In an industry where a warm welcome and fast Wi-Fi are now just the bare minimum, how does a modern hotel move from simply surviving to truly thriving?
From streamlining “every nook and cranny” of the back office to eliminating data silos between the “heart” of the accounting system and the “brain” of the Property Management System (PMS), technology is no longer just a luxury—it is the backbone of sustainable growth.
Understanding the operational aspect of a hospitality business
There are many factors at work behind the scenes to keep a hotel functioning effectively every single day. There is a human aspect involved in maintaining the facility. There is the sustainability aspect driven by public demand. Then, there is the personal aspect driven by the guest’s desire for a tailored experience and the hotel’s desire to increase returning customers.
Each aspect does not function in a silo but rather harmonises to paint a complex picture of the operational challenges hoteliers face daily. These are the three key pillars that hotels strive to master.
Talent retention
The hospitality sector has long been known as one of the industries with the highest employee turnover rates [source]. The problem is not finding suitable talent; retaining them is.
Besides obvious causes like demanding work schedules, low wages, and lack of benefits, making hospitality far less attractive than other industries, talents are opting for other promising careers due to:
- A lack of career progression
- Strained employee-manager relationships
- Individuals do not “fit” with the team, the business model, or the unique demands of the industry
To tame the chaotic labour shortage, hoteliers need to rethink their talent strategies, adopting more streamlined approaches such as conducting psychometric assessments to evaluate each candidate’s fit for the current vacancies.
TRG’s Hot Take:Why the MBTI Personality Test Is as Useful as Astrology
“Greenify” hotel facilities and “green” metrics reporting
Being eco-friendly and going green is gradually becoming the standard for businesses worldwide. And it does not mean adding a couple more CSR/ ESG activities to the annual event plan.
Read more:Sustainable Hospitality: Why Going Green Is Not That Straightforward
According to EHL Hospitality Business School, sustainability is “a business imperative. [source]
This movement requires hospitality businesses not only to remodel their facilities but also to invest in software to monitor and report on their “footprint” following the latest USALI guidelines, the widely spoken “language” for hotels across the globe.
However, meeting the new standards means hotels need to have visibility into the current performance and track the right metrics to predict future demands. More accurate, real-time data visibility can be achieved with robust tools such as Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) systems.
Download Our USALI12-Compliant Sample Reports | DOWNLOAD NOW
Personalised customer experience
Every step of the entire guest journey can be optimised with the right technology. Hotels should aim to please customers before they even consider booking a room. Because let’s be honest, a warm welcome, a comfortable bed, fast Wi-Fi, etc., are pretty much the basic amenities offered everywhere now.
That does not mean hotels should completely forgo these hospitality basics.
Nearly half of all online hotel bookings worldwide are preceded by a mobile device click. 94% of travellers utilise a combination of mobile, tablet, and desktop when planning their trips. 80% of last-minute bookings are made on mobile devices. [source]
Have you cracked the million-dollar code, which is: “What do guests really want in this new era of hospitality?” Maybe this on-demand webinar can help shed light on the matter. Find your answer today!
Understanding the financial aspect of a hospitality business
The backbone of hospitality, just like every other business, is sound finances, which provide the nitty-gritty details of revenue to the final line of the P&L statement. The meticulous tracking, analysis, and interpretation of these data ensure hotel businesses maintain their daily operations and secure sustainable growth.
Is hospitality accounting any different from general accounting or bookkeeping?
While the general accounting principles apply to all businesses regardless of size and industry, hospitality accounting requires:
- Specific skill sets, such as handling fluctuating food costs, 24/7 schedules, multiple revenue streams, loyalty deductions, etc.
- Deep knowledge of different revenue streams, whose insights are then fed into various customer-focused campaigns
- And regulatory compliance, for instance, the previously mentioned USALI 12
Read more:Best Practices for Hospitality Financial Management
The need for hospitality-specific financial management solutions
The hotel industry is susceptible to changes in macroeconomic trends, demand patterns, and price sensitivities. For example, a recessionary economy may soften leisure demand while boosting staycations.
Properties need agility to adjust room rates, packages, and marketing offers in response to changing demand signals. Financial scenario planning tools that allow modelling the impact of different what-if scenarios, like sudden drops in ADR or increases in food prices, become invaluable support.
Owners need to make strategic decisions around adjusting budgets, capping FF&E replacements, or reining in discretionary spending during times of uncertainty.
Strong financial systems provide the agility and dynamism hotels need to pivot and withstand potential disruptions.
Modern, cloud-based financial management systems can be a foundational shift that enables finance teams to eliminate data silos and work more effectively.
