The Problem
Little Hotelier and SiteMinder offer hotels (big and small) around the world a solution to two of the biggest problems they face:
- How to stand out amongst the competition, and;
- How to control all the reservations regardless of the channels guests are booking on
The first item is a major concern for hotels that are also competing against Airbnb/vacation rentals popping up in their city, or just outside of the city limits to avoid municipal restrictions. Coming out of the pandemic, hotels have been revamping their services, upgrading rooms, and putting more money into marketing materials. Trying to keep up on a limited budget is a big challenge for all hotels, but especially ones that are smaller in nature.
The second item becomes a big problem when proper controls are not in place. Guest bookings can come in from the phone, email, website, Booking.com, Expedia, etc. There are an endless number of channels available to book on and every guest has their preferred method to book. Having the ability to sell rooms everywhere is great, until your hotel becomes overbooked because someone was not controlling the availability across all those channels.
Larger hotels likely have systems in place to control their inventory through the property management systems they were required to use through their flagged hotels, or independent hotels bought when they transitioned from older systems to newer ones years ago. Smaller independent hotels, motels, or bed and breakfasts may not have a solution in place, however, which is why Four Sides Hospitality Consulting is proud to announce a partnership with Little Hotelier and SiteMinder.
Little Hotelier is an all-in-one property management system to help smaller properties improve their operations. Everything a hotel could possible need is available in this one system. Managing rates, reservations, a channel manager, payment processing, website builder, and direct booking engine to accept reservations from your website or even Facebook pages.
SiteMinder is the channel manager that Little Hotelier is integrated with, but is available separately for hotels that have a property management system already. SiteMinder integrates with over 100 different PMSes, including one of my favourites for larger properties InnQuest roomMaster, but also Opera, Maestro, and WebRezPro to name a few. SiteMinder allows hotels to control their availability and rates across 400+ channels. It also allows you to publish your rates through the GDS systems, like Sabre and Amadeus, to connect with travel agents serving customers and corporate clients around the world. SiteMinder is also a service that provides website design, web booking, and payment processing for properties.
More information about each is below, or jump to the form to get contacted by a member of their sales team to receive a demo.
Little Hotelier
As mentioned above, Little Hotelier is an ideal solution for small to mid-size properties. It is also a great property management software solution for people or companies looking to manage Airbnb listings. Before considering it for Airbnb management, make sure you review the Airbnb standards and onboarding procedure.
Little Hotelier has two versions to help you choose the best solution for your property or properties. Little Hotelier Basics and Little Hotelier.
Some of the main features for both versions of Little Hotelier:
- Simple, yet powerful
- Manage reservations in one calendar in the easiest way possible
- Receive bookings from 450+ channels like Booking.com, Expedia, and more
- Manage guest profiles and send out pre/post-stay emails automatically
- Take bookings from your website or Facebook
- Mobile Apps to manage your hotel on-the-go
- 24/7 support across phone, email. web and chat
- Manage rates across all channels in one step
- Simple reporting to help you stay on track of your business
- Mobile app for iPhone/iPad and Android devices (details below)
The more extensive version also includes:
- Website designer
- Google Ad integration
- Competitor Analysis Reporting
Simple
The biggest highlight for Little Hotelier is how easy it is to setup and use. A lot of the other systems available are overly complicated for managing a smaller property. Larger hotels are handling large group reservations, setting up special rate codes for conventions or large corporate clients, need integration with a restaurant and/or spa Point of Sales system or other onsite entertainment, to list a few examples.
Little Hotelier is not designed for those properties. It is designed for the Mom & Pop motel operations on the highways, or small bed and breakfasts, where the room configurations vary little and there is not a need for complicated rates. It is a perfect solution for operators who still manage their properties manually or through Excel spreadsheets.
This is the main screen when you load it, for example.
Clicking on the reservations opens up the details for it. Clicking on an available room and day, creates a reservation. It gives you a clear view of what is happening today, for 7, 14, or 28 days in advance of any day you choose. The colour coding allows you to easily identify the status of the reservation and room condition.
