A paper reservation book works until two people write in it on the same day. One of them writes in pencil, the other doesn’t have the book, and the second booking goes on a sticky note that’s gone by Thursday. If that sounds familiar, the question isn’t whether paper is bad. It’s whether it still fits the way you work.
Where paper does well
Paper is fast for a property with a couple of rooms and one person taking every booking. There’s nothing to install, nothing to learn, and it keeps working when the power’s out. If that’s you, a booking system probably isn’t worth the effort yet.
Where it starts to fail
The cracks show up in a few predictable places.
Two people, one book. The book is wherever the person who wrote in it left it. A booking taken on the phone in the office doesn’t reach the front desk until someone walks it over.
Finding a booking. A guest rings and says they booked “sometime in spring” under a surname you can’t spell. You’re now reading pages. A booking system finds reservations by date or confirmation number, and finds customers with a quick search.
Rates and bills. Different rates by season, per person or per night, plus tax and extras like laundry, all add up by hand. One slip and the guest sees a bill that doesn’t match what they were quoted. A system does the sums for you, including inclusive tax such as VAT or GST.
Moving a booking. Moving a guest to a different room means rubbing out a line and writing it again in another row, and hoping the new room really is free for all the nights.
No history. Paper doesn’t tell you which guests come back, which months fill up first, or which promotion filled the rooms. Reports in a booking system show occupancy, payments and booking trends, and keep each guest’s history.
What changes with a booking system
The calendar replaces the book. Every room is on one screen, bookings are color coded by status, and you can drag a booking from one room to another. The booking itself goes through a step by step wizard, and a confirmation or receipt prints with the charges calculated.
With iMagic Hotel Reservation you can also put the software on more than one PC on your network, so the front desk and the back office see the same bookings. Each PC needs its own license, and one PC holds the shared database.
Moving over without losing a booking
Don’t switch on a Monday morning in July. Do it in a quiet week.
- Set up your rooms and rates first. The Configuration Wizard walks you through adding rooms, charges and seasonal rates.
- Enter the bookings you already have, starting with the nearest dates and working forward.
- Keep the paper book beside you for the first week or two, and write new bookings in both places.
- Compare the two at the end of each day until they match without any fixing.
- Use the Import Customer Wizard to bring in existing customer details if you have them in electronic form.
Whatever you use, back up your data. Paper has one copy, and so does a database file unless you copy it somewhere else. iMagic Hotel Reservation always has Database Backup available.
When to switch
Switch when the book is costing you bookings, or time. Common signs are a double booking, a guest who arrives to find nothing recorded, or an evening spent working out who owes what. If you’ve spent that evening, you’re already paying for software with your own hours.
The FAQ has a short answer to “I’m quite happy with my pencil and paper, why should I use a computer?” The short version is that software should make your life easier, and if it doesn’t, it isn’t the right software.
Download the free iMagic Hotel Reservation trial, a fully functional 10 use evaluation, and enter next month’s bookings alongside your paper book to compare the two.