Question for hotels in North West U.K.

Question

Are there any hotels in the North West that would be interested in helping me to design a hotel booking system? I could provide your hotel with a copy of the booking system for free once it is complete.

I would like to create a generic hotel booking system that would be suitable for one hotel, or for a small chain of hotels. My problem being that I do not know enough about hotels to know what features would be required. Although I do have some basic designs on paper, I feel that I need to discuss and improve my ideas before I can begin coding.

Once I have the booking system up and running I would be looking to create a generic hotel Web site that could be customised by the hotel. The site could be used to check availability of rooms, book rooms etc.

Any ideas/advice from hotel owners would be great. Thanks for any help.

http://www.sansburycc.com/

Answer 1

Honestly - get a job in Guest Services and check out their system. I don't know about the UK hotel system but here in the States they are  unnecessarily complicated. I used to joke to trainees that whoever designed our software NEVER worked in a hotel. So many functions were redundant and it made it confusing to learn.

Good luck -it sounds like a great idea!

*edit - I think the type of program that you're aiming to market would have to be targeted to independent (non-franchised) hotels. Here in the States all your major hotels use programs that are required by their brand or corporate HQ..ie:Wyndham Wordwide owns your Days Inn, Super 8s,Wyndham resorts,....some use the same software, some do not, but each program is mandated for the property. This is to ensure that every few years the property MUST buy new hardware, software, etc.. to remain compliant (quite lucrative for corporate America, our last package cost over $8000 and was worth about $800..sad but true) These systems are interfaced with a central reservation system maintained by the franchise or corporation. This is why you can type in Wyndham Resorts and book anywhere nationwide. Any major hotel, in the states at least, would definitley not be able to use your program and remain compliant and connected to the crs system. I can't imagine it would be different in the UK but I might be wrong. Again, I would target your independent hotels and maybe bed and breakfast type businesses. Make a simple menu focusing on check-ins and reservations, room inventory, auditing, a simple but broad format to set rates and discounts,rack reports, housekeeping and maintenance reports, and arrival and departure reports. A good AR/AP menu would certainly be a plus as well.