Automated Hotel Booking
Automation is a technique, method, or system of operating or controlling a process by automatic means usually by electronic devices. If you are someone who spends most of their day doing administrative tasks. You can recognise the value of having more time to grow the business rather than running the business. Automation provides you more time to focus on what you need to do rather than doing the tasks that a computer could do for you.
Buzzy trends like automation include chatbots and artificial intelligence that make life easier because it is technologically dependent. Some customers feel that they are not being listened to, but with proper automation in place, the customer journey is faster and much more efficient.
We sometimes worry about the time it takes to automate tasks and think that it is faster to just do the task yourself. It is surprising to conclude that most of the time, automation tasks are more cost-effective to automate than to simply do the task manually. Especially repetitive tasks. To deepen our understanding of making automation work for those in the hospitality sector like hotels, here’s how to think about automation and its impact on hospitality.
Automation refers to any technology intervention that reduces or eliminates tedious tasks done by humans. In its broadest sense, automation performs tasks that used to be done by people. We are continuously innovating so our knowledge about the technology changes and improves over time. Automation may also refer to autonomous decision-making to do things that humans were never able to, such as analyzing massive data sets and continuously improving forecasts, recommendations, and actions.
Gains of an Automated Hotel Booking System:
1. Faster sales – a sense of immediacy and urgency is critical to a tourism business’ survival. That is why travel agencies need to automate things to speed up their process which include reservation management, creation of tours and travel packages, booking of travel products, and communication with suppliers. An ideal travel management process is one that could cover the entire sales process, ensure a wide choice of inventory options, and provide the smoothest transaction experience for employees and their customers. Having an automated hotel booking would help them speed up their system to ensure guests have a reserved room for their trip.
2. Quick Response- for travel agencies, tour-operators, or other businesses in hospitality, online inquiries are where they get the most business from. The faster these get processed, the more sales they generate. Sales may be hampered when communication has a barrier. Barriers and blocks cause companies to lose many potential clients. Automated communications can solve the problem, being able to reply to customers 24/7 in a fast, efficient and clear manner.
3. Increased efficiency – with automated communications and sales operations, employees can handle more leads and bookings. This means companies can do more business with the same staff.
Hotel marketing for COVID-19 will benefit by showing clear safety guidelines are in place to website visitors and having an online booking is a big step to reduce physical interaction with their clients. As the 2019 Coronavirus continues to threaten the lives of the people worldwide, along with other variants of the virus on the rise, it is getting more difficult for hotels to keep up doing business in the middle of the pandemic. Months ago, the United Kingdom expected 85 percent of hotels to re-open after the lockdown measures due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) were lifted.
