It is a well-known fact that the hospitality sector is one of the largest revenue generators in the world. A restaurant is no longer just a place where you consume food and alcoholic drinks, but it is a place where you have to enjoy an elegant ambiance, and mouthwatering food as well. The guest, all, wants everything to be perfect for them; above all this includes the services that take place both online and offline. This means your restaurant needs a perfect online presence which aids quick services of guests.
The hospitality industry has been growing into one of the most thriving industries globally. This is as a result of the introduction of several new and improved technologies in the industry. The job market for hospitality managers is being able to use technology at its finest. Hospitality is the heart beat of any successful business working more like an industry to many people.
This article provides a list of the best tools needed for all hospitality industry business. See what tools you’re missing and get access to everything needed for all hospitality industry businesses.
1. Email Tracking Tools
If you work with a lot of emails, especially in areas of customer service and receiving bookings for hotels, travel agencies, vacation rentals, and other hospitality businesses, you will need an email tracking tool to make it easier. Hoteliers have to send hundreds of emails every week, and travel agencies receive bookings through emails. Customers hate it when they aren’t responded to early because their message was lost in hundreds of other mails. An email tracking tool will make you more competent and responsible for reading and replying to all emails.
Apart from checking incoming mails, your outgoing mails are also important. Whether you’re replying to customers, making orders, asking for investments, or more, you need to know that your email was successfully delivered and read. An email tracking tool will show you if your mail was sent to the spam or if it was left unopened. If you’re into marketing for your hospitality business, an email tracking tool will give you an idea of how many messages you sent were considered. With email tracking tools, you can be well organized with your messages and be more mindful of your recipients. Many email services come with their dedicated tracking tool. You can use tools like HubSpot CRM, Streak Email Tracking, and Yesware for email tracking.
Best Email Tracking Tool For Hospitality Industry
Right Inbox
Right Inbox is one of the best email tracking software products, and it has a variety of features that can help your email marketing work effectively and efficiently. This tool looks after scheduling, setting reminders for those emails that should be sent later, mail merge, recurring emails, and tracking every step after clicking the send option. Right Inbox was founded by Sunjan Patel and later bought by Ramp Ventures for an undisclosed amount in 2018.
Features of Right Inbox:
- Set reminders for those emails, which should be sent later.
- Private notes
- Can send follow-up emails.
- Personalize and optimize effective email templates.
- Recurring emails
- CRM sync
- Smart links previews
- Mail merger
- Email tracker
Pricing of Right Inbox :
- Free for a 30-day trial
- $7.95 per month for professionals
- $6.95 per month for teams
Streak
One of the fastest email tracking platforms is Streak, which is able to track your recipient behaviour towards the email you have sent in 30 seconds right from Gmail. This software helps to get things done easily, from getting a notification on the recipient viewing your emails, improving your response rate, and saving time by sending emails to those recipients who have viewed your last mail and responding to it.
Features of Streak:
- CRM
- Email tracking in an organized manner
- Mail merge
- Thread splitter
- Send later
- Email Sharing
- Snippets
Pricing of Streak:
- For individuals, free for a month
- For solo, $15 per month For Pro, $49 per month.
- For enterprise, $129 per month
MailChimp
Mailchimp is the original email marketing platform, but they’ve since expanded to include a range of other marketing automation tools and channels. However, their early roots are still visible. They provide strong email marketing solutions, such as A/B testing, robust email analytics, and all the email automation capabilities you need to develop for your business.
Features of Mailchimp:
- Email Designer
- Reports
- MailChimp Editor
- Social Sharing
- Custom Forms
- Email Client Testing
- Mobile Signup Forms
- RSS-to-Email
- MailChimp Mobile
- MailChimp Coupon Scanner
- Campaign Archives
- Merge Tags
- MailChimp Snap
- Automation
- Social Profiles
- Integrations
- MailChimp VIPs
- SMS for Events
- Geolocation
- Segmentation and Groups
- Multi-User Accounts
- A/B Testing
- Delivery by Time Zone
- Spam Filter Diagnostics
- Email Beamer
- Subscriber Profiles
- Email Delivery
- Email Templates
Pricing of Mailchimp:
Mailchimp has a free plan that is limited in scope. Paid options for up to 500 contacts start at $9.99 per month.
