The hospitality and gaming industries require specific functionality when it comes to sales and catering, and event management. The same goes for family entertainment centers like bowling centers, laser-tag spaces, and others.
What are those factors? What should organizations in these sectors look for in software solutions to manage these important aspects of their business. The cloud has emerged as a proven alternative to the legacy systems used by the hotel industry. One by one and group by group, independent hotels and chains alike, are seeking out a cloud-based platform to provide integrated solutions for their hospitality management needs.
Beyond cloud technology, let’s look at some other event sales and catering software characteristics that contribute to the success of hotel and casinos as legacy systems are beginning to be phased out.
An end to end solution
Event management solutions should do it all; fully integrated solutions for selling and executing events, booking guest room blocks, and managing dining reservations. It should allow for FEC market bookings for very specific kinds of spaces that are associated with specialized services, too; bowling lanes, bocce courts, dining tables, and others.
Further, functionality should allow for event packages and online party booking, enabling an event function space and services to be booked by the consumer, directly from your website.
A unified and accessible sales and catering platform.
There are significant advantages to having a fully integrated suite of modules that reside in an enterprise database. No more duplicate entry in multiple systems, or double booking of assets that are shared by the sales and operations teams are certainly among them. This is true whether managing one property, or multiple ones.
On an operations level alone, this creates efficiencies that make processes smoother and more visible to and for everyone. It also makes sense on a strategic level, too. When all data is managed centrally like this, turning that into meaningful action is a lot easier.
Single log-ins for users
Individual users should be granted access to a single site, or all properties, with one log-on; yet, accessibility can be controlled per user, depending on security settings. Flexibility like this is mandatory.
Easy reporting functions
The flexibility aspect doesn’t end there. Reporting must be filtered by property, or rolled up for comparison, providing a high-level overview of the entire organization. Greater visibility of the data like this is a key building block to staying competitive.
Accessibility and ease of use
Key users in the organization have to be able to get up to speed quickly. For instance, sales teams should be able to check availability of function space and guest rooms, and also book across multiple properties with ease. And everything they’re seeing in the system should always be current, with changes they make being in real-time.
Simple resource management
Relevant information should be well organized and easy to find. Brand-protected collateral, menus, email templates, BEOs, contracts, and other documents can be standardized at the organization level, yet filtered by region, division, or property within the system.
The best software options are the ones that put your needs first
When looking for event management and sales and catering software solutions, hotel and casino organizations are best to start with how the prospective solution directly address company challenges. When the solution allows you as the decision-maker to frame your business goals more effectively, empower staff, and ultimately help to create a better guest experience, that’s a good starting point to building success.
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