Read more:Solving the 4 Core Financial Management Challenges in Hospitality
What does a financial management solution for hospitality look like?
Financial management software for the hospitality industry must have industry-specific functions that not only cover the accounting aspect but also handle:
- Reporting
- Automated workflows
- Budgeting, planning, and forecasting
- Inventory management
- Procure-to-pay
- Integrations with other hotel’s software
- And other unique demands
Cloud financial management solutions can aid revenue managers and hoteliers as it contains plenty of benefits:
- Accuracy: Next-generation solution automates invoice, statement, and payslip generation, making them much more manageable and precise. If data is entered correctly, all subsequent calculations will also remain accurate, thereby eliminating typical manual errors.
- Visualisations:Dashboards display critical performance metrics and financial information based on each viewer’s role and responsibilities. They allow managers to get quick answers at a glance.
- Reporting tool: A powerful query and analysis tool provides users with a familiar-looking interface so they can quickly generate reports that highlight trends, patterns, and exceptions.
- Collaboration tool: Seamless connection across the organisation can significantly save time and effort, ensuring only relevant personnel are involved in the process and guaranteeing reports are delivered on time and comply with industry standards.
- Anywhere, anytime access: Cloud accounting software is the solution of choice for many hotel businesses, regardless of size, thanks to its flexible pricing model and the ability to access high-quality insights in real time from any device.
Read more:What You Need to Know about SaaS in Hospitality? Is It a New Hype?
Why is it important to integrate the hotel’s financial management solution with PMS?
The short answer is: to eliminate data silos.
If the accounting system is the heart of the hotel business, the PMS is the brain where most transactions begin. The PMS informs the accounting team and their system of the number of reservations and their values, along with strings of guest details.
This integration ensures all ancillary income is properly tracked and recorded in the financial system, reducing costly manual entries and errors.
You may also want to know: Tech Tidbits: What Is an API?
What role does automation play in hospitality finance?
While we can all certainly manually generate invoices for every booking, post journals, and send email reminders to that particular supplier, imagine doing all of that and still ensuring an accurate, balanced report at the end of the month.
Automation with advanced technology can help streamline the finance team’s routine tasks (no, the AI is not taking away your job), so team members can focus on more valuable, strategic processes, such as providing customised reports that meet the unique needs of each stakeholder. For instance, high-level summaries for the senior management and area-specific detailed reports for each department head to identify areas of improvement.
How TRG’s financial management solutions can support your hotel business growth
The hospitality industry is no longer in a fighting-or-fleeing mode; it is inching towards survival or thriving. And when businesses look at how quickly technology is moving across every industry, legacy on-prem solutions just aren’t cutting it anymore.
What’s really compelling now is having a single, scalable technology platform that brings everything together to create a common, seamless experience and connects all those dots along the guest journey. Making that entire journey feels smooth and connected has never been more crucial.
At TRG International, we offer solutions specifically tailored to the hospitality industry, empowering you to manage complex business changes, transform operations, and achieve sustainable growth.
Read our customer success stories, let them tell you the transformational effects that modern solutions bring.
Streamlined daily accounting practices with Infor SunSystems Cloud
Infor SunSystems Cloud will act as your hotel’s core financial management system. It is the solution of choice for more than 2,200 hospitality companies worldwide. The system is designed to transform the way you collect, analyse, manage, and report financial information through its unified ledger accounting, multi-entity, multi-currency, multi-language reporting capability, real-time financial oversight, USALI 12 and IFRS 18 compliant, and more.
Infor SunSystems lets you automate a wide range of operating or ownership structures, including franchising, fractional ownership, global business units, and other holding structures.
You will get predefined charts of accounts that align with hotel structures and reporting lines, such as Departments, Segmentations, Meal Periods, and Events.
Infor SunSystems Cloud’s use cases in hospitality
- Automated financial workflows (accounts payable, expense tracking, and currency translation)
- View information by locations, regions, or any other dimensions to measure performance
- USALI/ IFRS-compliant accounting
- Property-level pre-built report templates covering every need – daily revenues, KPIs, flash reports, management reports, and statutory reports.
- Portfolio performance analysis
- Streamlined financial consolidation across properties
Infor SunSystems Cloud’s integration ability
The solution integrates seamlessly with your hotel’s PMS (Opera, Starlight, Epitome, Medallion, etc.) as well as other Infor (HMS, S&C, EPM) and non-Infor solutions (Yooz, Check SCM, Material Control for procurement, Sysynkt for e-banking, etc.) for unified financial visibility, ensuring event and room/non-room-related financial data flows automatically to SunSystems for complete operational and financial transparency.
