Launching “StayAhead”: Hotel Guest Experience Management Platform

Many of the eyebrow-raising scenes that we have seen in older James Bond movies have become a reality nowadays. Technology has been put on steroids in the last five years to add significant value to our lives.This applies to travel industry too, especially the hospitality industry.

Guests are expecting to manage their end to end stay with technology, they would like their mobile phone to do everything for them.

A guest opens his/her mobile phone to make hotel reservation for a same day check-in. Gets into the car and speaks (via Android Auto or Apple CarPlay) to the car to show driving direction to the hotel. While the guest is taking a break at a highway restaurant, the guest check-ins to the hotel room and sends an instant message to the hotel requesting to keep some Darjeeling Tea sachet in the room. Read more

By: Karthick Prabu
Published in: IDS Next Blog

How positive guest experience impacts a hotel’s revenue?

Guest experience is the culmination of a series of interactions and services offered by a hotel to its guests. Being a part of guest facing industry, hotels must offer top class services to their guests. Converting a guest to a “happy-guest” has a chain reaction of positive actions.

Happy guests become a hotel’s brand ambassadors. They write positive feedback across online review sites. They share their experience with friends and family. Thus, they influence potential buyers’ booking decision, too. Moreover, positive experience makes a guest loyal to the hotel brand. Apart from recommending the hotel to others, a loyal guest comes back to the property, thus helping the hotel generate more revenue (at zero further acquisition cost). In short, quality guest experience creates happy guests and in turn, happy guests do create happy hotels ($). Read More

By: Debi Prasad Sarangi
Published in: IDS Next Blog 

The growing importance of hotel channel management

Despite all the complexities in the hotel business, hotels should attract guests; sell more rooms to drive revenue. But then, how do they do it when many buyers today rely heavily on hundreds of OTAs to find the right hotel? Well, the answer is simple. Hotels must have an enhanced online presence. This means, hotels must be visible on online platforms to attract the attention of potential bookers. This is where; a hotel channel management solution can help users quite effectively. Read More

By: Manoj Mohanty

Published in: IDS Next

IDS Next CEO Mr. Binu Mathews' elaborate Q&A featured in Curiosity Middle East magazine. Read on to know more about IDS Next's wide range of hospitality technology solutions for hotels across Middle East. 

Tell us briefly about IDS Next?

We are a globally leading hospitality technology solutions provider with decades of domain authority. We understand the technological requirements of hotels across segments/categories and offer them the right solution to increase revenues, decrease costs and above all provide enhanced guest experience. Be it a large independent hotel, chain hotel, boutique & resort or small hotel, we have solution for all of them. Read More

Published in: CuriosityMiddle East

LOOKING FOR WAYS TO BOOST DIRECT BOOKINGS AT YOUR HOTEL?

OTAs help hotels sell more rooms to a wide-range of travelers from across the globe. They connect millions of travelers to hotels via online booking platforms every year, which is good for hotels. But, hoteliers feel the heat while paying out a huge sum of their earnings to them as commission charges. This surely impacts their profit margin. In this case, hotels must consider adopting various ways to get more direct bookings without paying commission to OTAs. Read MoreBy: Nandika UdupihillaPublished in: IDS Next 

HOW IMPORTANT IS ONLINE REPUTATION MANAGEMENT FOR HOTELS?

Guest reviews written across online platforms have become quite important these days. Due to its impact on a hotel’s brand value, hoteliers must have an effective online reputation management strategy. Adoption of online reputation management plan supports hotels to manage and respond to online reviews. Read More

Published in: IDS NextBy: Jacob KI

USING THE RIGHT HOSPITALITY TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS? ASK YOUR GUESTS!

Hotel industry is undergoing a technology driven transformation. Today’s smart hospitality technology solutions not only helps hoteliers automate operations, it also helps them serve their guests better. Hoteliers can adopt various hospitality technology solutions to achieve required operational automation. Read More

By: Varadharajan Athmanathan 

Published in: IDS Next 

IDS NEXT ROLLS OUT GST CPMPLIANT HOTEL ERP

To help hotels in India to adhere to upcoming GST norms, hospitality technology provider IDS Next, as rolled out a GST compliant version of its Hotel ERP Software. “The Goods and Services Tax Council has already finalised GST rates for hotels and restaurants and as a leading technology partner for hotels, we have introduced FortuneNEXT 6.5 which is the latest version of our Hotel ERP that is GST compliant,” said Manoj Kumar Mohanty, senior vice president – sales, South Asia and Southeast Asia, IDS Next. Read More

Published in: Food & Hospitality World 

SIGNIFICANCE OF RESTAURANT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Be it a fine dining restaurant, F&B or QSR outlet, the restaurant industry in general has been impacted by many technology solutions. These solutions are essential to automate operations and to serve their patrons efficiently. Therefore, operators are now keen on adopting technology solutions including restaurant management system and e-menu app. Read More

By: Manoj Mohanty

Published in: IDS Next

HOW DO SMART TRAVELERS FIND THE RIGHT HOTEL?

Today’s travelers are smart and they explore many options before selecting a hotel. They leverage the power of internet to find out accommodation options and to visit the hotels’ websites to know more about their amenities. Most importantly, they spend lot of time reading online guest reviews. Read More

By: Jacob K I

Published In: IDS Next

TOP 4 CHALLENGES FOR THE HOTEL INDUSTRY AND HOW TO HANDLE THEM

Being a part of 24/7 guest facing service business, hotel industry world-wide faces many critical issues on daily basis. Right from handling operations to serving guests, hoteliers have to handle numerous bottlenecks. For example, they sometimes have to make their guests wait for longer time due to the absence of right technology to speed up the check-in process.

Here are top 4 issues impacting the performance of the hotel industry across the globe. Hotels across segments and offerings face these issues – Read More

By: Manoj Mohanty

Published in: IDS Next

DOES YOUR HOTEL PMS SOFTWARE HELP YOU BECOME GST COMPLIANT?

Come July, India will witness a new and unified system of tax structure in the form of Goods and Services Tax (GST). Like any other industry, hotel industry too is preparing itself to operate as per this new taxation regime. And as a leading Hotel PMS Software we at IDS Next have also been working relentlessly to help hotels in their pursuit to become GST compliant.

Trouble with the existing taxation system

Presently the hotel industry is affected by multiple tax structures like service tax, luxury tax and VAT, levied by both central government and respective state government. For example, VAT varies from state to state and luxury tax depends on the proportion of the room tariff. Service tax depends on the types of services provided by the hotel. This leads to confusion as sometimes the same service or product gets taxed under multiple heads and multiple times. This leads to higher taxation which goes up to 27%. Additionally, some of the input tax from central and state taxes can’t be set-off against other taxes. In other words, this leads to a cascading effect. Read More

By: Manoj Mohanty
Published In: IDS Next