Owning your guest data is the key to cultivating loyalty and increasing your revenue. As you begin budgeting for next year, take the opportunity to evaluate how technology can help you meet and surpass objectives. When considering solutions, it’s critical to have purpose-built hospitality solutions that integrate with your existing systems. The right solution should also allow you with actionable, easy-to-digest reporting. 

Use these 5 questions to help you determine what your needs are and how the right technology can best support you. 

1. Is your vendor easy to work with, cost-effective, and meeting your needs? 

Let’s face it, hoteliers are always busy. If you have to spend a lot of time with your vendor to get things right, you’re wasting valuable time and you may also be overspending. 

If your vendor charges for every add-on service, like integration with core systems or email template creation, your actual costs become more difficult to project. 

2. How quickly does your vendor respond to your requests? 

Depending on your location and needs, your team may require different levels of support. If your vendor can’t meet your requirements regardless of language, geography or function, your service level agreements (SLAs) suffer. You may want to re-evaluate how well your systems can continue to grow with you. The right vendor will have the support systems in place to help your users get up to speed quickly and resolve problems in a timely fashion. 

3. Are you able to easily gather and report on your guest data, particularly if it’s scattered across multiple systems?

If you can’t easily connect your PMS data to your guest profile, you’re missing an opportunity to glean insights that increase loyalty and drive revenue. How helpful would it be to view guest stay data side by side with guest survey results? Reporting out on this and other aspects should be easy to do whether you’re creating canned reports, custom dashboards, or custom reports.

4. How long does it take you to build and launch an email marketing campaign? 

If it takes you weeks to launch a simple email marketing campaign, you’re missing out on revenue opportunities like last-minute campaigns. This is something you should be able to do within hours with simple, drag and drop solutions. If you have to use a vendor to create marketing templates, you’re paying unnecessarily for something that should never take days or weeks. Long lead times for marketing to past customers and prospects can significantly impact your business. It’s also important to be able to easily segment your audience for campaigns and track direct revenue contribution for each campaign you run. 

5. How disruptive are software upgrades to your organization? 

If upgrades to your guest feedback or marketing software involve a lot of planning, your team is spending too much precious time on vendor issues. Look for vendors who deliver upgrades seamlessly and take the headache out of managing your technology stack. Any vendor should also support your team with training on new features.