Future Digital Side of Hospitality Industry

Initially, Hospitality (hotel, restaurant, and catering) business was in no hurry to introduce any modern technologies until 2020 arrived. It was crowned with a turbulent start and became an impetus for making decisions beyond traditional foundations. Now, to adapt to the online life realities, many spheres are turning to innovative contactless technologies.

Online ordering and table reservation systems, contactless payment, inventory management, and kitchen operations automation – find out more about what Hospitality software we used in 2020 and what is at the top this year.

Hotel business

For hoteliers, it is not an easy time, when they made every effort to struggle for survival. Technologies became the key to improving the guest service quality and ultimately led to increased profits, even led to keeping afloat in such a difficult time. IDeaS Revenue Solutions is a product for revenue management. It provides the following features: 

• RevPAR maximizing 
• market trends analytics
• accurate forecasting of income indicators
• business mix optimization
• automatization of pricing and data analysis.

Atomize is an alternative to the previous one and includes:

• group pricing
• getting price recommendations
• rooms tariff automatic updating
• business analytics and reporting
• the entire hotel portfolio management.

Mews Systems is the best operation software with such characteristics:

• keeping a real estate portfolio in one system
• centralized management of group bookings
• integrated secure payments
• customer support automation
• business analytics
• API for communication and innovation
• revenue management optimization.

Revinate (Revinate Marketing) has an excellent email marketing software that includes:

• advertising mailing
• email automation
• email editor and access to over one million images
• track campaign results with digestible, real-time reports
• CTA buttons tracking.

Catering

The catering sector market in the US has fallen in price. In order not to stay in business, many entrepreneurs cardinally changed their management strategy, namely to integrate partners and start new cooperation forms. They also had to resort to introducing new technical functionality.

FoodStorm holds a leading position in catering management and administration. It has such  key functions:

• CRM, which provides and keeps sales history, upcoming orders and important customer data setting online orders for delivery, and pickup on a personalized website
• order tracking
• automatic reporting
• integration with top-notch systems such as Google, Ncr, Sap Mailchimp, Xero, Microsoft Dynamics, and others
• payment and billing.

Crafty is a unique software that allows remote workers to manage Kitchen & Pantry, Events & Happy Hour, Catering & Lunch, and In-Office Cafes. Also, the support service works closely with the user. What makes this platform different from others:

• budget management
• optimized product search by label
• task control
• inventory center
• creating payment profiles, budgets, invoices
• employee exploration.

Amadeus Sales & Event Management – Advanced is a cloud platform offering a services package in 30 languages and 160 currencies. It’s a sales and event management solution. Its functionality includes:

• customer relationship management
• communication with staff
• profile automation
• business performance measuring
• CRM management
• menu planning
• file and content management
• integration with other business solutions.

Restaurant business

Meanwhile, we propose to consider the latest technological progress of the recent years.

POS software saves you a lot of trouble and inconvenience in the restaurant, sales, and delivery management system. Often, programs offer a list of similar features. Next, let’s take a look at the best ones.

Toast POS is a complex management system for a restaurant, pizzeria, nightclub, bar. It optimizes client and back-office processes:

• provides for the separation of menus and accounts between clients
• sends a notification about the readiness of the order
• processes payments and printing receipts
• has customer management tools
• tracks staff performance
• defines the bestsellers
• has a restaurant digital ordering kiosk system

Revel Systems POS is a complete restaurant management system:

• has built-in CRM for customer profiles
• conducts inventory at the ingredient level
• creates a menu
• has numerous financial instruments
• satisfies franchise and network needs
• automatically syncs updates
• provides customer relationship management
• builds a discounts’ system.

Sapaad is the most convenient application for monitoring points of sale:

• personnel management
• home delivery control
• integrated call center and online ordering modules
• kitchen showcase
• food ordering platform integration
• customer database
• real-time analytics and reporting.

What will be the Hospitality software trends in coming years?

