GuestPoint shows the way

Tim Canny has worked in the accommodation industry in Perth, London and Canada. Now the owner/operator of Ballarat’s Sovereign Park Motor Inn, it is the GuestPoint Property Management System he employs here that gets his top rating.

As the major reasons for his rave review of the technology, he cites convenience, simplicity of use, and the fact that GuestPoint listens to clients and adapts its software to their individual wishes.

“We’ve been using GuestPoint for 12 years and we were probably one of the first motels to use it,” Mr Canny said. “We switched from their old system ‘Motelier’ to the new version of GuestPoint and we’ve been rapt with it ever since. It’s a great system for our property. We have 49 motel units so it’s perfect for us.

“I’ve worked in a lot of places around the world and GuestPoint is one of the simplest systems I’ve used, and I’ve had lots to compare it with. It’s easy to use and it’s easy to train other people how to use it.

“It saves us so much time. GuestPoint has also become our channel manager, so it now distributes the rates for us and it’s certainly made life much easier for everyone at Sovereign Park.”

David Sawers, GuestPoint’s General Manager, told AccomNews that one of the best features of GuestPoint is that it provides an “all-in-one solution” simplifying so many tasks in hospitality management.

“The GuestPoint Channel Manager, the GuestPoint Payment Gateway and your purpose-built property’s website are all integrated directly within the PMS allowing you one location to manage your entire business,” he said.

“Although we are heavily designed towards the motel market, we provide many industry sectors with a great solution. We can provide a system to match the needs of anyone who sells a bed or site. This includes properties such as caravan parks, hostels, and bed and breakfast accommodations to name a few, however, our goal is always to keep it simple.

“We have an online training academy where managers and staff can sign up and complete a certified course about the GuestPoint PMS. We also team up with some great relief manager companies that utilise these training courses.

“Many of our customers use this course when they employ new people, rather than having to train them themselves or organise a separate training session. The new team member simply goes online and completes the two-hour course, which covers everything from checking in to running management reports. We can even allocate specific modules so they only have to learn what relates to their property and job role.”
Mr Sawers said while some of GuestPoint’s newer competitors “might have all the bells and whistles, often they can be hard to navigate”.

“We prioritise what core products customers need and we try to make sure we integrate with those at a competitive price, so the customer is getting maximum value for money,” he said.

“We’ve been around for 13 years now and transitioned from being a server-based product to also a cloud-based version working in unison. Many of our customers have the server-based product on their reception computer. Still, their reservation centres, managers or owners can log in on any device, anywhere, at any time using the cloud-based version.”
Mr Canny said GuestPoint had done away with his days (and nights) updating availability on booking sites manually.

“Using it as our channel manager has been a huge time saver,” he said.

“Through GuestPoint Pay we can now process payments and it’s created a lot more efficiency in our front office. It makes taking deposits and checking in guests so much smoother.

“We’ve made all these changes in the last couple of months, and it’s added so much efficiency to our front office.

“It’s great for our guests too because they get instant confirmation emails and text messages from our GuestPoint, so communication-wise it’s tremendous.”

Mr Canny said GuestPoint provided 24-hour support and is “very quick at responding and solving any issues”.

“They listen to their customers and even implement suggested changes. They’ve adapted things for us based on our feedback,” he said.

“We’ve produced ideas, only to find them appear in the next version of their product.

“We have conference rooms listed through GuestPoint as well as our guestrooms, but we didn’t want them included in our occupancy percentage, because it skewed the figures. GuestPoint was able to install a feature for us through which we could choose what rooms were included in our occupancy data, so we could exclude those conference rooms and make our occupancy rates more accurate when it came to reporting.

“We made suggestions about emailing, and being able to amend and edit the emails before they were sent out by the system. GuestPoint listened and made changes to the software for us.

“They’ve updated and improved their products quickly based on our customer feedback. For us, that’s a great thing.”

For more information contact 1300 110 449 or visit www.guestpoint.com