In today's digital era, we have seen paradigm shift in the entire travel ecosystem. Increasing number of travellers are booking hotels via online channels and even on mobiles on the go. They expect value for money and personalized & faster services from a hotel. Moreover, most of them consider reviews (feedback written by other guests) as 'very important' while making reservation at hotels.

The above change in guest behaviour has forced hotels to act smart, too. In order to live up to guests' expectations, they need to ensure that they are available on popular online channels - in short, they should appear on a potential guest's search results. They also have to garner positive reviews from their guests. Additionally, they must leverage several other technology platforms to offer best-in-class services to their guests in order to earn their loyalty.

Last year in 2017, SaaS business grew at the rate of around 33 percent (year-on-year) in India

So, here is the big question - how would they ensure all these? And, the answer is - a cloud-based Hotel Property Management System (Hotel PMS). But, then what's wrong with on-premise Hotel PMS? Well, it is not simply built to help hotels run their business in this digital era. Here are some problems that a hotel is sure to face with on-premise/server-based PMS

1. Large upfront CAPEX

2. Long deployment period

3. No instant ROI

4. No easy third party integration

Adoption of cloud PMS among Indian hotels

Last year in 2017, SaaS business grew at the rate of around 33 percent (year-on-year) in India. Over last couple of years, SaaS solution providers across industries have somehow managed to educate their target audience about the usefulness of cloud. But, its adoption rate was yet to pick up. For example, we at Hotelogix went global quickly and managed to acquire customers in advanced geographies including North America and Europe with our cloud-based Hotel PMS. But, it was not that easy to convince hoteliers in India to migrate from on-premise to cloud PMS. So, we had to wait and watch for the right time to come.

But, this has changed in last 2-3 years. Hoteliers in India now do understand that only a cloud-based Hotel PMS can help them grow rapidly. Most importantly, to stay ahead of competition, best hotels have reinvented themselves with the help of cloud PMS. To be noted here, many emerging chain and standalone hotels in India have shifted from popular and leading on-premise PMS to our enterprise-grade cloud PMS. And we have efficiently helped them to-

1. Witness instant ROI

2. Save hundreds of man-hours

3. Gain business agility

4. Take data-driven decision

5. And, to scale up and expand

Not only this, a cloud-based PMS can easily be integrated with many operationally imperative third-party solutions like channel manager, revenue management solution, online reputation management and loyalty management solution etc that are also on cloud. However, in an on-premise solution, such integration would be expensive, time taking, and forced that would lack seamlessness. This would not help hotels to see value on their investment in technology.

Aditya Sanghi

Aditya Sanghi is currently the co-founder and CEO of Hotelogix. He is heading the organization and providing specialised insights on the Market and Business Strategy. The company under his leadership is providing a robust cloud-based Hotel PMS that helps hotels to automate and manage their end-to-end operations with ease. The PMS is hosted on Amazon Web Services, and thus offers the much-needed stability and security to hoteliers.