Reservation\Inn management system - ideas?

I’ve been considering building a reservation management system and thought I’d float the idea here to see what reception it gets. I’d also be love to hear from anyone about any areas that you find annoying when it comes to running an Inn that I might be able to help address.
To this extent some ideas I’ve had so far are:

• Make handling reservations as easy as possible, it shouldn’t be harder than using a good email client (i.e. gmail).
• Setting up and managing online presence should be easy and straight forward.
• Job management, e.g. what do I need to do today?
• No double entry, export to your favorite accounting software (e.g. MYOB, QuickBooks, etc)

So what are your thoughts?

I always appreciate someone's drive to succeed. But this is going to be a really hard sell. I will say that if you choose to do this, customer service will make or break you! It is a lot of work to switch over to a different program. Most of us are pretty set in our ways and are happy with what we have. That's why I think it will be a tuff sale!

Bob said:

I always appreciate someone's drive to succeed. But this is going to be a really hard sell. I will say that if you choose to do this, customer service will make or break you! It is a lot of work to switch over to a different program. Most of us are pretty set in our ways and are happy with what we have. That's why I think it will be a tuff sale!.

Click to expand...

Thanks for you feedback Bob, it's most appreciated. I understand what you mean by most of you are pretty set in your ways, my parents used to own a caravan park (RV Park in the US?) and they'd still be using a paper based system if they still had it!

also from my point of view integration with the most popular booking web sites ie mine linkes up with book ing .com, late rooms, ven eer and so on so I take a booking it updates everything. more money less work
Also it should email you every time there is a booking that way you would get it on your smart phone out at the shops - especially if it was for that day
also a way to set a last check in abilitiy ie that evening shuts down at a certain time that you set

Automated emails. The folio and other documents in PDF. Ability to handle multiple specials based on different criteria. For example, a special for those who book well in advance and a special for those who book online, etc. Ability to handle a garage/parking. Tax capabilities, we have three different taxes. None apply on food items, two apply on almost everything. One applies on rooms.
Ability to recognize country of origin of the reservation for both language reason (ie ability to take a reservation in multiple languages by having a module pass parameters for the language of the reservation) but also to specifically target a discount. We have specials for people from Europe that don't really interest our local customers.

charlesw said:

Bob said:

I always appreciate someone's drive to succeed. But this is going to be a really hard sell. I will say that if you choose to do this, customer service will make or break you! It is a lot of work to switch over to a different program. Most of us are pretty set in our ways and are happy with what we have. That's why I think it will be a tuff sale!.

Click to expand...

Thanks for you feedback Bob, it's most appreciated. I understand what you mean by most of you are pretty set in your ways, my parents used to own a caravan park (RV Park in the US?) and they'd still be using a paper based system if they still had it!
.

Click to expand...

charlesw said:

Thanks for you feedback Bob, it's most appreciated. I understand what you mean by most of you are pretty set in your ways, my parents used to own a caravan park (RV Park in the US?) and they'd still be using a paper based system if they still had it!

Click to expand...

'Set in your ways' is not equivalent to 'it's a bitch to move all the data to another system'.

I don't understand why you want to re-invent the wheel. There are MANY systems out there to choose from at affordable costs. A lot of us here moved to a system within the last 2 years which is affordable, looks greats, gets the job done well and has fantastic customer support. We know what a pain it is to change systems and that's putting it nicely.
By the way, the innkeepers on here are very tech savvy and not the old style paper & pen you still come across in many areas.

Sorry but what this industry does not need is another reservation system. There are tons out there already and one recent new one which many of us are now using.

Yeah, this is what I would add: Have you investigated the existing offerings already? How would you distinguish your product from the competition? (and there is plenty of competition already)

Madeleine said:

charlesw said:

Bob said:

I always appreciate someone's drive to succeed. But this is going to be a really hard sell. I will say that if you choose to do this, customer service will make or break you! It is a lot of work to switch over to a different program. Most of us are pretty set in our ways and are happy with what we have. That's why I think it will be a tuff sale!.

Click to expand...

Thanks for you feedback Bob, it's most appreciated. I understand what you mean by most of you are pretty set in your ways, my parents used to own a caravan park (RV Park in the US?) and they'd still be using a paper based system if they still had it!
.

Click to expand...

charlesw said:

Thanks for you feedback Bob, it's most appreciated. I understand what you mean by most of you are pretty set in your ways, my parents used to own a caravan park (RV Park in the US?) and they'd still be using a paper based system if they still had it!

Click to expand...

'Set in your ways' is not equivalent to 'it's a bitch to move all the data to another system'.
.

Click to expand...

Yes your absolutely right, sorry if I offended you. This is were a data standard for exporting\importing reservation management data would make life so much easier, but that would require it to be implemented by a majority of RMS' to be useful which is unlikely (unfortunately).

Thank you all for your feedback its been most enlightening.
As many of you had pointed out there are quite a few RMS' out there currently. That was partly the reason why I started this topic since I wanted to learn from people in this industry if there was any shortcomings or other areas when it comes to managing your Inn you find annoying or really just gets under your skin. If your very happy with your current RMS and its capabilities then that's great.
For example I've read one or two posts here where their current system isn't customizable enough when it comes to managing pricing structures. In this case I believe the issue was they had three different tiers of pricing based on a number of different conditions (a bit like Erec mentions).
There might also be other areas around the edges of reservation management that are not currently covered to a satisfactory level by existing RMS'. An example may be the idea of jobs where the system automatically makes a list of jobs\notes (i.e. which rooms need to be cleaned, Joe Blogs has a late checkout today, etc). This might not be as important for a small inn but may be for larger establishments.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have attendees motivated to flock to our booths because they wanted to and not because they had to? -Peter F. Spittler