2. Official Website
First and foremost, every professional needs an official website for their hospitality operation. Whether you’re running a hotel, vacation rental, or mobile marketing agency, you need a website to reach your desired target audience. Having a website makes coming up with marketing strategies easier and improves the effectiveness of your advertisements. It also allows you to expand your market, increase local reach, and provides easy access to new customers.
With a website, you can easily relate to your customers by educating them and receiving feedback from them on your services. You can also save money on distribution and printing costs since everything is done online. If you have the skills to create a website, you can do so yourself as they are easy to use and update. If not, it’s best to seek help from those who provide hotel, travel agency, or vacation rental website design services. Once your website is up and running, the business operations get way more efficient and effective. Besides, there’s no other way to be hospitable than with a user-friendly website.
Best Web design For Creating Hospitality Industry
Turkish Baklava Factory
Tint Marketing
York Street Market
3. Analytical Tools
With a website comes essential analytical tools. If you want to keep checking how well your website is working to benefit the business, you can use analytical tools. It also shows you how customers are using and engaging themselves on your website. One of these tools is Google Analytics, which is offered for free. You can use the tool to check how much traffic the content on your business website is generating. It’s essential for tracking the progress and monitoring the quality of your website.
If customers can make direct bookings on your website, you can also use this analytical tool to check how visitors found your site and which other website directed them to it. It also shows how long they stayed on the website and their geographical location. You can use this information to target your paid advertising to the website that often directs traffic to yours, and also the geographical location where most of your visitors are from. With this information, you know where to improve and how to attract more customers to your services. Analytical tools make marketing and advertisement easier for any hospitality professional. It also makes it easy to use the business website. Another analytical tools to use is IBM Planning Analytics.
Best Analytical Tool For Hospitality Industry
Tableau
Tableau data analytics software is considered the best integrated visual business intelligence tool in the market. It is a well-liked option for enterprises of all sizes because of its efficiency and productivity. Additionally, Tableau incorporates Einstein Discovery AI as a part of Salesforce, enhancing BI tools’ capabilities and increasing business productivity.
With Tableau Public, a free software version, even non-analytics experts may play around with their data and create complex visualizations per their needs and requirement.
Klipfolio
Klipfolio is the ideal data analytics software for quick metrics and confirming business decisions. Using a robust data modeler, users can edit, alter, organize, and manage data in any way they wish.
Besides this, one of its unique features that make Klipfolio stand out from the competition is PowerMetrics.
PowerMetrics tracks historical data so that users can quickly match, compare, and evaluate time phases and examine past trends. Moreover, this data analytics program is simple and doesn’t require coding expertise.
Zoho Analytics
Zoho Analytics offers the best analytical tools for robust and actionable insights. It provides a user-friendly connector interface, including reports and dashboards, renowned applications, cloud-based applications, and also on-premises databases.
Moreover, Zoho Analytics offers a wide range of APIs and a drag-and-drop interface integrated with AI and machine learning capabilities to react faster and run applications more smoother.
4. Social Media Tools
Like all other industries even the hospitality industry cannot escape the wave of social media. These tools are critical in getting attention from your followers and target audience as they enable you to track and follow what people are saying about your business and be alerted whenever your brand is mentioned. Social media tools can monitor conversations on social media platforms by selecting specific hashtags, keywords, and mentions.
With these tools, you can provide better and more hospitable services to your customers. Whenever you see a positive mention, you can reply with a message of gratitude and keep in mind what people like about your business. If you see a complaint on any social media platform, you can immediately apologize and mention that you have solved the problem or decide the future course of action to improve. This will show that you are focused on providing top services to your customers, and it helps you enhance your brand. You can do these with social media tools. Some of these tools include Tweetreach and Mention.
Best Social Media Tool For Hospitality Industry
MediaConnect360
Designed specifically for the hospitality industry, Milestone Internet’s “MediaConnect360” platform is a streamlined management tool that suggests marketing ideas and helps organize content through an integrated dashboard. Knowing that devising new marketing ideas can be tricky, the tool identifies local events and activities that might be worth promoting to engage guests. The Milestone team can also supply ongoing marketing tasks to complement a hotel’s own activity, all of which gets added to a centralized marketing calendar to help manage the workflow across departments. Analytics and scheduling tools also come included.
Pricing: Free trial to start, connect with Milestone to discuss pricing.
