Beginners' Guide to Hotel Maintenance Software & Hospitality Maintenance Solutions

Importance of Hotel Maintenance Software in the Hospitality Industry

When did you last arrange a big international trip, a business trip, or a quick vacation?

And, how much of your trip planning and bookings were done through digital solutions? 

The answer is probably all of it. 

As we are living in the digital age, flight booking, hotel browsing, and restaurant bookings, all of them are managed online through different software and tools.

Hotels can stay competitive and meet the constantly changing market demands by adapting the latest technologies such as hotel logbook software. It helps you to improve the guest experience, streamline operations, and improve overall efficiency. 

Rise of Hotel Maintenance Software For Hotels

Research suggests that by 2027, the hospitality sector could reach a whopping $5,8616.66 billion. It will boost economic progress in both well-established and developing nations, with developing countries hoping to see slightly quicker growth. 

Mainly, the Asia Pacific region is ruling in the hospitality market, followed by North America. It indicates a bright future for hotel maintenance software, which is anticipated to expand by $1176.2 million from 2023 to 2027. 

Benefits of Hospitality Maintenance App(s)

• Investing in hotel maintenance software can streamline your operations, enhance efficiency, and improve guest services.
• Automating tasks such as reservations, check-ins, check-outs, and room assignments reduces manual errors and saves time which increases productivity for your staff.
• Optimizing hotel management, tracking housekeeping services, and managing guest preferences through hotel maintenance software improves resource allocation, and faster response times.
• Personalizing guest experiences by storing guest information and priorities leads to improved guest satisfaction and encourages customer loyalty.
• Integrating hotel revenue management software into your hotel management system allows you to set optimal pricing strategies, maximize occupancy, and increase revenue by analyzing demand patterns, competitor rates, and market trends.

Places Where Hotel Maintenance Software is Needed

 The hospitality industry includes several types of hotels, all of which have their own maintenance needs.

1. Hotels: Every hotel needs a vast variety of maintenance work, including heating, cooling, lighting, plumbing, groundskeeping, electronic equipment, etc.
2. Resorts: Resorts located in remote locations have unique maintenance needs. Often, they need to supply their own electricity, water, and waste disposal, all while keeping up with the additional features they offer. Examples of extra features include golf courses, skiing, and swimming.
3. Timeshare rentals: Tenants purchase lodgings for a certain time each year, and they are often responsible for funding some of the maintenance of the property.
4. Casino hotels: Casinos also provide accommodations as a secondary business. Those residences also require upkeep. There are also machines and food service areas in casinos that require consistent maintenance work.
5. Serviced apartments: Residential hotels offer longer stay times, and their maintenance needs are pretty similar to apartments rather than hotels. 

Hotel Maintenance Workers Who Benefit From Digitized Solutions

1. Maintenance Technicians

Maintenance technicians handle a wide range of responsibilities. Their tasks include regularly scheduled maintenance and corrective maintenance tasks performed in the hotel. 

2. Maintenance Workers

Maintenance workers are involved in keeping up the insides and outsides of the building.

3. Maintenance Supervisors       

Maintenance supervisors manage the actions of maintenance technicians and may also help with regular maintenance tasks themselves. They also report to maintenance directors on various matters, such as scheduling, regulatory compliance, and safety.

4. Director of Maintenance 

Directors of maintenance handle high-level planning and hotel upkeep tasks, including working with supervisors, reporting to the hotel manager, and creating policies for their workers to follow.

They also manage maintenance workers, and cleaning and housekeeping staff. Communication between maintenance and housekeeping should be open enough that it facilitates the resolution of minor problems as they’re found. This communication is typically handled through work orders submitted to the hotel’s maintenance department.

Common Challenges Faced When Selecting The Best Hospitality Maintenance Software

1. Basic vs. Progressive Features: Hotel maintenance software should be lightweight on mobile interfaces, yet strong enough to create advanced reports, gather data, and manage more complex hospitality maintenance work orders. Hospitality software that combines the power of reports with a task/work order software workflow enables managers to ensure every step of a maintenance process is followed.

2. Mobile Functionality: Usage by field staff, engineering, and maintenance teams is heavily dependent on the mobile experience. Work order mobile apps should be quick, and accessible, enable photo/video capture, and provide role-based permission access to manage, edit, and view work orders. 

3. PMS Integration: Traditional PMS vendors haven’t changed their mobile and desktop experience in years, and are more focused on managing the guest & booking experience. Hotel managers and facility maintenance directors can stand up work order management systems without a PMS integration through one-time CSV bulk uploads (room numbers, assets, equipment, checklists) and onboarding services. 1-way integrations from the hotel maintenance system to the PMS are beneficial for storing data in one place but are not necessary as most work order software apps offer mobile & web-based reporting and historical activity views.

4. Scalability: If a work order system cannot scale to multiple hotel properties or across multiple departments, it is best to exclude this vendor from your evaluation. There are plenty of vendors that deliver multi-site, multi-department features inside of a work order software system. Choose vendors that offer the following capabilities: Multi-assignee, team assignment, and location assignment fields in work order form Access controls by location, region, etc. Multi-location checklists and work order restrictions Announcements, group chats, work order-related comments

5. Customizability: Ensure that checklists and work orders can be customizable with specific fields like geo stamp, multi-choice response, and more. The best hotel maintenance work order software can be fully customized to the unique process workflows of both small and large hotels.

6. Cost: When evaluating a vendor and how the system will scale into your organization, ensure you are not priced into a package that caps the number of users you can have using the maintenance work order system. Unlimited user-based pricing can ensure that housekeeping, front desk, and maintenance teams can all collaborate using the same tool. Some hotel-specific work order solutions will price on a per room per month basis as well which can be expensive for larger hotels and multi-unit collections.

7. Automations: Don’t buy a tool that limits what you can automate. Automate when certain responses in a maintenance checklist require corrective actions, create corrective actions route tasks to specific departments with advanced rule-based engines, and create automated scheduled maintenance plans. Rule engines for work order management can amplify your maintenance team’s productivity, error prevention, and more by eliminating manual processes.

FAQs

What are the 2 types of hotel software?

There are two main hotel software: cloud-based hotel PMS and on-premises hotel PMS. Cloud-based PMS can be accessed by hotel employees no matter where they are. These systems are usually better suited to hotel chains and large siz

What does a PMS solution help to manage in the hospitality industry?

Hotel property management systems (PMS) manage all aspects of hotel business operations, including the delivery of superior guest experiences.

What are the 4 main categories of the hospitality industry?

The hospitality industry is vast and can be broken down into separate sectors. The top four sectors consist of; 'Food and Beverage', 'Accommodation', 'Travel and Tourism' and 'Entertainment and Recreation'.