How To Save Time Managing Hotel Distribution for Your Independent Hotel

You most likely decided to own an independent hotel for many reasons – the enjoyment of meeting new people, your love of sharing your home and city with visitors, and your desire to increase your income. But odds are pretty high that none of your reasons involved spending hours stuck in front of a computer trying to get technology to work, be it your website, social media, or the booking engines.

Like many independent hotel owners, you probably had no idea when you welcomed your first guest how much time was involved in hotel marketing, distribution, analysis, bookings and everything in between.

However, the solution isn’t spending more time hunkered in front of the screen. Instead, small hotels and B&B owners can now turn to an all-in-one management system to handle everything efficiently.

Here are four benefits to using such a solution to handle the technology for your independent hotel:

1. Spend More Time with Your Guests

The personal attention you give your guests is one of the most important services you provide during their stay, and it’s likely the reason why many guests return year after year. Every minute you spend managing your technology is time not spent creating a memorable experience for each person staying with you.

Do you want your guests to tell their friends and family about how you went the extra mile to cater to dietary requests and recommended the perfect outing for their family?

2. Increase Your Productivity

Each minute you spend on technology is time that could better spent doing what only you can do—providing top-level service to your guests. Independent hotel owners who use fully integrated distribution platforms may find their never-ending to-do lists are finally reduced.

Here are just a few ways independent hoteliers see increased productivity:

• Changes and updates require less time because of intuitive dashboards
• Make changes only once and the content is synchronized on all channels
• Reduce time-consuming marketing efforts by increased exposure through better search engine optimization
• Save time spent updating OTAs
• Reduce overbookings

3. Increase your Direct Bookings

Every owner should be proud of their property and want to show it off on their own website, creating a mix between direct bookings and using OTAs for the full billboard effect. What if you could have a sleek, stylish and practical website without needing to know any code? Independent hoteliers are now using all-in-one systems to create their dream website for their hotel, add a booking engine and all with just a few clicks. Another way to save time and money.

4. Increase Your Time Management Ability

One of the most frustrating parts of technology is that you never know when things are going to break and how long it will take to fix them. This means that when you manage your own technology, you have less control of your time. And it’s very likely that the things that suffer are your own free time or the personalised attention you give through spending time with guests.

Let’s say you’re experiencing an issue with the online booking engine on your website that is causing guests to be unable to book rooms. You think it’s a quick fix, but you spend hours trying to solve the issue. This causes the rest of your day’s plans to get pushed back, meaning that you may be up late at night baking tomorrow’s cookies instead of spending time with your family or sleeping.

Yes, it’s a cliché, but people say “time is money” because it’s true, especially as a small business owner. And as an inn owner, the attention and service you give your guests is the most important task you do every day.

Discover more about DerbySoft’s all-in-one solution, One, and how we can help you find more time in your day for the things important to you and your business.