There's a now-legendary story among Polish hoteliers about how a mountain accommodation facility almost completely ruined its holiday season because someone had lost their current booking log. The resort management decided that the lesser evil would be to close the reception desk to accept new orders and serve those who arrived. Apparently, after some calculations, a sharp reduction in guest numbers was "better" than a potential overbooking. In the age of global networks and the increasing role of online sources in generating tourist traffic, the risk of overlapping bookings has increased even more.
As the saying goes: every rose has its thorns. However, the game is definitely worth the effort, as an active online presence can increase occupancy—and therefore revenue—even several times over. Especially during the off-season. With a paper travel booking log, you have to be prepared for the fact that the staff simply won't have time to "check out" the room you've just booked in the administration panel (or extranet) of the booking service before someone else is tempted by an interesting offer. Therefore, investing in a properly equipped system is crucial. hotel program is the only viable option. All that remains is to decide which specific IT solution for the hotel business to implement.
Here it is worth taking a closer look at NFHotel
It's important to note from the outset that launching an interactive digital travel booking journal is just one of the many possibilities that an advanced computer system should offer. The more options within a unified environment, the more efficient the entire system will be. Therefore, it's crucial that a multifunctional hotel schedule be integrated with channel manager, responsible for instant availability synchronization across all distribution channels. The reality of the OTA market is that the connection to booking.com is paramount. CMs from different manufacturers achieve widely varying update times, with the average being around 60 seconds. It's a long time – while some channel managers download and send information after 3 minutes, NFHotel achieves results of 5-8 seconds.
Tourist booking journal as a reception machine
The help of OTAs can be invaluable for hoteliers, but a much better solution is to acquire customers directly. Naturally, since the Dutch at Booking.com want to be offered the same prices as tourists calling the reception, there's no need to pay a commission. Therefore, a decent accommodation website should have online bookings. This element of travel booking logs is technically called booking engineThe principle behind this is that the program behaves a bit like a robot receptionist, working diligently 24/7 (and for a meager wage, usually a subscription fee). For tourists, this solution is just as convenient as OTAs: they can book whenever they feel like it. It's also great for hoteliers, as they can easily increase the share of direct bookings by placing the module on their website or social media.
NFHotel gives more than just boosting sales
Now that we've thoroughly covered the hottest aspects of advanced travel booking logs, it's time to explore the other benefits of specialized hotel and reception software. There are plenty of specific examples, so here are just brief descriptions. First: sending emails to guests. Essential for completing formalities (confirmation of reservations and payments) and strictly marketing activitiesNFHotel provides a tool for creating templates with keys, which are converted into personalized content based on the customer, reservation number, etc. No more lengthy rewriting. Secondly: organization cleaning rooms. It is enough to introduce the rules of order once, and the hotel program will generate appropriate reports itself. Similarly, in the tourist booking journal it works foodThird: financial settlements. From tracking every payment and reservation, through statistical analyses to profiling customer preferences, up to creating VAT invoices and exporting them to the standard control file format, adaptable by accounting software.
The travel booking log is the most important, but not the only, highly useful feature in a hotel program. NFHotel from the Polish company NetFactory is the best proof of this.