When this blog started out, quite a few years ago, it was intended to focus primarily on marketing and evaluating reservation or booking software. With changes in the industry, and in my situation, that emphasis has shifted, but, from a high-level view, it has all been related. However, it has been some time since I’ve written specifically about booking engines, but for some historical perspective, you can find some useful information here and here.

Last week we looked at a survey by BedAndBreakfast.com, apparently designed to help it determine new prices for its online booking software products. Depending on the number and kind of bookings you take, the proposals could be better, or significantly worse, for your property. This week we’ll look at other ways vendors set online booking software prices. One thing is for sure – no matter how the survey BedAndBreakfast.com is conducting turns out, the results will be very suspect.

A recent survey from a vendor considering changing the pricing for its online booking products raises the question, “How (and how much) should you pay for online booking software and property management software?” Since the prices of online booking software and and property management software can be considerable, this two part series will look at the online booking software prices suggested by this survey, as well as the way other vendors price their products.

Our review of the current version of RezOvation GT was published January 24 (during the 2012 Innkeeping Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas). At the conference, RezOvation invited current users to see a preview of the upcoming release, and to provide feedback on some of the anticipated features. We attended that preview, spoke with some of the RezOvation staff, and have some notes to share here. At the outset, the staff stated that the goal with this release was to give it a feel that would be very familiar to existing RezOvation GT users, while making it much more intuitive and much easier to use.

RezOvation GT began as a re-creation of the very popular Munsenware GuestTracker software. It aims to be a full-featured program, providing a simple interface, and all the features necessary for daily lodging operations. Some six years ago, when RezOvation GT was in its infancy, we researched and tried several different programs for use at our Freeport Maine Bed & Breakfast, and settled on RezOvation GT as the best choice. In all honesty, we were not excited about choosing it, as it was relatively untested, and had a number of significant blemishes and a very high price tag, but we considered it to be the best choice despite many shortcomings.

Based on data from its sister company’s directory (Destination Nexus) Reservation Nexus bills itself as the most popular and most used all-in-one reservation system for US bed and breakfasts and inns. With all due respect, data from a sister company (only), and excluding data from much larger directories, makes that conclusion just a little suspicious. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that ResNexus is one of the top reservation systems, both in popularity and in features.

Book At Onceprovides a powerful and innovative approach to their software for managing bed and breakfasts and other small lodging properties. For many, their power and innovation will be very attractive – especially in the free version. For others, it just may not be their cup of tea. Overview Book at Once is a German booking system, reaching out to become a worldwide provider, and particularly to reach the American, market.

As if you needed another reason to claim your Google Place page, the most compelling reason yet has now appeared. It is ridiculously easy (unless or until Google has fixed it) for a scammer to claim someone else’s Place Page if they have a mailing address in the same town as the business. Don’t believe me? Mike Blumenthaluncovered the way to do it, and it is quoted in detail at Search Engine Roundtable.

We tweeted the TechCruch story about the site which, if you visited while logged in to a Google account, sent you an email proving it had just harvested your email information. Scary, isn’t it? Well, the screenshotof the website, itself (no, we didn’t visit it to see if it was true – besides, it was down by the time we got there . . . ) got us thinking about security and how this occurred.

Instead of re-writing the article, we will simply mention and link to the great informationprovided by our friends at Acorn Internet Servicesshowing a comparison of statistics on bookings from before there were Google Place Pages and currently, and also noting which directories produce bookings. This is obtained from Acorn’s customers who use Acorn’s Intell-A-Keepertracking software. We will comment more on this topic before long. Enjoy this useful information!

As we have previously mentioned, one of the most frequent questions on innkeeping forums and elsewhere is which property management (or guest management) software (“PMS”) is “best.” Like most things, this is a subjective decision. What is the “best” property management software depends on your circumstances, your preferences, and your priorities. One size most definitely does not fit all. If you search around the property management / guest management software world a bit, you’ll quickly see that it is difficult, if not impossible, to find software reviews.

Our B&B, Brewster House Bed & Breakfast, was recently in a position to re-evaluate its guest management software choice. You would think that the frequent evaluations (and upcoming reviews!) of various systems (we’ll call them guest management software, though some call them property management software) would make this an easy thing to do, but it never works out that way. You see, while we did a careful study of the available software before our initial purchase, every time we have to review that decision, there are new players, with new products, and the older players and products have changed, and their pricing has changed.

A few months ago we wrote about the importance of tracking the sources of reservations, and mentioned that we would be testing the Intell-A-Keeper software available from Acorn Internet Services. While the high season bookings will get busier in the coming weeks, we thought it was time for an update on that process. The results are both interesting and enlightening We have been using Intell-A-Keeper (IAK) since January, and find that the results are both interesting and enlightening.

This week we attended the PAII Innkeeping Conference in Austin, Texas. Our first presentation was “How to Select Guest Management Software” on Tuesday afternoon (changed from its original time on Wednesday afternoon). Since it seemed that many were not aware of the schedule change, we wanted to make the slides available for viewing here. During the presentation we also gave access to a Google Documents spreadsheet to help in comparing different Property Management Systems, and evaluating them according to your own priorities.

In our previous posts on this topic we discussed a basic approach to selecting guest management software and online booking software, and considerations affecting the choice of web-based systems versus locally installed systems. As promised, we’ll discuss some of the features you may want to consider, and ways of evaluating them. Deciding what features you need We’ll list a variety of features, grouped by category, but you should make your own list.

In our previous article on selecting guest management software we talked about selecting online booking software, and how that choice can help to resolve questions about the property management software. This installment will talk more about the considerations in selecting the property management system, itself. Since it is also possible that your consideration of online booking solutions has not narrowed the field for property managment software (perhaps because you are considering systems that “play nicely” with several online booking platforms), we will consider property management software regardless of the type of online booking software it supports.

Our recent post on evaluating online directories briefly mentions the difficulties in accurately determining where a guest has found your property. Yet how to track the source of bookings is one of the most frequent questions prompted by that article. At our B&B (Brewster House Bed & Breakfast, in Freeport, Maine), we have used Google Analytics to track online bookings, and have attempted to ask every guests who books by phone where they located us, to add that data into the mix.

Assuming you have decided to find a new Guest Management System, let’s look at the process of choosing from among the many products available. The first step may not be the expected one, but looking at it first may save headaches later. Determine whether or not you will be using a third-party system for online bookings. That is, (a) will you accept online bookings, and (b) if so, (1) will you require that your Guest Management System provide built-in online booking capability, or do you want a third party online booking system, and then, (2) if appropriate, which third party system will you select.