Hootsuite
In the world of social media management tools, Hootsuite is one of the biggest names out there. One of its big strengths is the way it allows content to be promoted across multiple social networks including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and even Instagram (through Hootsuite’s mobile app). Workflows can be split between teams and you can assign team leaders to make sure every message has brand approval before being sent. Alongside analytics and reporting, Hootsuite features a social media listening tool that lets you stay on top of what customers are talking about, which is a great way to devise the kind of content likely to gain high levels of engagement. Messages can also be created in advance then auto-scheduled to go out when they’ll gain maximum visibility and interaction. This is a good option for independent properties or small hotel groups.
Pricing: The basic version is free. Pro pricing starts at $9 per month with enterprise pricing available for those after the full range of features.
TweetDeck
TweetDeck, which is now owned by Twitter, is a free and easy way to manage your Twitter account. This is especially useful if your hotel manages customer service through Twitter, as it allows you to set up desktop notifications to rapidly respond and engage with tweets from your audience as soon as they appear. You can also choose the Twitter streams and hashtags you’re most interested in following, and schedule tweets in advance.
Pricing: Free through your Twitter account. Any kind of hotel can (and should) take advantage of its features.
5. Survey Tools
Customer satisfaction is the core of any hospitality profession. Any professional knows that they must take the feedback and thoughts of the customer into consideration, and do their best to ensure that their clients are happy with the service. As a hospitality professional, you need survey tools. These tools are the best way to get honest customer feedback on your services. The tools make it easier and quicker, not to mention way more organized than knocking on doors and getting questionnaires. The use of survey tools can be optimized with analytical tools.
Additionally, survey tools make it easy to conduct market research on particular target audiences for your travel agency, hotel or vacation rental. With these tools, you can know what people want to see more from your services, what kind of promotions you should hold to increase traffic and customers, what people like about your services and what you need to improve on. When you know all these little things, it would not only improve your marketing strategy but make it easier for you and your team to provide satisfying services to new and old customers. You can use companies like Google Forms, Snap Surveys and SoGoSurvey for your business surveys.
Best Survey Tool For Hospitality Industry
Revinate
While creating customizable surveys can end up being pretty time-consuming, Revinate makes life easier with a series of drag-and-drop tools. Surveys can be quickly created by selecting from multiple question types, while integration with your hotel’s PMS means each survey can be swiftly matched up with the right guest. Revinate also has a mobile app, so you can delve into guest satisfaction data on the move. Online reviews and surveys can also be brought together in a single dashboard, which is ideal for getting a complete overview of satisfaction levels and trends.
ReviewPro
With more than 19,000 customers, ReviewPro is one of the most popular survey tools for the hotel industry. Top features include “sentiment analysis,” which lets you assess guest feedback in over 120 categories to quickly identify key areas that might need urgent attention. To help improve the guest experience while on property, ReviewPro also offers in-stay questionnaires that offer the ability to quickly survey customers and respond to potential service issues. Surveys can also be customized in up to 36 languages, a useful tool for hotels that regularly attract overseas guests.
Guestfolio
Guestfolio enables hotels to gather customer feedback through customizable pre-arrival and post-stay surveys. You can create surveys yourself or ask Guestfolio to help you structure questions to capture the most relevant data to meet specific needs. To speed up responding to guest reviews, you can also set-up automated responses that are triggered when a survey score falls below your own pre-determined level. Different surveys can also be generated based on criteria such as your customer’s nationality and how often they stay with you.
6. Task Management Tools
Managing a hospitality business, or your duties as a professional can be tricky, especially when you have more tasks than you can remember. It’s essential to properly manage your workload by being organized so that you don’t forget critical appointments or duties. As a rescue, there are many task management tools present. Some prefer to use project management software instead. These tools make it easy to prioritize and organize your tasks every day, as well as track your progress of daily goals.Task management tools are not helpful only for you but can be used by your entire team for improved productivity.
For example, when your team is taking on a new project, you can use a task management tool to distribute duties to all team members. You can also use it to set priorities, guidelines, and deadlines. Some tools allow you to add comments that others can see and attach essential files. Then, there is the tracking feature, which shows how much work you’ve done and what’s left. Task management tools are vital for any hospitality professional, as forgetting one important duty can upset customers and disrupt the business flow. Some great task management tools include Trello, Asana, and SmartTask.
