Have Better Control over Your Hotel Chain’s Reservation Process with SkyRes

Apart from a Hotel ERP to manage entire operations, hoteliers also are looking at several other platforms to attract guests and sell more rooms to stay profitable. And in a continent like Africa, where the hotel industry has ample scope to grow, cutting edge hospitality technology plays major role.

One such hospitality technology platform that has become operationally imperative in today’s competitive hotel business is a Central Reservation System (CRS). CRS acts as the central hub for all the properties in a chain spread across locations. As the name suggests, a CRS effectively centralizes the property wise reservation related data from the property management system, call center and phone reservation system.

Significance of CRS for Chain Hotels in Africa

Hotel industry across the African continent is set to grow in near future. Undersupply of quality hotel rooms in such a vast region is the main reason for this prediction. Riding high on the back of Africa’s strong tourism prospects, several globally leading hotel chains are investing heavily across the region. Around 270 hotel chains with over 30,000 rooms are expected to be added to the continent’s existing inventory in near future.

Review SkyRes

Looking at the inevitable further growth in chain hotels, it is quite advisable for hoteliers to adopt a smart Central Reservation System like SkyRes from IDS Next. This cloud based central reservation system has the capability to support multiple properties in a chain or group in making reservation and managing inventory and rates quite efficiently. Implemented at the chain hotel’s central reservation office, SkyRes centralizes and organizes reservations, guest information and inventory related data in one place for easy access and management. Most importantly, it acts as the central reservation office and delivers bookings to multiple properties in a chain.

For chain hotels, SkyRes, a cloud based CRS built on Microsoft’s Azure platform ensures that all bookings made across properties are accurately captured in the PMS. It integrates seamlessly with FortuneNEXT 6i Hotel ERP and offers users a real-time, best in class, end-to-end reservation solution. It also provides users a dashboard which displays the status of critical KPIs including availability, rates, reservations, travel agent and corporate performance and revenue generation reports etc. Skyres enables users to achieve higher conversions in direct booking thereby benefitting the hotel to maintain profitability. It is also a scalable platform that allows integration of a wide variety of systems ranging from revenue management, BI tools, CRM and mobility etc.

Receive bookings from across the globe

For your chain hotel operating in Africa, SkyRes provides the ultimate platform to receive bookings from across the globe. SkyRes allows the chain hotel’s central reservation office to assign travel agents (including OTAs) separate log-ins to receive booking from a growing number of audiences. Even the hotel’s CRO can assign log-ins to Corporate Organizations and empower them to book rooms as per their requirements.

Hotels using SkyRes will have the option to allocate rooms to travel agents, tour operators and corporates. Plus, hotels can also analyse the performance of travel agents, tour operators and

Corporates. TA allocation enables the hotel to take advantage of its distressed inventory and identify effective TA/TO through productivity reports.

Itinerary booking

With SkyRes in place, users can accept bookings for multiple properties in one go. When a guest wants to book multiple hotels in a chain, the central reservation office can take the guest information once and go ahead with the itinerary booking.

Hotel users, travel agents, tour operators and corporates can take advantage of the itinerary booking function to make reservations with multi properties in distributed geographies within the group. Thus it helps them to avoid booking individual hotels. Also chain hotels operating in Africa will have the option to promote additional customized services as non-room items like spa, gym, safari visits directly to their customers.

Set BAR rate to boost room sales

SkyRes users will have the ability to define Best Available Rate (BAR) and create reservation across all the properties. This helps hotels sell maximum rooms by attracting more customers. With this, hotels can have the ability to create rates on the fly for selected or all properties within the group to take advantage of the demand based pricing. Users can also set daily rates based on week days and weekends and special occasions.

Additionally, users can preview a set of operational reports in the SkyRes dashboard including amend/cancel arrival report, booking details report, collection summary report, expected arrival report, group arrival report, no show report, productivity report and reservation departures etc.

Debi Prasad Sarangi handles Corporate Communications at Ids Next Business Solutions, a global leader in the domain of hospitality technology solutions.