Best Hotel Front Desk Software Of 2024

By Riddhiman Roy, Market Analyst at SelectHub

Consider this: a cross-country hiker arrives at your hotel for a night's rest before embarking on another adventure, only to be kept waiting for hours at the front desk because your Excel spreadsheet refuses to load. That’s a tragedy. Even if the stay is satisfactory, the traveler's perception will be ruined by the negative first impression. Hotel front desk software helps you avoid such situations by providing your staff with an automated platform that boosts efficiency, cuts labor costs and improves the guest experience.

This guide will discuss the primary benefits and key features of hotel front desk software and equip you with a comprehensive vendor comparison and pricing strategy. We’ll also talk about some of the most popular systems to give you a reference point in your selection process. Finally, we’ll leave you with a set of questions to help you identify your requirements and get the conversation going in the right direction with vendors. Let’s dive in.

Executive Summary

• Hotel front desk software manages check-ins, check-outs, payments, housekeeping and reporting.
• It streamlines collaboration between departments, simplifies administrative tasks and collects customer data for analysis and data-driven growth plans.
• Identifying your personalized needs and preparing a budget are crucial before starting the selection process.
• Ask plenty of questions to vendors to get a holistic understanding of their product, pricing model and support plans.

• What Is Hotel Front Desk Software?
• How Does It Work?
• Primary Benefits
• Key Features & Functionality
• Software Comparison Strategy
• Cost & Pricing Considerations
• Most Popular Hotel Front Desk Software
• Questions To Ask
• In Conclusion

The platform offers an integrated calendar to track reservations, room status, inventory and housekeeping activities so that your front desk staff can always have a definite answer to guest queries. Most hotel front desk solutions are cloud-based or provide mobile apps to track activities whenever and wherever.

How Does It Work?

Although checking guests in and out is one of the primary functions of a front desk, the full scope of the job is much wider. There are four stages in a typical guest’s life cycle, and each has the front desk’s contribution in some form or other.

Here’s how you can enhance the guest experience at different stages using hotel front desk software:

• Pre-arrival: In this stage, guests research their trip location, itinerary and accommodation. An efficient front desk department helps build goodwill, resulting in better online reviews that generate more leads. Plus, during peak seasons, you can define rules to delay sending confirmation emails until the front desk accepts the booking after checking waitlists.
• Arrival: Whether you have a self-service kiosk, point of sale system or a physical front desk, the software helps quickly check-in guests, send welcome emails and collect guest information. You can also print and email receipts for guests paying at the counter.
• Occupancy: Maintain clear lines of communication with guests for housekeeping, food, beverages and support. You can also set up triggered emails and messages for pivotal services like currency exchange, telephone and transport.
• Departure: You can accurately bill guests for stay and additional services based on advance payments and outstanding invoices. After check out, the system updates the room status for housekeeping activities, relays room availability to reservation software and sends emails to guests requesting feedback and reviews.

Primary Benefits

Flexible Front Desk Operations

Flexibility in the hospitality industry is the need of the hour. Guests no longer want to spend time at the front desk to confirm their booking, pay advances and select rooms. A manual front desk is one of the major bugbears for time-efficient guests.

With front desk software, you can check a guest’s past visits, payment status and room preferences using their reservation ID. Provide a guided or a contactless experience to your guests. They can pay, select rooms and request additional services online at their leisure via mobile apps or portals.

Streamlined Collaborations

The front desk acts as a link between your marketing team, back end processes and guests. Whenever a manager confirms a booking on any sales channel, the platform notifies your receptionist of the date of arrival and other guest information. They can schedule housekeeping tasks on the integrated calendar to ready the rooms quickly, leaving room to focus on guests when they arrive.

Simplified Administration

Automating your front desk operations not only saves a lot of time but also ensures accuracy on all fronts. Traditionally, sending emails and SMS to guests was a time-consuming process. But with hotel front desk systems, you can specify rules for sending automated emails, pre-departure and arrival messages, and more.

The platform automatically processes payments, notifies accounting teams and maintains guest ledgers, ensuring accuracy and avoiding manual errors.

Data-driven Approach

Earlier, hotels could only collect guest data through their bookings and feedback forms. They had limited chances to uncover intimate and non-critical details like favorite cuisine, pillow preferences, language and more because guests are usually apprehensive about mentioning these details in booking forms. Hotels had to make blind decisions in an attempt to improve services.

But with front desk solutions, you can record every guest interaction and demand to create a repository of guest data that’s not limited to name, address and payment details. You can analyze this database to create personalized experiences for repeat guests, identify opportunities to upgrade facilities, add revenue streams and upsell items.

Key Features & Functionality

Software Comparison Strategy

The global hotel management software market is worth $6521 million in 2022 and is estimated to reach $10,871 million by 2027 at a 10.72% CAGR. Due to this growth, the market has a lot of options, each with its unique features. It’s important to understand that finding the best hotel front desk software is subjective, and there isn’t one perfect solution available for every size and type of hotel.

