Why it’s the best time to change your PMS – Gisborough Hall Hotel
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Guestline, a leading hospitality technology provider, interviews Vicki Jackson, Deputy Hotel Manager at Gisborough Hall Hotel to find out why it was the right time to review their systems and migrate to a new property management system – Guestline’s cloud PMS.
Whilst it's been a challenging time for hoteliers, it may seem unsettling to install a new PMS and distribution system. However, for some, it was the ideal time. Vicki Jackson, Deputy Hotel Manager at Gisborough Hall Hotel, tells us why their hotel took the opportunity to switch systems to Guestline…
Guestline: Why did you review your systems?
Vicki Jackson - The quieter times gave us the time and space to look at our business in more depth and see where we can make improvements to benefit both our guests and our team. Our management team analysed our systems, focused on how we could advance and reacted accordingly. We also reviewed our cost lines to see where we could reduce spending.
Q: Why did you want to move?
We were so unhappy with our previous PMS legacy system [from when we were a Marriott hotel] and their lack of support and understanding of independent hotels that we knew it was the best time to move to a new solution.
Q: What did the process involve?
Changing your PMS is a big decision - using previous experiences from the team and looking for recommendations from fellow hoteliers goes a long way. There was also a little bit of ‘gut instinct’ kicked in! Your PMS and speed of processes reflects on you as a hotel – if it’s slow and unreliable your team can’t always hide this.
Q: How did the implementation go?
Training was completed remotely, and our Guestline project manager and trainer have been brilliant throughout the whole process.
My advice would be to choose your ‘live load’ team wisely – fewer is often better. Agree who will be completing refresher training when you re-open and ensure you get your training plans organised as soon as possible.
Q: How are you now benefiting?
This investment makes our processes slicker, our guests experience has improved and our team is more effective and efficient - as well as being a lot less frustrated with the old system! In the short space of time that we’ve had the system, we can also see how much better the support is - Guestline’s online support portal is coming in very handy and their team are so helpful in answering our questions!
Q: What would your advice be to other hoteliers in a similar situation?
We are a family run hotel and are so pleased we switched systems; everyone we’ve met at Guestline has been lovely, the system is brilliant, and everyone is amazed at how easy it is!
For more information, please visit www.guestline.com
