5 reasons why you need serviced apartment property management software

A serviced apartment property management system (PMS) wears many hats. It’s your lead revenue collector coordinating pricing, boosting conversions and taking payments. It's your site manager organising housekeeping, scheduling maintenance and unlocking doors. It's your head entertainer hosting events, running amenities and putting on activities. 

All day, every day, a serviced apartment PMS can juggle multiple roles to make your business stand out from the crowd. Based on our 15 years experience of working with service apartments as an operator and technology provider - here’s our five top reasons for getting serviced apartment property management software.

‍Contents

• Increase revenue
• Manage multiple properties
• Enhance guest experience
• Automate the back office 
• Stand out from the crowd

Increase revenue

Are you maximising your booking potential? Are you getting the best price for your units? Are you using serviced apartment management software? Put bluntly, a PMS optimises your profitability. 

• Multi-stay lengths. Take advantage of high short-stay rates and high long-stay occupancies. With a PMS, you can get the best of both worlds by diversifying units across multiple stays lengths, minimising booking gaps and profiting from seasonal demand. 
• Dynamic pricing. Instead of manually checking competitors’ prices and regional rents to determine room rates, outsource the hassle and upgrade the results. Dynamic pricing with a PMS not only works out the best rate per unit according to local demand and supply, but also updates rates across all channels automatically and minimises voids by reducing rates for ‘in between’ bookings. 
• Conversion. More than twice as many customers (39%) book directly than book via an online travel agent (17%). A slick PMS booking portal, which works across all formats (i.e. smartphone and tablet), is your converter-in-chief: encouraging more guests to book and minimising abandonment through friction or delays. 

Manage multiple properties

Where are your units located? With serviced apartment property management software, it doesn’t matter. From a central location (or remotely), a PMS easily manages different units of different sizes in different locations at the same time. 

• Maintenance. Be it a leaky pipe in London, a broken hob in Birmingham or a safety inspection in Salford, a serviced apartment PMS covers all the bases. From scheduling planned maintenance, such as air-conditioning upgrades, to quickly reacting to urgent repairs, such as burst drains, use a PMS to remotely and effectively oversee maintenance operations. 
• Housekeeping. Short-stay turnarounds. Weekly building cleans. Emergency stain removal. Use a serviced apartment PMS to schedule housekeeping rotas across your portfolio, communicate directly with housekeeping staff and receive photo notifications of completed work. 

• Expansion. Scaling nationally? Set up new locations with a lean team and benefit from having low overheads. Growing internationally? Communicate with staff using automatic translation and sell in multiple currencies. Moving into new hospitality segments? Expand with ease like Flying Butler, who recently launched its BTR brand Mura Living with a split development (80% BTR, 20% serviced apartment) and manage both with only one centralised PMS. 

Enhance guest experience

With four in five hospitality customers reading reviews before booking accommodation (and 40% of hospitality guests writing a positive review after a great experience), you need to prioritise guest experience. A PMS is your 5 star review creator. 

• Connection. Automate pre-stay emails and impress your guests by giving helpful advice and arrival tips. Respond to in-stay requests instantaneously with a live chat feature. Schedule post-stay comms and tailor discounts to guest preferences. Forge a strong direct connection with each guest using a PMS. 
• Customisation. Personalisation is the new byword for great guest experience. Be it sending bespoke quotes with snazzy images and virtual tours or enabling guests to update their in-stay preferences with the touch of a button, a PMS perfectly curates a guest’s stay to their tastes. ‍
• Control. Allow your guests to choose their own housekeeping rota to fit around their working day. Enable residents to report maintenance issues and follow its status via an app. Let customers book the boardroom for a work meeting. A serviced apartment PMS allows you to put your customers in the driving seat and feel valued.  

Automate the back office

Guests want a streamlined service just as much as you do. By automating a variety of back office tasks using a PMS, it reduces errors and speeds up processes, allowing you to service your customers better.

• Finance. Wave goodbye to the calculator, printer and photocopier. Say hello to error-free accounting, automated invoices and secure payments. A PMS auto-generates, sends and chases bills based on a guest's stay. Get paid on time and make sure your books are balanced. 
• Reporting. Still using Google Sheets or Excel to analyse occupancy data? Let the PMS crunch the important numbers for you. As a single source of truth, a PMS gathers key data from across your operations, and packages it into a simple dashboard. Use it to spot trends, address pressing issues and make informed decisions about the running of your serviced apartment business.
• Inventory. Inventories were once thick dossiers of printed photos that took hours to complete. Now, PMS-integrated inventory tools are not only digital, but also have the most up-to-date technology to provide easy-to-use 360° virtual tours, saving you (and your incoming guest) time, money and stress. 

Stand out from the crowd

What makes you stand out in a serviced apartment hub like London? Price? Location? Room? Amenities? Different guests appreciate different things, but all guests appreciate a well-run service. 

• Tech-led amenities. It’s no longer enough to offer a great gym amenities or spa treatments if you want your serviced apartment business to stand out. But, add a PMS into the mix, which enables guests to book gym sessions via an app and reserve a massage on their way back from work, and you’ll be a step ahead of the competition. This is especially crucial if you have a large, multi-use development with multiple guests. 
• Seamless access. Easy to lose and tiresome to replace, physical keys are fast-becoming a museum item for good reason. Smart locks - ranging from a QR code to an in-built sensor - are not only simple to add to existing units, but provide guests with seamless and secure entry to public and private spaces. Nothing says incredible service than doors literally opening for you. 
• Responsiveness. From speedily responding to maintenance and housekeeping requests to answering questions via live chat functions and sending important updates through push notifications, you can turn any potential experience detractor into an experience enhancer with a PMS. 

Future-proof your business

Whether it’s optimising revenue streams or facilitating expansion plans, a serviced apartment property management system sets your business on course for a profitable future. 

Download the Ultimate Guide to Serviced Apartment Property Management Software 2023 to learn how property management software supports serviced apartment operators.

‍Request a demo to find out more.