What software will best fit your business depends on the following situations:

• Scenario 1: You don’t use any software but want to digitize your workflows. So the three most essential solutions you need are reservation software, a channel manager and a front desk module. Contact software developers with expertise in the hospitality industry to design a platform from scratch or go for an all-in-one hotel management system that covers marketing, booking, front desk, housekeeping and reporting capabilities.
• Scenario 2: You use front desk software, but it lacks modern features. For example, since the COVID-19 pandemic, proptech facilitating contactless experiences are in demand. Consider adding features like digital keys, contactless check-ins and virtual tours to your front desk module.
• Scenario 3: You already use reservation engines, channel managers and back office platforms but need a new front desk module. In this case, you need a comprehensive platform for front desks instead of all-in-one property management systems. Make sure you look for software that connects with your existing stack. It might get tricky if you’re using a legacy system, but you can hire third-party tech developers to design custom integrations.

Once you’ve identified the type of front desk software you need, it’s time to determine your unique requirements. We recommend you create a committee of department heads and stakeholders and devise a requirements checklist that addresses everyone’s needs.

Here are a few pointers you can consider while creating the checklist:

• Property Type: The front desk software should be able to handle every property you have in your portfolio. For example, if you manage a hostel, the software should track beds and not only rooms; if you handle a hotel chain, it should be able to switch between assets; if you have banquet halls, the platform should track usage on an hourly basis, so on and so forth.
• Team Size: Not every software supports unlimited team member onboarding. Look for solutions that can not only onboard your entire team but also streamline collaboration with intuitive HR tools.
• Deployment: Choose a suitable deployment option based on your business needs. SaaS deployment doesn’t require extensive IT expertise and infrastructure but lacks customizations. On the other hand, on-premise deployment requires hefty investments for infrastructure and licensing but offers total control over the software.

Cost & Pricing Considerations

Cloud-based hotel front desk software usually comes on a per month and per unit basis. You can pay a monthly subscription fee and access the platform using any web browsing device. Prices start from around $20 to $30 and can go up to $150 per month.

For on-premise hotel front desk software, you have to pay a lump sum instead of a monthly subscription to buy the software license. A few enterprise solutions also have commission-based pricing, where they don’t charge you for using the platform but take a commission on your sales or total revenue.

Some vendors charge extra for adding advanced features, onboarding more team members and priority support. We recommend preparing a budget after considering your basic and advanced requirements and looking for software that fulfills all of them without going over budget.

Most Popular Hotel Front Desk Software

We’ve listed overviews of a few popular solutions in the market to get you started on your quest for the best hotel front desk software:

Resort Data Processing

Resort data processing is a cloud-based platform for handling any type of hospitality property, including hotels, motels, vacation rentals, campgrounds, bed and breakfasts and more.

An intuitive front desk interface allows you to quickly perform check-ins and outs, housekeeping audits and payment processing. It also offers front desk kiosks for contactless check-ins and a native CRM for managing customer data.

Manage every front desk activity with a tape chart and integrated calendars.

Hotello

Hotello is a robust hotel management software that offers front desk modules, a channel manager and housekeeping tracking capabilities. A native booking engine allows you to take direct reservations and avoid paying third-party booking commissions and fees. You can design channel-specific campaigns and set up tiered pricing based on the season, customer profile and sales channel.

Track housekeeping and business-specific KPIs from a dashboard.

eZee Absolute

eZee Absolute is an all-in-one hotel management system with a channel manager, booking engine, central reservation system, restaurant point of sale system and more. You can design professional websites using drag-and-drop tools and HTML toolkits.

It offers a mobile app for tracking and managing the front desk and back office operations from anywhere. A reputation management module helps collect your hotel's reviews from every channel and respond to them from a centralized dashboard.

Use intuitive drag-and-drop tools to block rooms, schedule housekeeping, send emails and more.

Questions To Ask

While selecting software, it’s crucial to ask the right questions to identify your requirements and determine the type of software that best suits your business. Use these questions to start internal conversations:

• What are the major pain points in your front desk workflow?
• Which areas can automation improve?
• What’s your preferred deployment model?
• Which software will need integration with the new front desk platform?
• Which sales channel will the front desk module need connections with?

Use these questions to start conversations with vendors:

• What support options are available, and what is their average response time?
• What’s the cost for additional features and team member onboarding?
• Can the platform handle multi-property portfolios?
• Who are your clients, and what are their success stories?
• How many team members can the software onboard?

In Conclusion

With hotel front desk software, you not only combine every miscellaneous front desk task in one platform for easy management but also reduce administrative tasks with smart automation. Be careful while selecting a hotel front desk solution as features and compatibility differ from platform to platform. You need to identify your requirements, prepare a budget and look for software that fulfills every requirement within your budget. Happy selecting!