While on the main screen, something else that is helpful is the ability to click and drag reservations around to change the room assignment, room type, and dates. All very easy to do and the system warns you before any changes are made, too.
Rate Control
Little Hotelier is simple, yet powerful, with control over the rates and extensive guest profile history. Setting up room rates is fairly simple, and additional rates are easily made based on the rates that are currently setup. For example, having a Best Available Rate and then a AAA/CAA rate 10% less.
Little Hotelier offers the ability to alter the room rates on the fly, too. For example, you notice that one day has plenty of availability or there is a special event in the city. Room inventory can also be altered, to stop selling rooms through the website and save a few for walk-in guests or guests calling the hotel directly. There is the ability to alter the room rates and inventory by day and room type on a general screen, or do a bulk update for rates for a set period of time. Only a few clicks and you have full control of your room rates and inventory.
From the reservation screen, previous guest information will pre-populate when a guest profile is matched to the reservation. This will save time from having to collect phone and email address each time, and also allows you to see the previous stay information about the guest easily. From the reservation screen, you can send confirmation emails and receipts manually, but Little Hotelier allows you to have pre and post-stay emails to be sent automatically.
That covers some of the basics for Little Hotelier. The next section covers the Channel Manager, connecting your hotel to all the various booking channels.
Channel Manager
The channel manager is how Little Hotelier connects beyond the direct bookings that are received in other ways besides by phone or email. One of the channels that should be setup first is Direct Bookings, which allows you to take bookings from the website. As mentioned previously, there are over 450 different channels to choose from, and you can connect as many as you would like. I would likely start with a small number that you are familiar with and you know are popular for your region (i.e. North America properties should start with Booking.com, Expedia, and Agoda). For other regions, contact me and I can assist you with a top 10-12 list of booking channels.
The setup process for other channels is fairly straightforward. It varies slightly by channel, but for the most part, you fill in a few different fields, and then a request is sent to Little Hotelier support to get the channel connected completely. One of the more interesting steps involved is the ability to set a rate percentage for the booking channel. That means you can automatically have your rates be 10% less or more on the booking channel compared to when booked at the hotel directly. This is helpful if you have a contract to offer rates below what is offered directly at the hotel, or if you would like to offer rates higher than normal to off-set any commissions/fees that are collected.
After some channels are setup, the Channel Manager offers you a quick look at how the channels are producing, the rates that are being published, and the reservations from the different channels. The dashboard is an overview of the hotel operation from an online perspective giving you helpful information if a channel connection is broken or how many reservations have come in. The inventory screen is similar to the rate updater from the Front Desk part of Little Hotelier. It shows the available rooms, the rates by channel, and the status for the day (stop sell, closed to arrival, closed to departure). The reservation screen will allow you to pull up the reservation information for bookings made through the various channels. That screen (hopefully) won’t need to be accessed much, but will be useful if there was a problem with reservations being entered properly from a booking channel to the Front Desk reservation system.
If you have front desk agents working at the property, the channel manager can be restricted to management only, to ensure people do not play around with it.
The channel manager comes fully integrated with the Little Hotelier Front Desk system. The extra channels will need to be setup manually through the various sites to sign agreements, upload all the photos and property information. Once the sites are setup, the integration to the hotel will happen fairly easily.
Mobile App for Little Hotelier
Little Hotelier has a great mobile app for iPhone/iPad and Android that allows you the basic functionality that you need on the go:
- See the reservation calendar
- create and edit reservations, check-in guests, and process payments
- close out rooms
- receive push notifications for new or modified bookings on your device
- contact guests by phone or email directly from the app
- chat with technical support within the app
Everything stays in sync instantly with Little Hotelier since it is a web-based application. This allows you to manage your property while away from the office/front desk area or away from the property completely doing errands or on vacation even. Below are some screenshots of the application and the reservation process.
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