Best Task Management Tool For Hospitality Industry
Asana
Asana focuses on managing projects and workflows. Task lists, comments, notifications, and other team collaboration tools are some of its most noticeable features.
- Key features: Task lists can be arranged by project or deadline. On tasks, you can make comments and tag coworkers. You can privately message any of your teammates. Notifications are triggered by all forms of communication and task assignment.
- Price: There is a free trial period, and paid plans begin at $10.99 a month.
- Differences between free and paid versions: Three project views, community support, as well as fundamental workflows, reporting, and security are all included in Asana’s free tier. All of these capabilities are available in more advanced forms (or quantity) in Asana’s premium tiers.
- Pros: With Asana, you can quickly group tasks for a project together, assign these tasks to team members, and view a detailed list of the assignments and due dates for each team member.
- Cons:Managers like you cannot generate Gantt charts in Asana. There isn’t a simple way to determine how much time each team member should spend on the other.
2 Monday
Project management is a major component of Monday, a task management tool. It allows you to automate workflows, share files, communicate deadlines, and create Kanban boards.
- Key features: Gantt diagrams make timescales clear. It is simple to submit and approve requests. Workflows that are automated can be altered. Kanban boards are simple to make and offer areas for file exchange. It provides four additional solutions in addition to its main work management platform, including Monday Sales CRM, Monday Dev, Monday Marketer, and Monday Projects.
- Individual plans are free, and team plans start at $8 per user per month
- Differences between free and paid versions: You get limitless free viewers and goods when you subscribe to a premium Monday plan. Additionally, you receive more storage, Gantt charts and deadlines, direct customer support, a more comprehensive dashboard, and more automation capabilities and connectors.
- Pros: Monday has most of the tools a team leader needs to keep things running smoothly.
- Cons: Monday boasts robust customer service for paying subscribers, but it can be tricky to track down the right contact information.
3 Trello
A task management app, Trello uses boards, cards, and lists to organize work. You can see your projects in great detail as well as from a higher vantage point with the help of these instruments.
- Key features: Gantt charts can be approximated using boards, lists, and charts. There are tools available for monitoring productivity. Trello is compatible with many other popular business apps (such as Jira, Excel, Slack, and more).
- Price: There are free options, and the cheapest paid plan starts at $5/month/user.
- Differences between free and paid versions: Paid plans include extra customization options, user-friendly views, and unlimited boards and checklists.
- Pros: The free version of Trello does not limit the number of cards, boards, or users you can have.
- Cons: In Trello, each card or task can only be part of a single board. Similar restrictions are unusual in competing project management systems.
4 Fellow
When compared to other time management apps, Fellow stands out due to its central emphasis on gatherings. During the meetings that Fellow organizes, you and your team can discuss any issues that have arisen and agree on a course of action to take moving forward. You can do all this and more by incorporating Fellow with your favorite programs.
- Key features: Fellow serves as a centralized location for your team’s meeting agendas, meeting notes, feedback, and subsequent actions. Paper notebooks are obsolete thanks to the abundance of meeting-related templates and idea streams at your disposal. You will also receive complete integrations with a wide variety of other apps, from the most fundamental ones like Google Calendar to advanced HR systems like Workday.
- Price: Up to 10 users can use Fellow without paying a dime. The monthly fee for the Pro plan is $5 per user, and bespoke pricing options are also available.
- Differences between free and paid versions: In the paid versions of Fellow, features like group chats, scheduled tasks, and more are all unrestricted. They also have excellent compatibility with Jira, Asana, and Zapier.
- Pros: Fellow maximizes the effectiveness of your meetings, which are vital for planning, delegating, and monitoring work. They’ve thought of everything and included it all in this meeting toolkit.
- Cons: If you’re looking for a comprehensive project management tool, look elsewhere; Fellow isn’t it. But that’s only a problem if you’re unhappy with your current solution for managing projects.
Fellow is a great complement to your project management app (or any of the apps on this list). With both organized task lists and streamlined events for identifying and assigning tasks, your team will swiftly ace all its goals.
Conclusion
The whole hospitality industry is growing rapidly and to accommodate this growth, there are lots of new trends in this sector. The hospitality industry has improved a lot by shifting from paper tools to software.
Innovations in hospitality industry is not only making guest’s stay more enjoyable, but also make their life easier, spa management can be much easier and more efficient with few technological innovations.