More resources on Infor SunSystems Cloud:
- Scaling Innovation and Security with Infor SunSystems Cloud
- From On-Premise to Cloud: How Sofitel Singapore City Centre Overcame Financial Migration Hurdles
- On-demand Webinar | From Capture to Cloud: How Invoices Flow from Yooz to Infor Sunsystems Cloud
Accurately budget and forecast future demands with Infor EPM
Infor Enterprise Performance Management (Infor EPM) is an integrated solution suite designed to consolidate, plan, budget, and forecast. Infor EPM leverages Infor OS Data Fabric to connect to and pull data from the Infor ecosystem and third-party software, providing a single source of truth.
The solution utilises an in-memory analytical engine, ensuring that when data is updated, the impact is reflected across all models and reports instantaneously. For the finance team, this means moving away from data gathering and moving toward high-value data analysis.
Infor EPM has helped famous hospitality brands like Wyndham Hotel Group, Kempinski Hotels, Auberge Resorts, Intrawest Resorts, and Hard Rock International better monitor their performance.
⌈ Infor EPM’s use cases in hospitality
- Track costs for capital planning
- Analyse, forecast, plan, and predict profit and loss
- Slash the time dedicated to budget by half and produce more relevant, timely budgets
- Create detailed budget scenarios to evaluate risks and potential impact
- Built-in in-context analysis for data consolidation
- Track occupancy, average daily rate (ADR), revenue per available room (RevPAR), social media reputation scores, and overall performance compared to competitors to identify market trends
⌈ Infor EPM’s integration ability
Infor EPM can integrate with other Infor products, such as SunSystems Cloud, HMS, and revenue management systems, to facilitate automated, real-time data aggregation, helping you navigate demand cycles more efficiently.
More resources on Infor EPM:
- On-demand Webinar | Budgeting: From Manual to Agile
- Experts Explained: Breaking Down Data Walls with Infor EPM
- Nucleus Reports Infor EPM Improves Financial Productivity by 20 Per Cent
- Why Infor EPM & SunSystems Are Such a Dynamic Duo for Finance Leaders
Know your guests wherever they go with Infor HMS
Infor Hospitality Management System (Infor HMS) is a centralised platform for managing reservations, guest information, front desk operations, and housekeeping, thus enabling front office staff to significantly improve efficiency. Additionally, Infor HMS also offers robust reporting capabilities to track key performance indicators and make data-driven decisions.
Infor HMS’ use cases in hospitality
- Capture a guest’s special requests and loyalty program usage so the hotel can offer tailored services and special promotional programs
- Real-time reporting on guest spending by revenue category, last stay details, the frequency of stays, geographic source, travel type, and the guest booking journey
- Estimate room demands in the future and recommend appropriate selling strategies
Infor HMS’ integration ability
Infor HMS serves as a central hub for advanced hotel and resort operations. This scalable hospitality technology platform provides extensive integration capabilities, accommodating both mainstream and bespoke third-party solutions, including:
- Infor SunSystems Cloud and Infor EPM for real-time posting and reporting
- Infor Revenue Management Solution (Infor RMS) for dynamic pricing, charging the right customers on the right channel with the right price, and accurate forecasting
- Infor Sales & Catering (Infor S&C) to further enrich the customer database with purchasing history, communication history, group billing, etc.
- And more
More resources on Infor HMS:
- On-demand Webinar | Hospitality Management: Meet Modern Guest Demands with Modern Solutions
- What These Numbers Say About Infor HMS
Centralise your data and documents in one portal with Infor OS Data Fabric
Infor Operating Service (Infor OS) is the foundation that powers many of Infor’s cloud solutions. The platform was developed based on four key pillars:
- User experience and productivity: Through consistent, secure, and personalised interfaces for every role, group, and user
- Smooth integration: Unifies enterprise systems, providing hotel-wide visibility
- Automation: Creates and monitors automated workflows or events
- Security: Leverages world-class security services to authenticate, authorise, and regulate users, APIs, and more
Built into and readily available on the platform is Infor OS Data Fabric, a comprehensive data integration and management solution for businesses. Infor OS Data Fabric allows organisations to store their data as-is, preserving its integrity and ensuring efficient data management across diverse sources and formats.
