innRoad

Although it is frustrating, I like that Inn Road allows one step to be completed at a time and you cannot proceed unless everything is done correctly. Working in a fast pace environment with hospitality a lot of things can be forgotten or overlooked because we multi-task upon multi-tasking. I've done so myself plenty of times, but the program is built to allow things to be done correctly the first time by having all the proper areas filled out. This way it limits the time one could waste backtracking to find a mistake made towards the beginning of the process or even at the beginning of the month.

The thing that I least like about Inn Road is that users can delete/void items that were done on a previous day and it can alter number totals for the MTD. The rule of thumb is to never change anything in the past!! Always do everything in real time and the date coincide with the date that the correction is being made; It is very important. To explain, an associate deleted the first night room charge on a guest that was staying 15 days total. What should have been done was to add a room charge adjustment that coincided with the actual date and type in the date it was correcting in the comment area. What was done was they deleted the posting and added a posting for a discounted percentage, but they changed the date for the posting to be for the first day. I hope this makes sense in text because it was confusing to locate where the issue was at first.

After looking at several other systems, including a couple of the ones aimed at large, chain hotels, innRoad seemed to be the best designed for the small, single location business. We are very new to this business, so anything that could clearly improve our operations and sales is a bonus. A few things we do that are somewhat unique require creating workarounds that aren't as precise as would be ideal, but the customization available is great. Customer support and training has been really good, as well, leaving me in no doubt that the vendor actually does care about their customers. Even on a holiday, you can get live help on the phone quickly. The channel management features got us quickly online with major OTAs so we could get loads more exposure than traditional advertising would for the same cost. Already we are up 73% in sales over the same time period in the previous year! Of course, your mileage may vary. The pricing is also very competitive. I would not say it is the lowest I found, but based on every point I compared among systems, the system returns good value for the cost.

We have a vacation rental component to the way we do business that doesn't really fit the traditional inn model. This software is clearly aimed those businesses that hew closely to the inn model. I agree that their focus is entirely appropriate, but managing the kind of group bookings we do is a little harder than it would be using a system designed for vacation rentals. That said, vacation rental-based systems are far more limited in their overall scope. My only other nit to pick is that a few of the functions scattered throughout the system don't always respond reliably, but this may be more a function of the system being web-based, rather than run from a local server.