Hotel business

According to AHLA data, the pandemic has severely damaged the hospitality industry. For example, during this period, companies had to cut their workforce by 4 million jobs. The unemployment rate was 18.9%. Of course, this year is expected to be reversed in the form of filling 200,000 jobs, but you need to be prepared for the fact that half of the hotel rooms in the United States will be empty.

Business travel has become less frequent, although it’s certainly the largest revenue source for hotels. Nevertheless, the forecasts remain quite positive: about 26% of people plan to make a business trip in the first half of the year, 36% – in the second half, and more than 20% – in a year. Leisure travel is expected to become more popular: 56% of Americans are likely to travel on their vacation. To keep you afloat, here is the top business process automation software.

Cloudbeds PMS is a cloud-based property management system. Its functionality includes:

• centralized user and role management
• integrated CRS
• booking management
• payment control
• RevPar and ADR reports
• automatic night audit
• group functionality
• multi-currency.

RoomRaccoon HMS is the best all-in-one hotel management software. What makes it user-friendly:

• real estate and booking management system
• website development
• revenue management
• price intelligence
• gift certificates
• cleaning control.

ALICE Guest Services is your hotel reception, which allows you not only to track complaints, satisfy guests needs as quickly as possible but also to conduct other functions:

• reservation
• lost things finding
• transporting
• smart supplier database availability
• query management.

Catering

The fear of Covid-19 contracting has become the main trouble of entrepreneurs in the catering industry. That’s why, for this sphere, the most important is the software implementation providing the safety of the event.

Amadeus Sales & Event Management continues to be at the top. It’s a comprehensive solution containing sales, marketing, and catering systems for small and large businesses. Its alternatives are Oracle Hospitality OPERA Sales and Catering and Total Party Planner, which we’ll consider further.

Oracle Hospitality OPERA Sales and Catering is a full-featured client and event management application. It provides the following options:

• booking multiple events/conference halls
• quick menu creation
• finance analytics
• internal communications and planning
• wide range of reporting capabilities.

Total Party Planner is a program for catering and banquet management providing:

• CRM
• reporting
• events calendar
• tasks tracker due to their priority
• calculator of the product costs
• profitability estimation.

Restaurant business

There is good news: the restaurant business is restoring. In 2021, the industry is projected to grow by 10.2%, which is $ 548.3 billion. The “deferred” demand last year is offset, and consumers aren’t worried that due to the impact of inflation, table service will increase by 7.6%. The business group, which includes bars and taverns, will see an explosion in sales of 80.2%, although it has been the most affected. People miss restaurants a lot: about 83% of American adults said they didn’t eat there as often as they would like.

To maintain such positive statistics, you’d automate all processes as much as possible. Consider further which software is at the top this year.

Toast continues to dominate in 2021. We’ve already spoken about it earlier. Alternatively, you can use POSist Restaurant POS and Lightspeed Restaurant. Let’s consider them in detail.

POSist Restaurant POS is a cloud-based software that works offline and online. It includes:

• CRM system
• reporting
• business analytics
• billing
• inventory management.

LightSpeed Restaurant is a platform that deserves attention. It fully automates business management and provides:

• secure contactless payment
• making adjustments to floor planning
• serving with delivery and pickup
• reporting tools
• specific branded screen for the client
• selling of goods through the e-commerce platform
• editing the menu.

Now the software is maximally focused on usability and automation processes for both consumers and entrepreneurs. Contactless management of personnel and clients will become a trend this year, and it’ll also reduce the likelihood for clients to become ill. The pandemic has proven that the Hospitality industry could stay strong and survive difficult times. Yes, it suffered big losses and also huge staff reduction. Such a change has toughened true fighters-entrepreneurs up – they succeeded in adapting to the current environment and remain flexible. By introducing new software, the only thing that connects the consumer and the industry, there is a chance for both to revive. Depending on the Hospitality needs, different software functionality might be required. That’s why business owners may ask developers to modify some options or create new programs from scratch.