Greetings everyone. We just discovered Innspiring this morning while searching "booking engine reviews". I do hope that this forum can give us some direction. Our 20-room inn (small independent boutique hotel actually) has used RoomMaster 2000 since 2001. Local server PC. No online reservations - just toll-free call ins. Well, times have changed. We got called from several marketing companies and have used Buuteeq for several months to "test the waters" of website updating and an online booking engine (albeit manually managed for now). My bottom line question - with the numerous engines now out there, how is a property to figure out the best ROI/effectiveness of these? We're reviewing RezKey, RezNexus, and InnKeepers Advantage. We have 11 years worth a guest data embedded in RoomMaster. We cannot lose this data in the switchover. Seems like figuring out which way to go is as bad as buying a new car or going into an ice cream parlor featuring 150 flavors.
We are planning to move our website to 1and1 shortly since we are not convinced that reservation increases are impacted by supposed razzle-dazzle back-end "digital marketing" as much as they are by well-crafted images/content, a mobile app, and ease of online booking.
What's important to us? Ease of use, being able to see names of incoming guests on a grid, applying discount rates at will, marketing capability for follow-up/special promos/newsletter etc. Certainly cost is important too, but several hundred dollars per MONTH is a tough pill to swallow and any outcomes offered to "prove" the "digital marketing" benefits are still spurious at best given the freebie analytics out there.
So - who uses what booking engine, why, and what are the booking engines perceived to be less robust or desirable nowadays?
We are planning to move our website to 1and1 shortly since we are not convinced that reservation increases are impacted by supposed razzle-dazzle back-end "digital marketing" as much as they are by well-crafted images/content, a mobile app, and ease of online booking.
What's important to us? Ease of use, being able to see names of incoming guests on a grid, applying discount rates at will, marketing capability for follow-up/special promos/newsletter etc. Certainly cost is important too, but several hundred dollars per MONTH is a tough pill to swallow and any outcomes offered to "prove" the "digital marketing" benefits are still spurious at best given the freebie analytics out there.
So - who uses what booking engine, why, and what are the booking engines perceived to be less robust or desirable nowadays?