What businesses will get with Infor OS Data Fabric
- Big data Q&A: Accelerates data exploration and analysis to quickly uncover insights
- Data unification: Manages petabytes of data from countless business applications, devices, and users and provides meaningful metadata for compliance requirements, data purging, sharing, and more
- Semantics: Provides a governance backstop for developers to deliver meaningful, on-time data projects while also ensuring the repository does not turn into a data swamp
More resources on Infor OS:
- On-demand Webinar | Unlocking the Power of Infor OS
- Learn everything you need to know about Infor OS via our on-demand training courses
- Infor Document Management Cloud Capture Integrated with Infor OS Multi-tenant
Own your revenue streams with Infor RMS
Infor Revenue Management Solution (Infor RMS) is an all-in-one pricing solution built to meet the demand for modular pricing, personalised automation, science-based functionality, quick user adoption, and continuous innovation.
The cornerstone of Infor RMS is data and advanced BI capabilities, which are enhanced by Gen AI to empower revenue managers to visualise, slice and dice, or export intelligence in any data format.
With better data and user-centric tools, revenue managers can now produce more accurate forecasts, get detailed answers, and add strategic value to the board.
Infor RMS’ use cases in hospitality
- Demand forecasting
- Rate optimisation
- Market segmentation
- Channel management
- Business performance analytics
Infor RMS’ integration ability
The solution can be integrated with Infor HMS and S&C to ensure consistent data and optimise RevPAR and profit margins.
More resources on Infor RMS: On-demand Webinar | Reimagining Hospitality: How Technology is Shaping Guest Experience and Business Growth
Infor S&C
Infor Sales & Catering (Infor S&C) simplifies the entire event booking process while ensuring every little event detail is well taken care of.
From the initial inquiry to the final invoice, Infor S&C helps hoteliers and event managers straighten out every end right from their PCs, tablets, and mobiles.
Infor S&C’s use cases in hospitality
- Automatically populate website inquiries into Infor S&C so staff can quickly create custom proposals
- Stay on top of availability, communications, contract details, event requirements, inventory, etc., when simultaneously managing multiple events across different properties
- Quickly share proposals, orders, schedules, and more for efficient liaison between the hotel and clients
- Recognise, personalise, and maximise existing and prospective guest relationships
- Monitor and control costs of event equipment, labour, inventories, etc.
- Examine, adjust, and analyse important metrics like revenue by customer or required resource analysis with just a few clicks
Infor S&C’s integration ability
Hotels can connect Infor S&C with HMS for guest room blocks and RMS for revenue impact forecasting.
Syskynt
Sysynkt is an open banking solution built for Infor SunSystems, though it can be treated as an extended financial management system and configured to integrate with the hotel’s accounting software, CRM, or ERP of choice.
Sysynkt’s use cases in hospitality
- Safely and securely share the hotel’s financial data with the bank
- Automate payment and remittance sending processes
- Automate the bank reconciliation process by automatically pulling files from bank portals, converting them to the correct formats, and uploading them to the accounting software
- Capture expense, develop automated approval workflows, and enforce policy across the hotel
Sysynkt’s integration ability
Sysynkt offers a ready-to-go library of plug-ins and public APIs to extend and enhance their existing financial infrastructure, whether on-premise or in the cloud.
More resources on Sysynkt: Open Banking Meets Automation: A Deep Dive into Sysynkt
Hire the right talent and unlock their full potential with Great People Inside psychometric assessments
Great People Inside (GPI) is a cloud-based platform that streamlines businesses’ talent management practices through psychometric assessments and surveys.
The platform allows hotel businesses to develop assessments for each job role. With clear, actionable reports, GPI equips hiring managers with data-driven insights to make informed, confident decisions. This empowers them to believe in their recruitment and employee development processes, knowing they are making the best decisions for their team’s success.
GPI’s use cases in hospitality
- Assess top talents’ behavioural characteristics, cognitive abilities, and occupational interests
- Leverage assessment results to nurture talents, predict how well a job candidate performs (or even succeeds) in a specific role
- Identify candidates who have a high tendency to contribute to a positive work environment and high productivity
- Evaluate key traits like adaptability and people skills in top talents and identify areas of improvements
Want to develop your own assessments instead? Browse through GPI’s library of hundreds of dimensions, drag and drop relevant ones to create your own customised questionnaires.
More resources on GPI:
Maximise your technology investments with streamlined and on-demand end-user training
Without proper training, the latest technology, tools, applications, software… can quickly turn into “yet another failed upgrade project” that costs the company an arm and a leg. Why not meet the needs and wants of your employees, the real end-users and the main target audience of these digital transformation initiatives, with tailored and on-demand training courses?
TRG Academy is TRG’s brainchild, developed from years of accumulating knowledge, resources, industry best practices, and customer success stories. Our courses are bite-sized, interactive, and viewable from anywhere.
TRG also provides on-site training upon request.
Learn more about our different training programs and what to expect via our website.
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Contact our Sales team to schedule a quick discovery call today!
