION*. Your hosting space includes 100 Email Ids which come with Spam and Anti-Virus protection. You also get a webmail interface to check emails from multiple locations. You can easily manage your email accounts with the world’s most advanced hosting control panel – cPanel.
* SMARTROOMS IS INSTALLED ON OUR SERVERS AND IS CURRENTLY OFFERRED WITH COMPLIMENTARY 500 MB HOSTING SPACE. THIS OFFER MAY BE WITHDRAWN WITHOUT NOTICE.
