Dear WuBookers,
as you know by now, a PMS is an indispensable tool for those in the hospitality industry. Indeed, running a hotel, B&B or vacation home full-time without adequate technological support risks creating disruptions for guests and generating wasted time and money for operators. Equally important, however, is making sure that the management software of choice is adaptable to the needs of the property and its customers. In this article we focus precisely on the importance of hotel PMS customization. 

Hotel and Property Management Software: an indispensable tool

PMS (acronym for Property Management System) is a piece of software that helps hotels, B&Bs, and properties in general to carry out all ordinary and extraordinary activities: from rate setting, sales management, room assignment, and housekeeping planning.

Technology designed to meet the needs of the industry, streamlining processes and making management easier, with positive effects on operations and profits. Provided, however, that it is easy to use and is tailored to the property.

The benefits of PMS customization

The benefits of a customized PMS are many:

• allows a more streamlined use of the software itself, avoiding technical hiccups or unnecessary steps, because it is responsive to the real needs of those who need to use it; 
• allows you to make the most of its potential, optimizing the investment made in its activation; 
• Reduces time spent by Staff in conversely time-consuming operations;
• as a result, it increases the profitability of the tool and the hotel staff, who can then deal with all those activities that can hardly be delegated to software.  

But what exactly does PMS customization consist of and how does it occur in practical terms? Let’s look at it by taking Zak, WuBook’s hospitality property management software, as an example.

Zak by WuBook: the all-in-one property-friendly PMS

Zak is the all-in-one management software for hotels, B&Bs and vacation rentals that helps you take full control of your property. A control that also comes from the possibilities offered by the platform such as: front-end and back-end customization, automation of repetitive operations, reporting with advanced statistics, and accessibility from any device.   

Platform customization 

Among the key factors in choosing the right PMS is also ease of use. An aspect that stems, on the one hand, from the macroscopic, cross-cutting settings of the PMS, such as the possible functionalities and their ease of execution. On the other, it also depends on the flexibility of the software, that is, its ability to adapt to modes of use customized to the needs of each hotelier or property manager.

WuBook’s Zak is built with clear and intuitive interfaces that speed up the retrieval of information and the performance of daily activities. Moreover, it provides the ability to take action on dashboards, or control panels (also called “dashboards”) related to various operations, to view and process only the data relevant at that moment or in general for the property.
This can relate, for example, to the reservation calendar (filterable as needed), but also to customer lists or performance metrics.  

Moreover, with the Hotel estimator it is possible to structure complete and effective quotes that are perfectly coordinated with the image of the property.

Automation of recurrent tasks 

Recurring activities in a hotel or B&B are numerous and affect both operations and business strategy. The first group includes, for example, housekeeping management. This includes daily scheduling of shifts, any overtime cleaning, and implementation of automatic notifications to and from the front desk when employees are finished. 

Even some guest interactions can be automated: in fact, Zak allows for the creation of personalized communications (which can also be created from scratch with the support of built-in artificial intelligence) that can be sent automatically depending on the actions taken by the guests. An option that relieves staff of manual operations, ensuring timeliness and consistency in terms of style and content. Particularly effective, for example, is the sending of emails requesting feedbacks – an action that is often overlooked due to shortcoming of time, but which can significantly affect the perception of the property and the generation of new reservations. 

Advanced statistics

Customized automated rules can moreover relate to setting rates and derivations, but also to the processing of periodic reports. Drawing directly from data collected by the PMS in fact eliminates the risk of human error and, therefore, potentially incorrect evaluations.
After defining which metrics are of most interest and configuring the basic cons. eguence report, the hotelier can decide what data to view and export documentation.

Accessibility from any device

Roles and organization also affect how the PMS is accessed: there are those who will prefer to use it from PCs (Receptionists and Directors, for example) and those who will use it more often from smartphones or tablets (cleaners, but also customers who make online payments while on the road). Zak is software programmed to be 100% usable from any device thanks to user-friendly graphic settings that adapt to different screens. Customizing the experience is a key aspect of ensuring that everything works well and that all services are delivered – and enjoyed – correctly.

5 more features that make a difference 

These are just a few aspects that impact the extent to which the PMS can be adapted to each property’s needs, but Zak offers at least as many that can make a difference in terms of usability and efficiency: 

• Differentiated permissions for different users. Not everyone who works with the PMS is interested in all features (or not everyone needs access to everything). Zak allows unique credentials to be created for each user with full permission or limited to only certain areas; 
• Multi-language and multicurrency. We mentioned just above the importance of personalization of the experience for operators and especially for customers. An ever-expected and trending prerogative throughout 2024, it also comes through the ability to interact with the system in one’s own language and to be able to pay in one’s own currency; 
• online check-in, to simplify and speed up property arrival and payment, relieving hotel staff of a chore and reducing waits at the front desk for guests. When a new reservation is made by Staff or directly by the guest through the hotel website, Zak generates a link that can be sent to the guest for them to enter the necessary information to proceed; 
• overbooking detection. Overbookings can be the result of a precise strategy or an unfortunate fluke: in either case, it is also important to govern it through immediate notifications, sent by the system when it detects an overlap of reservations for the same accommodation on the same dates. Moreover, to reduce the risk of overbooking, Zak performs quick updates between all sales platforms and the availability calendar. 

Last but not least, customer care. Whatever the pricing plan, Zak provides initial technical support (for account opening and initial configuration according to the hotelier’s needs) and ongoing, free of charge. The support team is available 7 days a week via email with average response times of one hour. A valuable resource, available to all, that contributes to the optimal functioning of the tool and, consequently, to the property’s performance.
These are just some of the features included in Zak: to learn more, we invite you to request a free trial to see if it is the PMS for you.